Going It Together

Also unsurprisingly, the same officials have little confidence that the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan, and chief arms inspector Hans Blix will achieve anything in the round of inspections set to begin this week. Already, Blix and his colleagues have rejected President Bush’s “zero tolerance” of Iraqi noncompliance, saying it’s not their place to make such judgments. No similar scruples kept them from promising Saddam Hussein they would recommend lifting U.N. sanctions if they found no weapons of mass destruction in a year. Kofi Annan, of course, is the author of numerous failed “deals” with the Iraqi dictator, whom he once described as “a man I can do business with.”

So it should likewise come as no surprise that the Bush administration is steaming ahead with preparations–both military and diplomatic –for regime change in Iraq.

This despite Kofi Annan’s declaration last week that “regime change is not on the table.” Asked about the comment, a senior administration official dismissed it with a wave of the hand and a single word: “Whatever.”

“It’s the stated policy of this government to have regime change,” President Bush declared at a July 8 press conference, after repeated questions about his commitment to removing Saddam. “And it hasn’t changed.” It still hasn’t changed, despite the infrequent use of the locution “regime change” by administration officials since passage of the U.N. resolution. “There have been no changes in policy,” a White House spokesman confirmed late last week. “Period.”

Senior administration officials insist that the recent softening of Bush’s public rhetoric does not reflect a change in priorities–from regime change to disarmament–on Iraq.

In fact, says one, “regime change” is so integral to Bush’s thinking, he uses the phrase against advice to avoid it. Last week, in an interview with Czech television, Bush said, “I hope we don’t have to go to war with Iraq. I mean, my first choice is not to commit our troops to regime change. I hope Saddam Hussein does what he said he would do, and that is disarm. For the sake of peace, he must disarm.”

But Bush knows Saddam will not unilaterally disarm–he could have avoided 11 years of sanctions had he done so after the Gulf War–and the president understands that U.N. inspectors will never truly disarm Saddam without his cooperation. In short, disarming Saddam means removing him. So even as the president plays rhetorically to the U.N. crowd, his administration is moving ahead quickly, not only militarily, but diplomatically, too.

The president’s aides are feverishly assembling what Bush calls a “coalition of the willing”–allies who will support the United States even without a second U.N. resolution specifically authorizing force. (Such a second resolution is “not being widely discussed” and is unlikely, says one administration official with knowledge of war planning.) Evidence of this effort is everywhere. The president himself sought support from allies at last week’s NATO summit and huddled with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Friday. Meanwhile, Donald Rumsfeld raised the issue in recent bilateral meetings with defense officials in Latin America. And the Washington Post reported last week that 50 U.S. embassies sent letters to “sound out foreign leaders about their willingness to participate in military action in the event President Saddam Hussein fails to comply” with inspections. Several top administration officials will be seeking concrete commitments of support from would-be allies over the next few weeks.

One important argument U.S. officials will make in asking for cooperation: The war in Iraq is part of the larger war on terror. And just as U.S. allies were free to characterize the terms of their participation in the early stages of that broader campaign, they will be able to do the same with Iraq. Allies who do not wish to contribute troops or equipment to the war in Iraq will likely be asked to step up their participation in other aspects of the wider war on terror.

In New Zealand on Friday, for example, U.S. chargé d’affaires Phil Wall met with New Zealand foreign minister Phil Goff. Goff said the American diplomat came “seeking possible contributions . . . if force is used against Iraq.” And while Goff reiterated New Zealand’s opposition to military intervention in Iraq without explicit U.N. approval, Prime Minister Helen Clark said earlier in the week that New Zealand would send a naval warship and “patrol aircraft” to the region in support of the ongoing anti-terror campaign. Such aid, of course, will allow the U.S. military to shift resources to Iraq.

What will become increasingly clear in the coming weeks is the hollowness of claims that the United States will be “going it alone” when it intervenes militarily to unseat Saddam Hussein. Allies who have already offered varying degrees of support include Australia, Bahrain, Britain, Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy, Kuwait, Qatar, Spain, and Turkey. Other nations have pledged help, but won’t say so publicly until the United States has begun the military campaign. The White House counts 90 nations as active participants in the war on terror. Officials say most of those countries will participate, one way or another, in the coming war in Iraq.

“It’s going to be a fairly big coalition,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on Sean Hannity’s radio show on Friday, “and it’s going to grow over time.”

Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.