The deaths of Uday and Qusay–confirmed on Tuesday by U.S. CENTCOM in Iraq–represent more than just the delivery of American justice to the murderous and sometimes psychotic sons of Saddam Hussein. Their demise in a protracted battle in the northern Iraq city of Mosul is one of the single most important stages in helping to rebuild the traumatized nation.
As critical as repairing the decrepit electricity network, their deaths should lay to rest two of the ghouls haunting Iraqi citizens, and blocking their cooperation with the occupying forces. Iraqis have been terrorized by decades of Saddam’s tyranny and remain terrified of the criminals and militias operating as saboteurs and guerrillas today. But the terror really lies within: the terror of Saddam’s return. According to one group of Pentagon advisers, a group of reconstruction experts assembled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, that terror is not easily brushed aside.
Robert Orr, vice-president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says that Saddam still loomed large among the Iraqis his group met. “They are still afraid that Saddam is coming back and have not been convinced yet that the changes are inevitable,” he told reporters last week. “Until that occurs, they won’t be free to fully participate. The small but organized elements that are now killing mayors and attacking police understand this very well. It will be hard for us to get Iraqi leaders to step forward when they see the price being paid by other collaborators.”
That calculation changes dramatically with the belated killings of Saddam’s sons. They were the future of Saddam’s rule and their deaths–while not guaranteeing its end–point to its ultimate demise. In a sense, it’s another stage in the liberation of Iraq.
It’s also another step forward for President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair after weeks of nothing but bad news. Both beleaguered leaders benefit from the distraction of attention away from the daily murders of U.S. troops and the ever-elusive weapons of mass destruction. But more than that, the deaths underscore why they went to war in the first place: to rid the world of a bloody and dangerous regime.
Which brings us to the third corpse–the body of poor David Kelly, the British bio-weapons scientist who committed suicide last week. The hunt is on for Kelly’s killer in London, although the real hunt may be for Prime Minister Blair’s scalp.
You might think it was obvious who killed Kelly. It was, after all, a dreadfully solitary end to the life of one of the world’s best weapons inspectors and the man at the center of allegations that the Blair government exaggerated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In police terms, there is little to investigate. But for the people who whipped up the storm clouds over Kelly’s head, the investigation has only just begun. This isn’t just a tale of Tony Blair versus the BBC. The appalling irony is that the feeding frenzy that consumed Kelly’s life shows no signs of dying with him. If anything, it’s getting worse. The judicial inquiry into the whole sorry affair will find it hard to pick its way through the hype. Yes, Blair’s government over-hyped the threat of Saddam’s weapons. And yes, the BBC over-hyped Kelly’s briefing into a scandalous report about political interference with the pre-war intel.
Yet the real killer was the attack dog culture of Britain’s media and political circles. Much has been made of Kelly’s essential decency, and the unbearable pressure of life in a firestorm. The people responsible for that storm–in what used to be called Fleet Street and what is still called Westminster–are now the self-styled investigators, trying to pin the blame on somebody else.
Of course, it’s too much to ask London’s media and political life to change itself. They can’t help themselves. Whole business models have been built on this kind of media frenzy. Political strategy revolves around how to manage and manipulate it. For weeks the British media has been slapping itself on the back for its aggressive coverage of the pre-war intel. For weeks it has been pooh-poohing the supposedly wimpy American media for failing to hound the Bush administration. Maybe they should not have taken such overweening pride in their coverage.
Such antics have a profound impact on not just the British government, but on life in Iraq and the position of U.S. and British forces on the ground. British ministers spend their days fretting about the scandal of a BBC reporter’s stories instead of fretting about how they will ever rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure. In turn, that makes London fearful about its role in Iraq and unwilling to take a greater role at a time when U.S. forces are seriously overstretched.
In contrast to U.S. troops who have extended their tours of duty repeatedly, the number of British troops has fallen sharply from the peak of the war: down to about a quarter of their full strength at around 11,000. British officials say this is because their troops are so good at peacekeeping that they don’t need so many boots on the ground. Maybe so. But if that’s the case, then they should be spending every day training the Americans how to do the same. (Incidentally, the Pentagon’s group of external advisers said British patrols in southern Iraq were just as patchy as U.S. patrols in Baghdad, even if they were less intimidating to bystanders.)
Maybe, just maybe, the deaths of Saddam’s sons will galvanize Britain–and the rest of Europe–to understand that the hard work in Iraq has only just begun. That work does not involve the pre-war intelligence, important though that is. It involves the post-war job of building a new Iraq that we can all respect.
