Struggle in Washington

Internal struggle in Washington?

Hawks and doves fight for control of campaign

America weighs up its military option

by Ed Vulliamy in Washington, for The Observer

[10-3-01]

Note: This report has come to us from the Justice and Peace in Palestine/Israel Group, and we share it here with their permission. It offers an look at current power struggles in Washington that - if it's accurate - merit serious attention. Or panic?

[The Observer - September 30, 2001]: As war begins in Afghanistan, so does the assault on the White House - to win the ear and signed orders of the military's Commander in Chief, President George W. Bush, for what Pentagon hawks call 'Operation Infinite War'. It is a sinister reworking of the original codename for the mobilisation against the Taliban, Operation Infinite Justice, that had to be changed because it offended Islam, which holds that this is something that only Allah - and not B-52 bombers - can dispense.

The Observer has learnt that two detailed proposals for warfare without limit were presented to the President this week by his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, both of which were temporarily put aside but remain on hold.

They were drawn up by his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz - a highly intellectual right-winger who rose through State Department and Pentagon ranks under Ronald Reagan to become one of the chief architects of the 1991 Gulf War.

Drafted with a small coterie of loyal aides, mainly civilian political appointees at the Pentagon, the plans argue for open-ended war without constraint either of time or geography and potentially engulfing the entire Middle East and central Asia.

The proposals have opened up an abyss in the Bush administration, since they run counter to plans carefully laid by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has had the upper hand against the Pentagon for the first three weeks since the disaster, but is starting to lose his commanding position within the Oval Office.

The Pentagon notion starts with the basic proposal that the US should begin its war on terrorism in Afghanistan as it has - along with British troops - using special operations units to scout out targets, ready to pinpoint them with lasers when the bombers fly over. Where it differs is that the dominant thinking in the administration over the past few days is that the plot to attack the World Trade Centre and Pentagon spread well beyond Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden into what Attorney-General John Ashcroft on Friday night called 'a series of individuals and a series of networks around the world'.

Senior Pentagon officials believe that such a diagnosis demands a military response to match. 'This is the green light,' said one on Friday, 'to do away with fundamentalist terrorism worldwide, for good.'

The plans put before the President during the past few days involve expanding the war beyond Afghanistan to include similar incursions by special ops forces - followed by air strikes by the bombers they would guide - into Iraq, Syria and the Beqaa Valley area of Lebanon, where the Syrian-backed Hizbollah (Party of God) fighters that harass Israel are based.

In Iraq, any site suspected of being a chemical weapons facility or proliferation plant of any threatening kind would be bombed, in an escalation of the almost weekly current harassment of Iraqi installations by British and US fighter jets.

In Syria and Lebanon, as in Afghanistan, special ops would guide air strikes, and also be called on to mount guerrilla-style raids on training camps and to carry out assassinations. While a presidential executive order - which Bush is under pressure to revoke - bans overseas assassinations, the Pentagon points out that the US can act as it pleases in self-defence. If action in Lebanon led to an Israeli reinvasion of the southern part of the country, it would be supported by the US.

Asked whether the Hamas organisation on the West Bank and in Gaza would be too controversial for inclusion among possible targets, one source said: 'never say never'.

The plans involve overt and 'visible' military action by the 10th Mountain and 82nd Airborne divisions in Afghanistan. These would act as cover for units under the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command, which would operate in other places. They include the Delta Strike Force - specialists in commando raids and freeing hostages - and Army Rangers who work covertly across rugged terrain. There would also be attacks from the air by the 160 Night Stalkers helicopter squadron and the USAF's AC-130 gunships and helicopters.

According to one suggestion, the teams would be added to by Arab and Arab-American fighters, who would scout terrain, locate camps and hideouts and scatter sensors disguised as rocks along roads and trails used by terrorists.

Sources even said that operations could be mounted with permission from governments in semi-hostile nations which have nevertheless pledged their co-operation in the present crisis, such as Algeria and Sudan. Special US units could be deployed in conjunction with domestic troops against terrorist cells in allied Western countries, notably Britain, Germany, France and Spain.

Colin Powell's argument - backed by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice - is that such a campaign would be disastrous, isolating the United States and breaking up the coalition he has carefully built, making more than 80 calls to heads of foreign governments since the attacks on 11 September.

But the Pentagon militants prefer to speak of 'revolving alliances', which look like a Venn diagram, with an overlapping centre and only certain countries coming within the US orbit for different sectors and periods of an unending war. The only countries in the middle of the diagrammatic rose, where all the circles overlap, are the US, Britain and Turkey.

Officials say that in a war without precedent, the rules have to be made up as it develops, and that the so-called 'Powell Doctrine' arguing that there should be no military intervention without 'clear and achievable' political goals is 'irrelevant'.

Ironically, The Observer has learnt that the Pentagon hawks' principal obstacles apart from Powell is the military itself, much of which remains loyal to the view of its erstwhile chief, Powell, that 'American GIs are not pawns on some global game board'.

Officials speak of bitter arguments this week between President's Bush's political appointees and the generals and officer class who hold a deep distaste for front-line action.

While happy to support operations in Afghanistan, military sources say that the US risks being dragged into a quagmire of wars far deeper than Bosnia or Kosovo if it begins to strike in Iraq, Syria or Lebanon.

The final arbiter between the Pentagon and Powell camps is likely to be Vice-President Dick Cheney. Cheney is traditionally an enemy of Powell's and a close ally of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, but has been said to be moving closer to the Secretary of State's views over the road to war. The Observer's sources, however, indicate the reverse - that Cheney will remain with his friends and support an expansion of the war beyond Afghanistan.

The driving force behind the influential hard line is an axis of old-time hawks gathered around an erstwhile colleague of Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, Richard Perle. Perle has declined various offers to join the Bush administration, but acts as an influential adviser in his role as chairman of the Advisory Defence Policy Board.

Perle and Rumsfeld also head a think-tank called Project for the New American Century, which sent a letter to President Bush laying out the Pentagon's position and urging the removal of Iraq's Saddam Hussein as a precondition to the upcoming war.

'Failure to undertake such an effort,' it said, 'will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war against terrorism.' In a straightforward swipe at Powell, it continues: 'Coalition building has run amok. The point about a coalition is "can it achieve the right purpose?" not "can you get a lot of members?"'

The prestigious group of Washington hawks behind the letter include former US ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick and William Schneider, former adviser to Rumsfeld and now chairman of the Defence Science Board - both of whom have formidable influence over White House thinking.

President Bush said of his foreign policy team: 'There's going to be disagreements, I hope there's disagreement.' But the bitter divisions in Washington are long-standing. Wolfowitz and Powell first disagreed over military intervention in the Gulf War, which Powell initially opposed. They also held opposing views on the Shia rebellion against Saddam Hussein which followed in its wake. Powell refusing to support it while Wolfowitz saw it as an opportunity.

They next clashed over the Balkans: while Powell used his full influence to forestall US military intervention in Bosnia, Wolfowitz was one of the first senior politicians to advocate it.

Feelings are no friendlier between Powell and Vice-President Dick Cheney, with matters coming to a head over Rumsfeld's appointment to the Pentagon. After being appointed to office earlier this year, Powell set about installing his candidate for Defence Secretary, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, who Bush has put at the head of the new Office for Homeland Security.

Cheney, who effectively chose the cabinet, vetoed Ridge and nominated his old mentor from the days of the Ford administration, Rumsfeld. Then, together, they chose Wolfowitz, who had rocketed through the ranks of the Reagan and Bush senior administrations.

There was an ironic twist: also brought into the inner circle was Zalmay Khalizad, an Afghan and Reagan veteran whose speciality was championing armed insurgencies. Khalizad was one of the early supporters of Bosnia's Muslims and had made his name managing the Reagan administration's backing for the mujahideen - and Osama bin Laden - against the Red Army in his native Afghanistan.

That was the time that the then Pakistani head of state Benazir Bhutto had warned President Reagan: 'You are creating a Frankenstein.'