I BACKGROUND
Hussein: Hoping To Turn
Defeat Into Victory
The Iraqi dictator appears to have played
his political cards well and is gaining
stature as the hero of the Arab and
Islamic worlds.
Foreign Correspondent
A
s President Bush
ponders the date for
committing ground
forces to drive the well-
entrenched Iraqis out of
Kuwait — what Iraq's Pres-
ident Saddam Hussein has
termed "the mother of all
battles" — it is clear that the
decision will be the most
difficult, most fateful that
any leader could expect to
confront.
Its consequences will be
measured in tens of
thousands of lives and in po-
litical, economic and social
ramifications whose effects,
at this point, are almost
wholly uncertain and un-
predictable.
So far, the war in the Gulf
has — for the allies, at least
—been a relatively low-risk,
low-cost affair, involving the
massive aerial bombard-
ment of Iraq's military and
strategic targets. However, a
number of conclusions can
be drawn from this initial
phase of the war which pro-
vide important clues to its
future course:
First, it is now clear that
Saddam Hussein never had
any intention of seriously
challenging the superiority
of the allies, particularly the
Americans, in this high-tech
war of wills.
Second, he had prepared
for the air assault and was
ready to absorb whatever
the coalition was planning to
throw at him: Rather than
scrambling his front-line
warplanes to challenge the
allies, he sent them scurry-
ing to safety in Iran.
Such passive resistance,
however, is not the product
of military strategy but of
careful political calculation,
for while he has been losing,
Saddam Hussein has also
been winning.
Most particularly, he has
been winning hearts and
minds by the hundreds of
thousands throughout the
Arab and Islamic worlds by
standing up, and being seen
to stand up, to the Ameri-
cans.
It was not, say analysts, a
careless oversight that led
Saddam Hussein to leave the
lights of his capital on when
the first wave of American
bombers appeared over
Baghdad shortly after the
UN deadline for his
withdrawal from Kuwait
expired on Jan. 15.
Rather, it was a powerful
symbol: He wanted the
world, particularly its Arab
and Islamic components, to
see that he —perhaps he
alone — was willing to defy
the international super-
power.
The gamble appears to
have paid off. From India
and Pakistan to North
Africa and the Middle East
itself, passions have been
aroused in favor of the Iraqi
leader and in opposition to
the United States bombing
of Iraq and Kuwait.
So skillfully has Saddam
Hussein played his cards
that there is now acute anxi-
ety among coalition leaders,
both Arab and Western, that
they may be unable much
longer to contain the do-
mestic discomfort which has
been evoked by the specter of
American military might
bombing Iraq into the Stone
Age.
The allies may have quick-
ly and easily achieved air
superiority, but it is now
equally clear that Saddam.
Hussein was playing a long
game and had prepared well
for that eventuality.
There is little doubt that
the U.S.-led allies will
achieve the UN's stated goal
of driving the Iraqi forces
out of Kuwait. Much less
certain, though, is the
human cost of accomplishing
that task and the strength of
the coalition's resolve in the
face of savage ground
fighting and a mounting
body count.
Uncertain, too, is the abil-
ity of the United States to
achieve its "hidden agenda"
— destroying Iraq's
Ba'athist regime and its
non-conventional military
arsenal — and the extent of
the political fallout for the
region and beyond, par-
ticularly if Saddam Hussein
survives as the leader of
Iraq.
The objectives of the Iraqi
leader, to the extent that
Israel's political and
military strategists now
understand them, appear to
Anwork from the los Angeles r.nes OY Rchsr.A.o.d. CoPY.g.t .
be far more attainable. They
are:
• To draw the United
States into a more equal,
grinding, punishing ground
war in which he is con-
sidered willing to accept up
to 200,000 casualties on a
10:1 ratio with the US;
• To entice Israel into the
conflict so that he can be
seen to have stood up not
only to the imperialist ag-
gressor and Great Satan, but
also to its regional puppet,
the hated Zionist enemy;
• To ensure his physical
survival and that of his
power structure so that he
can reap the rich political
rewards when hostilities
finally cease.
It is quite likely that
Saddam Hussein will suc-
While he has been
losing, Saddam
Hussein also has
been winning.
ceed in engaging the U.S. in
a ground war very shortly
and that he will soon achieve
his objective of dragging
Israel into the fray, even if
that means resorting to non-
conventional weapons, stag-
ing a spectacular terrorist
operation against an Israeli
target abroad or deploying
tactical forces in Jordan — a
move the Israelis have ex-
plicitly declared would be
considered a casus belli.
So far, Israel's leaders
have won an impressive
number of diplomatic points
for their uncharacteristic
display of restraint in the
face of more than 30 missile
attacks.
...les ...sr .....
At the same time,
however, they have con-
sistently maintained that
they would respond — at a
time and place of their own
choosing — to protect their
citizens, to demonstrate once
again their deterrent
capability and to avenge the
unprovoked attacks on their
civilian population centers.
The only inhibiting factor,
they have insisted, has been
the need to establish prior
coordination with Washing-
ton in order to avoid the pos-
sibility of accidental conflict
with U.S. aircraft.
Nor is it coincidental that
Israeli Defense Minister
Moshe Arens flew to Wash-
ington early this week, just
as Cheney and Joint Chiefs
Chairman General Colin
Powell were heading home
from Saudi Arabia with
their recommendations
regarding the timing of a
ground offensive.
One possibility being
discussed by analysts is that
Israel's retaliation — in
part, at least = will involve
the dispatch of a large expe-
ditionary force to take con-
trol of Iraq's western desert,
from where the missiles are
being launched.
If this were to coincide
with the start of an allied
ground offensive, • it would
perform a multi-purpose
function, enabling Israel to
remove the 15 mobile mis-
sile launchers which have
eluded the allies so far and
opening up a second front
against Iraq at precisely the
moment when Saddam Hus-
sein will be mustering all his
strength to confront the
allies in Kuwait.
Such an operation would
almost certainly be mounted
from a bridgehead along the
Jordanian border and this
could provide the most
testing moment in the 38-
year rule of King Hussein.
Uncomfortably sandwich-
ed between Iraq and Israel,
the Jordanian monarch has,
in response to irresistible
internal pressure, chosen to
throw in his lot with Saddam
Hussein (no relation).
Both the United States
and Israel appear to have
been preparing the Jorda-
nian monarch for the possi-
bility of Israeli involvement
and both have been
strenuously urging him not
to allow himself to be drawn
into the war.
Late last month, the
United States sent senior
State Department official
Richard Armitage to the
Jordanian capital to warn
the king not to make the
mistake of backing "the los-
ing side" yet again.
It hardly needed to be
pointed out that in the 1967
Six Day War, he lost half of
his kingdom — the West
Bank — to Israel; this time,
he might lose the other half
to his own Palestinian
radicals.
Shortly after Armitage's
departure from Amman, the
head of Israel's Air Force,
Major General Avihu Bin-
Nun, in a rare interview, ex-
pressed the hope that the
king would demonstrate the
same understanding regar-
ding Israeli planes overfly-
ing Jordanian territory as he
did when Israeli-bound Scud
missiles, launched from
Iraq, overflew his territory.
If King Hussein's pilots at-
tempted to interfere with an
Israeli operation, Bin-Nun
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
29
I TERNATIONA
HELEN DAVIS