Artículo de Jim Hoagland en "The Washington Post" del 6-3-03

The Bush administration counts down the few remaining days to war in Iraq despite the jolting refusal of Turkey's Parliament to let U.S. troops strike from that country. Failed U.S. diplomacy must now give way to a clear war strategy for Iraq's liberation.

The Turkish imbroglio illustrates the moment of change that is upon us: This is no time for President Bush's diplomats to try to pressure or seduce Ankara into changing the vote, or for recriminations or reprisals to fly. It is time to move on, to let Turkey's politicians stew in the consequences of their act, and for Washington to be crystal clear with Turkey's senior generals that they would pay a huge price for staging a unilateral intervention in northern Iraq when war begins.

"We have told them before" that a Turkish grab for land and power in Kurdish-inhabited northern Iraq "was unacceptable. Now we will have to tell them in even more forceful and unmistakable terms," says a senior administration official. A colleague adds: "War is at hand. We are rapidly moving beyond 'what-ifs' to 'this is how it is going to be.' "

United Nations diplomats reflect a new sense of urgency as well. This crisis is now about U.S. decision-making, not about weapons inspector Hans Blix's remaining reports, says one senior envoy, adding: "The power has moved from the Security Council to the national capitals."

Others professionally qualified to judge the mood of Bush's military commanders portray an evolution that has now reached the proverbial midnight: Reluctant last summer, resigned for most of the winter, the commanders are now determined to get the war underway and finished as quickly as possible, before an incomparably messy international situation becomes chaotic.

The scale of the failure of U.S. diplomacy to give Bush workable alternatives to the situation in which he finds himself -- going to war over the concerted opposition of allies and world public opinion -- is staggering.

The Turkish vote is only the latest example of America's supposedly overwhelming power in global affairs being unable to command support from an ally on a vital matter. In this instance, Turkey's secular opposition, a dissident wing of the ruling Islamic-oriented party, and senior officers on the Turkish general staff combined to produce an embarrassing defeat for Prime Minister Abdullah Gul.

The belated endorsement of U.S. use of Turkish bases by the head of the general staff, Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, on Tuesday is likely to be too little, too late. Other officers had prevented an earlier, unified stand that would have been crucial to approval by Parliament.

Colin Powell's critics claim Bush was set up for these problems by the secretary of state's strategy of going to the United Nations for a "last chance" Security Council resolution. But Powell obtained the minimum that Bush needed to wage war. This is a war about Iraq's refusal to comply with that resolution in any meaningful way -- even now.

No nation should ever go to war for "credibility" or other such abstractions. The cost of war is anything but abstract: It is paid in flesh and blood and treasure. Soldiers pay that cost. Soldiers must now chart the path out of the clouded "context" the politicians and diplomats have created since Resolution 1441 was passed.

My sense is that Bush's commanders have reluctantly reached a conclusion that Bush's critics refuse even to consider seriously: At this point, the human, financial and political costs of packing up and coming home would outweigh the costs of going ahead.

This is not a movie that can be ended on an uplifting final frozen frame of smiling troops climbing on air transports as the story ends. Saddam Hussein still standing in the wake of an American retreat is a Saddam Hussein implicitly blessed as a non-threat to world peace.

If this happens, economic sanctions will evaporate. No-fly zones now enforced at the cost of $1 billion a year will no longer be tenable. And the Shiites of the south and Kurds of the north who have once again put themselves on the line because of American promises will be without protection against one of history's greatest mass murderers. There will be nothing abstract about the price they will pay.

Republican administrations abandoned the Kurds to Baghdad's atrocities three times in three decades: in 1975 at the end of the Kurdish rebellion, in 1987 when Hussein used chemical weapons against them, and in 1991 at the end of the Gulf War.

Some Bush critics try to saddle him with responsibility for those past betrayals as a way of immobilizing him.

But Turkey's opting out clears the way for the binding, clear and moral U.S. commitment to real autonomy in Iraq that the Kurds seek and deserve. They should be honored guests at a victory banquet rather than items on the menu for Arab dictators or Turkish generals.