Objective: Democracy

By R. James Woolsey
Tuesday, November 27, 2001; Washington Post Page A13

As the Taliban crumbles, our decisions about the next phase of the war against terrorism have become more informed. It turns out that we have had a powerful ally in this fight, one that the skeptics heavily discounted as recently as two weeks ago: the Afghan people. As they shake off the harsh Taliban rule, we see clearly that we have not just been fighting for our own security and to avenge Sept. 11 but, as in both the hot and cold world wars of the 20th century, for the freedom of the people living under regimes that have threatened and attacked us.

It also turns out that in Afghanistan in a mere six weeks, American air power and special forces -- working with a loosely organized opposition ethnically representing only a portion of the population -- have proven awesomely effective.

This ought to be enough to make us call into question some of the European-generated "truths" about another region, the Mideast, that have generally guided our conduct there for the past 80 years: that Arabs and Muslims have no aptitude for democracy, that we are well-advised to stay in bed with corrupt rulers -- occasionally changing them if they seem to threaten, especially, our access to oil -- and that the general rule should be: better the devil we know than the devil we don't.

We have, on the whole, followed this European conceptual lead, and it has brought us Sept. 11, disdain and hatred. Only in Afghanistan, and in Iran, where we are perceived to be at odds with the repressive regime, do the demonstrating crowds chant "U-S-A."

One of these days we're going to get the picture. It has been the received wisdom at various times in the 20th century that Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Russians and Chinese would never be able to manage democracy. Yet from Berlin to Taipei, people seem to have figured out how to make it work. And no democracy threatens us, for the very good reason that, unlike dictators, democracies turn to war last, not first. And no democracy consciously harbors terrorists or encourages them to attack us.

The Mideast does present a special problem. Outside Israel and secular Turkey, the governments of the region comprise no democracies but rather vulnerable autocracies and pathological predators. Some of the autocracies have launched reforms and may evolve toward constitutional monarchies with parliaments and the rule of law -- Jordan and Bahrain, for example -- if a predator doesn't get them first. Other autocracies, such as Saudi Arabia, seem mired in self-destructive behavior: spending vast sums to promote a whole set of domestic and foreign institutions, such as Saudi and Pakistani schools, that build hatred against both us and the modern world and that will, in time, undermine their own rule.

Many in the West see hatred and conclude that the people of the Muslim and Arab worlds are our enemies. They could not be more wrong. If we continue to follow the European paradigm -- as, tragically, the first Bush administration did in the spring of 1991, when it failed to back the Iraqi resistance's rebellion against Saddam -- we will continue to be hated both by predator governments and by a vocal minority in the streets of the autocracies. Our only sound strategy is to take the side of the people against the predators and, albeit less urgently, the autocrats as well.

Of the Mideast's predator governments -- Iraq, Iran, Syria and Sudan -- Iraq presents the most urgent problem. Its work on weapons of mass destruction, untrammeled now for three years by U.N. inspections, creates a serious risk for its neighbors and for us. We have plenty of evidence of Iraq's support of terrorists, such as its training of other Arabs at Salman Pak in how to hijack aircraft with knives. We know of many meetings between Iraqi intelligence and various terrorists. And we know for a fact that Saddam tried to assassinate former president George H. W. Bush in the spring of 1993.

This seems quite sufficient for putting Saddam's regime next in the cross-hairs. Those who would argue that we cannot move against Iraq without hundreds of thousands of American troops and dozens of allies must now deal with the reality of what has happened in Afghanistan. They should also take a good look at the Iraqi armed forces, which are a shadow of what we confronted in 1991. We do need help, but only one government is critical -- Turkey. The Turkish government fears a split-up of Iraq and worries that a separate Kurdistan in what is now northern Iraq would exert a gravitational pull on Turkey's Kurds. This problem should be manageable by working with the Iraqi opposition to guarantee Iraq's future borders and to give Turkey a role in guaranteeing stability in the north and in obtaining access to the oil fields there.

This will not be easy, but it should be well within our power if we are determined. Operating from Turkey and from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, we should have less difficulty generating enough sorties to make quick and devastating use of air power than we had against landlocked Afghanistan. We will have to take out Iraqi air defenses and hit Iraqi ground units from the air when they concentrate to fight. We need to arm the Iraqi opposition in the north and south and provide advisers and other assistance, as in Afghanistan. We should not do this just to destroy specific sites (Saddam has hidden much of his work on weapons of mass destruction in and under hospitals, schools, etc.) nor to stage a coup to replace Saddam with another dictator. There should be no doubt about our objective: We need to bring democracy to Iraq.

While we are so engaged, we can hope that the recent demonstrations in Iran against the mullahs multiply. If the mullahs want to help provide intelligence and other support against Saddam, fine. We can be cordial -- we can't fight everyone at once. But we should pay them no respect of the kind that would lose us the growing admiration among the youth and the women of Iran, almost universally hostile to the mullahs' rule. And the Mideast's other predators and autocrats? The Alawite regime in Syria, the Saudi royal family? Let them tremble. And let them have no doubt that America is again on the march, and on the side of those they most fear: their own people.

The writer, an attorney, was director of Central Intelligence from 1993 to 1995.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company