Behind US rifts on hitting Iraq

A rift over Iraq is developing in Washington along a sharp generational and ideological fault line.

Call it "realists" versus "Reaganites," although this oversimplifies things. On one side are traditional conservative foreign-policy experts, who emphasize study of national interests and working with allies. On the other are a group of younger officials, many of whom served in junior positions in the Reagan administration, who advocate a Gipper-like muscularity and more unilateral action.

By all accounts, the Bush administration has collectively decided that there needs to be a regime change in Iraq. But as the president meets with his top security advisers today at his Texas ranch, it appears that many details regarding "how" and "why" remain to be settled. The cautionary words of the old hands could yet affect the timing and shape of any US military effort in Iraq – or even whether it will take place at all.

It's this ideological debate between conservatives, more than a partisan argument between Democrats and Republicans, that's "going to be decisive" on Iraq, says Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution.

In recent days, the most prominent member of the realist faction has been former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, a key aide to the first President Bush during the Gulf War. Mr. Scowcroft has been publicly hesitant about a possible invasion of Iraq, emphasizing the damage an ill-thought war could cause to US standing in the Middle East.

Such an attack "could turn the whole region into a caldron and thus destroy the war on terrorism," said Scowcroft in a broadcast interview last Sunday.

Some commentators have speculated that, in going public with his opposition, Scowcroft may be delivering a pointed message from the first President Bush to his son to take things more slowly. That's certainly possible – Scowcroft and George Herbert Walker Bush wrote a book about foreign policy together and remain close – but it's perhaps more likely that Scowcroft is delivering a message for an entire generation of internationalist conservatives who fought and won the cold war with a mixture of prudence and resolve. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Carter's security adviser, have similarly urged a cautionary approach to planning for an Iraq war, though both appear to support some kind of military intervention.

One of the most vociferous spokesmen for the Reaganite faction has been Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, who has called Scowcroft "naive" and says that the US needs to smash Hussein before he gets nuclear weapons, by itself if need be, for the good of the world.

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