Iraq again

The problem with leaving a job half done is that someone eventually has to go back and finish it. And it’s never any easier the second time around.

So it is with Iraq. Six years ago, coalition forces shredded the renegade nation’s army in just 100 hours of perfect military execution, then the diplomats shoved the generals aside and blew the whistle short of Baghdad. The snake’s body — the hapless Iraqi regular army — was mashed and mangled, but the head — the criminal Saddam Hussein — was left to bite again.

The cease fire was a humanitarian gesture devoid of any understanding of human nature’s dark side and innocent Iraqis condemned to live under Saddam’s heel have been paying the price ever since. Hundreds of thousands have been massacred, entire Kurd villages have been slaughtered, political prisoners are murdered daily. Freedom of thought, opinion and association are as nonexistent as fear and repression are pervasive.

It comes as no surprise that Saddam, the master dissembler, has failed to keep his end of the cease-fire deal — the eradication of Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapon programs under the supervision of United Nations inspection teams. It was inevitable that Saddam would become less cooperative the closer the teams came to paydirt, that he would rather prolong his nation’s agony under economic sanctions than give up his weapons of mass destruction, that he would attempt to weaken the Security Council by cutting favorable oil deals with its less resolute members, like France, Russia and China. The current crisis — Iraq’s demand that Americans be excluded from inspection teams and its threat to shoot down surveillance aircraft — was entirely predictable to those who have studied the careers of history’s madmen.

After initial wavering, the United Nations regained some of its backbone in recent days. Secretary-General Kofi Annan made it clear that the mission of three special envoys was not to negotiate, but to reiterate. Britain’s U.N. Ambassador John Weston said the message will be delivered in words of one syllable. The result of such unambiguity was immediate — Iraq, with the requisite touch of bluster, agreed to postpone the expulsion of the American inspectors.

Although the U.N. offered Iraq a face-saving opportunity by postponing the surveillance flights during the envoys’ mission, Defense Secretary William Cohen struck just the right tone Tuesday in saying that when the American U-2s do fly again, their safe return is the expected, the only acceptable, outcome. He did not elaborate on what would happen should that not be the case.

That’s President Clinton’s job. He should address the American people immediately and describe the hideous weapons already uncovered, the importance of the inspections and the dire consequences of allowing Saddam to keep what is still hidden. He should tell the American people (Iraq surely will eavesdrop) that this nation, alone or with the U.N., will enforce the cease-fire agreement and he should make it clear to the rest of the U.N that it must chose: preserve the integrity of the institution or buy cheap oil from a monster.

One of the fundamental lessons of history is that those who lead the world into war must pay the price. That lesson was ignored six years years ago and, unless the United Nations stands together, young men and women in uniform will be doomed to repeat it.