Can We End the Siege of Iraq?

Mr./Ms. President:

The real name of our current policy should be "Middle East Oil Forever," for that is its real end. The alternative to endless containment in the Gulf -- against not just Iraq but also Iran -- is a rational energy policy. More on that momentarily; but first a word on our current policy.

There is a vicious circularity to what we are doing in the Gulf. To contain the secular Iraqi regime we station troops in Saudi Arabia. Their presence helps to undermine the Saudi government, giving its militantly anti-Western Islamic opponents a cause and a target -- the terrorist bombing earlier this year was a portent. So, to keep Iraq out of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia we pursue a policy that undermines Saudi Arabia. By containing a secular state that poses no ideological threat to Western interests we find ourselves strengthening the forces of militant Islam that do pose such a threat.

This makes no sense.

We need to take steps now to guard against a revolt in Saudi Arabia that expels us from the Gulf. That is where our current policy is leading.

We know what to do. The answer has been clear ever since the oil shocks of the early and late 1970s. We need to price gasoline at its real cost: a fifty-cent per gallon increase in the gasoline tax would be a beginning. It would yield $50 billion in revenue annually. Some of that should go to subsidize alternative sources of energy -- solar, wind, water, biomass. Some of it should go to mass transit. Some of it to research on the next generation of clean cars. Why not? Our whole Persian Gulf policy amounts to a huge subsidy of (foreign) oil.

The United States could lead the world in green technology with that kind of subsidy. We could free ourselves of the need for Mideast oil. We could pioneer the growth industry of the future. And we would help save the environment at the same time.

Or we could stay hooked on Mideast oil -- not forever, but only for as long as we can manage to keep militant Islam at bay.

And what of Saddam Hussein? He can be contained without basing troops in the region, and without the attendant costs of a large military build-up. Israel sent one or two planes to destroy an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981; acting for the world and the community, we could do the same if Saddam commenced a build-up in either weapons of mass destruction or in his army. A few planes could fly from Germany or off the deck of an aircraft carrier brought to the Gulf for that purpose. In the long term Iran, Syria, and perhaps Israel will contain Iraq. Our presence in the Gulf only serves to retard the formation of local alliances against Saddam. In diplomacy as in social policy, dependence stifles initiative. Let's end Gulf policy as we know it.

Mr./Ms. President:

In the wake of terrorist attacks against American soldiers in Saudi Arabia, and with Saddam Hussein showing no signs of going anywhere, many people have been trying to persuade you that Iraq is not worth risking lives for. But the major goals we set out to achieve in the Gulf War -- containing Iraqi aggression and safeguarding our oil supply -- were not fully realized. Despite our victory in the war, Saddam has repeatedly tested our resolve in the past few years by massing his troops on the Kuwaiti border in 1994 and, more recently, by completely ignoring the U.N. safe haven declared in northern Iraq and sending his forces into the area. Saddam's aggression is undiminished, even though American troops, planes, and equipment are and have been stationed at bases in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and on aircraft carriers in the Gulf as a deterrent. If American troops were to leave the Gulf region, there is little doubt that Saddam would once again threaten Kuwait and Saudi Arabia -- in other words our vitally important supply of oil.

The Persian Gulf is the site of two thirds of the world's known oil reserves. Forty percent of American energy comes from oil; we are vulnerably dependent on Gulf oil. Remember what happened when oil prices shot up in the seventies? If Saddam were to gain control of Kuwaiti or Saudi oil, he could toy maliciously with our dependence by raising oil prices at will.

There's a lot of idealistic talk these days about reducing our dependence on foreign oil, but while we may someday be able to rely on other alternatives, such as solar energy or synthetic fuels, we have no idea when or if they will be economically viable. Raising the gas tax -- even by only a few cents -- has proven to be a politically volatile issue, so the much larger increase needed to research and develop alternate energy sources would never pass Congress. Even if such a chimera were possible, it would have adverse economic effects of its own. Practically speaking, we're stuck with a need for Gulf oil. Leaving containment of Saddam to others would be naive, careless, and economically reckless. Face the facts, Mr./Ms. President.

Equally important to our national interests in the Gulf is keeping Saddam from developing weapons of mass destruction. Saddam claims to have destroyed his chemical and biological arsenals after the Gulf War, but United Nations inspectors insist that there are still several hidden stockpiles in Iraq. In fact the head of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) in charge of making sure that Iraq has no nuclear-, biological-, or chemical-weapons capabilities has testified before Congress that he believes Iraq has enough anthrax stockpiled to kill the world's entire population. Saddam has used chemical weapons before -- against the Kurds, and perhaps even against us in the Gulf War -- and he may well use them again. We can't let that happen.

We would all prefer it if Saddam were to suddenly disappear forever, but, unfortunately, that is unlikely. Let us instead keep up with our efforts, together with our allies in Europe and the Gulf, to isolate and weaken Saddam through economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, U.N. monitoring, and restrictions on the movement of Iraqi planes and troops. We should maintain our military presence in the region indefinitely as a deterrent to further action and weapons development. Perhaps at some point we will no longer need to be in the Persian Gulf. But as long as we are still dependent on oil from the Mideast (in the foreseeable future there's no avoiding it) and as long as Saddam is still very much of a threat -- it is in our national interest to contain him rather than leaving him to his own devices. Stand firm, Mr./Ms. President.