WHY CODDLE IRAQ?; U.S. MUST USE MILITARY FORCE IN ITS OWN INTEREST.

Byline: Robert W. Tracinski

AT first glance, America's foreign policy presents a paradox. In Bosnia, where there is no threat to the United States, we have deployed thousands of troops, for an indefinite period, as ``peacekeepers'' among savagely warring factions. In Iraq, by contrast, where a terrorist nation is developing weapons of mass destruction - a nation that we already have had to defeat once in war and that denounces America as its principal enemy - we send tiptoeing diplomats instead of armed soldiers.

What explains this combination of feckless adventurism in Bosnia and hand-wringing timidity in Iraq? Underneath the superficial differences there is a consistent foreign policy at work: a policy of American self-abnegation. According to this policy, it is morally wrong - it is ``selfish'' - for America to decide unilaterally to use its overwhelming military might to protect its own interests. The corollary of this premise is that we have a moral duty to dispatch our troops to the aid of any needy nation on earth - as long as we have no practical interest at stake. This policy can be seen in the self-sacrificial willingness to send American troops into dangerous conflicts that mean nothing to us.

In Bosnia, for instance, our soldiers have been sent to deal with a conflict that poses no danger to America or her strategic allies.

The same is fundamentally true of a string of foreign adventures, from Somalia to Haiti, in which the U.S. has offered its troops as sacrificial fodder in the name of international altruism. (In fact, the basic reason we don't hear the old liberal denunciation of American ``intervention in a foreign civil war'' applied to our presence in Bosnia is that we have no self-interest in being there - i.e., whatever enemy we are fighting there, is not an enemy of the U.S.)

The most disastrous consequence of this policy, however, is not the sacrifice of American troops in senseless conflicts. Rather, it is America's paralytic policy of self-doubt and appeasement when confronted with real threats to its interests.

This national self-neglect is on shameful display in the so-called showdown with Iraq. Saddam Hussein is working to re-establish his military power by producing chemical and biological weapons, such as anthrax spores and botulin toxin. More frightening still, Iraq has a long record of supporting international terrorists, who would be eager to unleash these weapons on American soil. If America cannot act swiftly and decisively against this kind of threat - when can it act?

The U.S. response, however, has been tragically impotent. Washington has engaged in endless negotiations with Iraq and its United Nations apologists, arrived at laughably weak ``agreements,'' scrambled to make more concessions each time Hussein ignored the terms, and refused to employ anything more forceful than the threat of another empty U.N. resolution ``deploring'' Hussein's tactics. And our secretary of state, instead of condemning the U.N. for failing to support America against Iraq, chose to condemn Congress for curtailing her negotiating ``leverage'' by allowing America to be in arrears to the U.N.

Throughout this process, the U.S. has taken no action more severe than restricting the travel privileges of Iraqi diplomats. President Clinton has thus far refused to use military force to eliminate this odious threat. Just as America obediently complied when asked by the U.N. to commit troops to Bosnia and Somalia, so now it self-effacingly waits for U.N. permission to act against Iraq.

Hussein has ample reason to believe that he can get away with his gleeful defiance. He can look to our coddling of China over its arms sales and its threats against Taiwan, or to our appeasement of North Korea when it attempted to develop nuclear weapons. He can even look back to the 1991 Gulf War, when, after crushing Iraq's armies on the field, the U.S. - in order to placate Arab ``allies'' - refused to oust Hussein from power. Years of recent history reveal America's moral reluctance to take unequivocal, ``non-diplomatic'' action in defense of its interests.

This policy constitutes a massive abdication of responsibility on the part of the nation's leaders - and needs to be repudiated. America must reverse the self-destructive policy of sacrificing its military resources in arcane tribal conflicts while neglecting its real interests in the world. If we cherish our lives and our liberty, we must regard the defense of our self-interest as morally desirable.

Only when this country holds its own interests - and only its own interests - as the basic value of its foreign policy, can we look forward to the day when the Saddam Husseins of the world will no longer dare to pose a threat to America.

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Drawing: (Color) no caption (Saddam Hussein)

Jorge Irribarren/Daily News