Administrations and politicians can avoid reality for only so long. Eventually, reality intrudes on artful spinning and wishful thinking. Since last January, we have been arguing that the United States faces only two choices in dealing with Saddam Hussein: either remove him from power or learn to live with a dictator in Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction. The middle-ground policy of containment — featuring sanctions, inspections regimes, and diplomatic pressure, punctuated with occasional “whack-a-mole” cruise-missile strikes — was never sustainable. It has now collapsed. Fancy talk about how Saddam might be “kept in a box” or made to live by the rules of the game has been utterly discredited. Now, finally, there is broad agreement in Congress and, we suspect, even within the Clinton administration that the only solution to the present crisis is doing what is necessary to remove Saddam from power.

Now the task is actually to do what is necessary, and not to shy away from the full implications of that understanding. As we go to press, the Clinton administration appears to be on the verge of launching military action against Iraq. We trust that the bombing campaign will be large, sustained, and aimed at the destruction of Saddam’s conventional as well as unconventional military capabilities. Congressional leaders should certainly insist on that much. But everyone ought also to grasp that an air campaign alone will not solve the problem. A comprehensive political-military strategy to remove Saddam will require more: It will involve establishing liberated zones in Iraq where the Iraqi opposition can rally and offer a credible alternative to Saddam’s regime. And it will require an American commitment to use force, both from the air and on the ground, to defend those zones.