Fran O'Sullivan: Only way to deal to despot

So Saddam Hussein's evil regime is on the way out.

Let's focus here on the leadership that United States President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard have collectively exerted to get us to this point.

For months now the anti-war movement and some self-interested nation states on the pretentiously named Security Council have ignored the brutal truths about Saddam's repressive and sadistic regime; failed to see through his obfuscations over his war arsenal and his double-dealing with United Nations weapons inspectors.

But within hours of war being declared the Iraqi missiles were flying. The lie was given to Saddam's protestations that Iraq had fully conformed with the UN demands.

Well before the war began it was portrayed by many as an uninvited - even criminal - assault by the US on an innocent people.

Bush the warmonger, and his Texas backers, were out to gain control of Iraq's rich oil fields; Bush was avenging those who sought to kill off his pappy; Bush had enslaved Blair and Howard as his political poodles.

I don't need to "ad lib in the key of C" much longer here. There has been plenty of coverage on this particular set of theories.

Certainly Bush and Blair have been somewhat haphazard with the truth as they sought to build a firm linkage between al Qaeda and Saddam's Iraq.

They should not have been. Nor did they need to be.

Nobody likes war. But there has to be more than one construction placed on the actions of Bush, Blair and Howard than the prevailing line marketed by "progressives" (and I include here the leaders of France and Germany - and much of the New Zealand political establishment) to the detriment of informed debate.

In this country, the political clamps on informed debate have been so strong that even Parliament was refused permission to debate the Iraq question until the US was on the point of launching its invasion.

That was not the point at which to debate such serious issues as: What does New Zealand's official non-aligned stance do for our traditional relationships?

Or, has New Zealand misplaced its faith in a UN that will not even uphold its own resolutions?

This debate should have occurred earlier, not when war was imminent but when cool reason prevailed.

There were, and still are, major public policy issues which cry out for debate despite the Government's prevailing orthodoxy.

It may well be that the United Nations has become as inept at forming multilateral solutions to security issues as the World Trade Organisation threatens to be on trade.

At least in the WTO's case, it is not hostage to one nation exercising a veto to stop action in the manner of the Security Council.

To make another parallel, it is possible to argue that Bush's actions were as necessary to the breaking of the Security Council stalemate as New Zealand and other nations' decision to resort to forging bilateral trade agreements was in the face of WTO inaction.

Then there is the other debate we have not had over whether New Zealand's stance has in fact harmed its own chances for long-term security by refusing to stand firm with our traditional allies.

Has this been lost amid an indecent haste to publicly bury the issue lest the politicians give further offence to the US coalition by saying what they really think?

It is almost as if there has been a collective memory lapse over just what Saddam's regime entails.

Right up to - and beyond - the expiry of the Bush ultimatum it was within Saddam's power to accept the offer of exile and thereby guarantee that no further damage occurred to Iraq or its people.

Other Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia offered him safe exit.

But Saddam's 48 hours to get out of Dodge City came and went.

Unlike those dictators who had passed their use-by dates - such as the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, and Uganda's Idi Amin, all of whom managed a "get out alive"scenario - Saddam stayed.

Admittedly, these players took the cut-and-run option at the point of being overthrown by their own people. In Saddam's case, his people had not revolted.

But it is arguable that the UN's decision to continue with economic sanctions against Iraq after the Gulf War, instead of enforcing existing Security Council resolutions, crushed the country to the point where its people lacked the necessary resolve to overthrow Saddam.

Visit Amnesty International's website if you wish to exercise judgment on whether it is Saddam or Bush that is the true criminal.

The UN's use of economic weapons such as "sanctions" to force behavioural changes on ruthless regimes does not work in the short-term. Despite the UN weasel words that cloak these so-called "economic" measures, in practice they simply allow more power to accrue to the ruling establishment.

It has become a truism that the exercise of force on Iraq is only morally correct if sanctioned by the UN Security Council.

There has been little serious investigation into the council's own decade-long ineptitude that enabled Saddam to rebuild his military forces and remain dominant.

An Observer article, republished in Friday's Herald, took issue with the Bush Administration's pre-emption doctrine and argued that another scenario underpinned its actions.

To paraphrase: A ruthless bunch of ideologues, who now inhabit the White House, hatched a conspiracy a decade ago to establish a new world order. They have since parlayed their support for the hapless Bush to achieve positions of extreme influence, have overridden UN opposition to deal to Saddam and have opportunistically used September 11 as the platform to establish their mad plans for global domination.

But this neglects the fundamental change which has taken place in global affairs.

Countries used to go to war over territorial disputes.

But much of recent conflict has been civil in its origin: One faction - religious or ethnic - against another; blatant demagoguery such as Saddam's or that of Idi Amin; or outright genocide, as with Bosnia.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives during Saddam's rule. He was the first to use biological weapons - against fellow Muslims - not the US.

It is worth a pause here.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta backed the need for war against Saddam to liberate victimised Iraqi civilians.

Writing in the New York Times, East Timor's Foreign Minister said containment was doomed to fail, and abandoning the threat posed by Saddam was perilous.

"If the anti-war movement dissuades the US and its allies from going to war with Iraq, it will have contributed to the peace of the dead," Ramos-Horta wrote.

"Saddam Hussein will emerge victorious and ever more defiant.

"Containment is doomed to fail. We cannot forget that despots protected by their own elaborate security apparatus are still able to make decisions."

Is there really any rational doubt that the US-led coalition is primarily intent on regime change?

Or does the opposition to this war come down to self-interest?

* The self-interest of France and Germany who want to use the Security Council to curtail US power.

* The self-interest of other heavyweights such as China and Russia who fear US hegemony.

* The self-interest - which we all in our deepest hearts must surely feel - as we weigh whether supporting the US position simply exposes us to terrorist attack.