The Politics of Truth

President Bush has made his preference clear: He wants Saddam Hussein’s scalp, or at least wants him run out of town—an approach that virtually ensures a bloody American invasion and long occupation of Iraq. And Congress late last week gave the president broad authority to launch that war, with or without United Nations involvement.

The U.N. Security Council, meanwhile, is pursuing a business-as-usual policy, reluctant to put any teeth into the possible resumption of weapons inspections until Saddam cheats yet again.

Both the U.S. and U.N. approaches are dangerously flawed. They ignore crucial lessons we learned in the Persian Gulf War about how Saddam thinks.

If history is any guide, “regime change” as a rationale for military action will ensure that Saddam will use every weapon in his arsenal to defend himself. You need look no further for evidence than his use of chemical weapons to repel Iranian invaders during the Iran–Iraq war. As the just-released cia report suggests, when cornered, Saddam is very likely to fight dirty.

But history also shows that the less-confrontational approach favored by some on the Security Council—France and Russia—isn’t likely to work, either. Saddam has, after all, repeatedly flouted U.N. resolutions and ignored its demands to let weapons inspectors back into the country for almost four years.

Twelve years ago, I was in charge of the American Embassy in Baghdad. On Aug. 6, 1990, four days after the invasion of Kuwait, I met with Saddam for nearly two hours and listened to him gloat at the overthrow of the Kuwaiti government and threaten to “spill the blood of 10,000 American soldiers in the sands of the Arabian desert” should we counterattack. Over the next several months, my staff and I worked day and night to try to persuade him not just to leave Kuwait, but also to allow Americans in Kuwait and Iraq to go home and to release the hundreds of foreign hostages, including Americans, whom he had taken as “human shields.” The lessons we gleaned during that period are applicable to today’s looming conflict.

What we learned firsthand is what the cia psychiatrists have said for years: Saddam is an egomaniacal sociopath whose penchant for high-risk gambles is exceeded only by a propensity for miscalculation. Those psychiatrists, who study the characters of world leaders, believe that he suffers from what is popularly called “malignant narcissism,” a sense of self-worth that drives him to act in ways that others would deem irrational, such as invading neighboring countries.

But the trait also makes him highly sensitive to direct confrontation and embarrassment, even as he is contemptuous of compromise.

“In your face” approach

Shortly after the invasion, I met with my senior staff to game out possible outcomes, given the history of Iraq in times of conflict. When the monarchy was overthrown in 1958, foreigners, including Americans, had been dragged from their hotels and hanged in public. At the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, a visiting delegation of Iranians disappeared in Baghdad, never to be seen again. Our conclusion was that some of us attending that meeting would not survive.

We also recognized that the traditional diplomatic methods had not worked; Ambassador April Glaspie had been severely, albeit unjustly, criticized for not being tough enough in her meeting with Saddam just days before the invasion. What she did at that meeting was follow longstanding instructions from Washington to urge, but not demand, that Iraq’s dispute with Kuwait over border and oil issues be settled diplomatically. She then left for official business in Washington.

After the invasion, those of us still at the embassy opted for a confrontational “in your face” approach opposite to diplomatic convention, but well-suited to Saddam’s understanding of the world. Whenever Saddam tried to garner international sympathy or support, we pushed back hard. Saddam would never yield to traditional diplomatic persuasion, because he equates compromise with weakness. Therefore, we let no action go uncriticized and sought to embarrass him whenever possible, to shame him into concessions.

The first test of this approach came when Saddam tried to portray himself as a host rather than hostage-taker when he appeared on television with a young British boy and his terrified family. We immediately issued statements that true Arab knights, as Saddam liked to be called, did not hide behind women’s skirts—mocking his masculinity. Our comments were broadcast to the world and repeated by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a speech. Just days after Thatcher chided him, Saddam released all women and children. While we could never prove cause and effect, we knew we had succeeded.

Later, when the Iraqi government circulated a diplomatic note threatening to summarily execute anybody harboring foreigners—at a time when the embassy was providing refuge to 125 Americans stuck in Baghdad—I wore a hangman’s noose in lieu of a tie to a news briefing. I shared the note with the international media and told them that if the Iraqis wanted to execute me for protecting Americans, I would bring my own rope.

The Iraqis were furious at my black joke and harangued me publicly. Then they withdrew the diplomatic note—another indication that Saddam was thin-skinned in the face of aggressive opposition.

Confrontation worked

At one point, Saddam sought to justify the invasion of his neighbor as a step toward the liberation of Palestine and, in a particularly ludicrous assertion, he claimed to be the champion of the Muslim world against the Christian infidel capitalists. We countered that several hundred thousand Muslim Pakistanis, Indians and Sri Lankans were languishing in Iraqi refugee camps. Within days, Saddam released all of them.

As we applied these tactics to the task of attempting to reverse the invasion of Kuwait, we understood that the only way to try to avoid a war was to be credible in threatening one. Saddam had announced the annexation of Kuwait on Aug. 8, but by the end of September he was squirming, trying to retain as much of his conquest as possible as we kept beating the drums of war.

We told Saddam that the United States had accepted the fact that the men he was still holding hostage would be killed and convinced him that they were not of any worth to him. On the contrary, we said, they were a liability; if the Iraqis brutalized any of them, American outrage could well trigger a war to avenge the mistreatment.

He released the hostages in early December. Our entire embassy staff and virtually all other foreigners who wanted to leave also were allowed to go before the start of war.

In each case, taking a tough stand worked.

In the end, of course, the United States didn’t succeed in peacefully dislodging Iraqi troops from Kuwait. But in the days leading up to Operation Desert Storm the United States again took a confrontational approach that may well have prevented an even deadlier war.

A week before the United States launched the assault on Iraqi forces in Kuwait, Secretary of State James Baker met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in Geneva. Throughout December it had become clear that Saddam would fight a military battle that he knew he would lose, calculating that in defeat he could still win the political war. In a region that feels deeply the humiliations it has suffered over centuries at the hands of imperialists, conquerors and more recently Israel, merely standing up to the West is considered a victory.

It fell to Baker to try to deter Saddam from using chemical or biological weapons. In the meeting, Baker made it clear that if Iraq attempted to defend itself in Kuwait by using weapons of mass destruction, the United States would respond by “eliminating the current Iraqi regime”—a not-so-veiled reference to a nuclear strike.

During the war, Saddam launched Scud missiles against Saudi Arabia, set fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields and did everything he could to draw Israel into a broader conflict. But he did not use chemical or biological weapons against our troops. In the end, he prized his own survival above all.

You could argue—and some liberals have—that deterrence alone could work again now, and that neither war nor tough inspections are needed. But effective deterrence requires that world leaders issue ultimatums backed by the credible threat of force, which they have not been willing to do so far.

Build on experience

So the question remains: Can we disarm Saddam this time without risking a chemical attack or a broader regional war that threatens our allies?

The answer, I think, is yes, but only if we reject the approaches favored by many in the Bush administration and by France and Russia, and build instead on the experiences of the gulf war.

An aggressive U.N.-sanctioned campaign to disarm Iraq—bolstered by a militarily supported inspection process—would combine the best of the U.S. and U.N. approaches, a robust disarmament policy with the international legitimacy the United States seeks. Secretary of State Colin Powell is pushing the Security Council to adopt such an approach.

But he will have to overcome French and Russian concerns that other harsh demands in the U.S.–British draft resolution leave Saddam little room to save face and avoid war.

One of the strongest arguments for a militarily supported inspection plan is that it doesn’t threaten Saddam with extinction, a threat that could push him to fight back with the very weapons we’re seeking to destroy. If disarmament is the goal, Saddam can be made to understand that only his arsenal is at stake, not his survival.

Our message to Saddam can be simple: “You are going to lose your weapons-of-mass-destruction capability either through the inspections or through a sustained cruise-missile assault on the 700 suspicious sites the United Nations has already identified. If you rebuild them, we will attack again. And if you use weapons of mass destruction or attack another country in the region, we will destroy you and your regime.” The decision to live or die then becomes his to make.

The ultimate lesson of the gulf war may be that when offered the choice, Saddam will sacrifice almost everything before sacrificing his own life or grip on power.

Joseph Wilson was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from 1988 to 1991. He also served as special assistant to President Clinton at the National Security Council and as ambassador to Gabon. He wrote this article for Perspective.