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This line is being voiced largely by people who prior to Jan. 16 favored giving economic sanctions a lengthy trial before any use of force at all. Some refer to bombing as "sanctions with teeth." But it also is coming from bipartisan hawks. Maine Republican William Cohen, an influential member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who voted for the resolution authorizing Bush to use force, publicly urged the President last week to pursue the air campaign exclusively "for the next several months." Wisconsin Democrat Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, similarly warned against "danger . . . that we will go to the ground war too soon." And one member of Bush's unofficial five-man war cabinet asserts that the Administration hopes bombing will so cripple Iraq's fighting ability that an eventual ground offensive "will be nothing more than a mopping-up operation."
THE CASE FOR SPEED
There are some military reasons for a relatively quick start to the ground war. The air campaign eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns, when all the obvious and easy targets have been blasted. Only hardened and elusive ones remain, and hitting them requires more and more bombing to produce less and less effect. Maintaining the fighting edge of allied troops becomes more difficult the longer they sit in the sand. And the longer they wait, the greater the chance that coalition troops would have to fight in searing heat. If Iraq uses poison gas and the allied troops had to don bulky protective clothing, they could quickly reach the limits of physical endurance.
The most important arguments for speed, however, are political. The more protracted the war, the greater the chance that proposals for a compromise settlement that would leave Saddam a menace for the future would gain support. Iran made some mysterious noises about such an idea last week but got no takers. That situation might change in a month or two, though -- particularly if the Soviet government softens its insistence that Saddam must get out of Kuwait. And Moscow seems to be falling under the increasing influence of military men who still feel nostalgia for the old alliance with Iraq and distress at the idea of a victorious American army perched virtually on the U.S.S.R.'s southern doorstep. In a statement Saturday, Gorbachev warned that the gulf war might begin to exceed the U.N. mandate and said he was sending an emissary to Baghdad.
The heaviest pressure is coming from the Arab world. With every day that Iraq holds out against the assaults of a coalition led by the world's sole surviving superpower, Saddam becomes more of a hero to masses of Arabs who have long felt humiliated by the West. And that is one problem that a prolonged bombing campaign will not ameliorate. Quite the contrary, it gives Iraq ever more opportunity to propagandize about civilian casualties.