Did we really have no better options in Iraq than to stand by, leaving Saddam in power to slaughter whole communities of people who wanted to be free of his brutal rule? Yes, there were better choices. But only if we took seriously our rhetoric about a "new world order." What kind of world order do we want? To establish, as we said we were doing, that one country cannot gobble up its neighbor is a significant step forward. But are we to be content with an order that allows a war criminal to remain head of state? In this new world order, will the cloak of "national sovereignty" make genocide within borders no business of the world community? Or can humankind so organize itself that there exists no sanctuary within which crimes against humanity can be committed with complete impunity? Moving toward such a new world order should be our highest priority. But creating a new order requires new ways of thinking. Mired in its old habits of thought, the Bush administration has allowed much of its great accomplishment in the Persian Gulf to turn to ashes in its hands. As the Bush administration saw it, the choice it faced was between the "Lebanonization" of Iraq --its breaking into pieces-- and the preservation of the current criminal regime. The splintering of the country might well destabilize the region, but were those the only two possibilities? In the wake of World War II, criminal regimes in Germany and Japan were replaced while order was maintained. The Bush administration feared that Saddam's fall, in a country lacking any tradition of humane rule, would produce nothing better. But in the course of a half dozen years, occupying administrations in post-war Germany and Japan put in place enduring democratic structures of government where no democratic tradition obtained. Yes, but the Bush administration was understandably reluctant to take responsibility for the future of Iraq, to risk getting an American army of occupation bogged down in a quagmire, to inflame Islamic passions against Western intruders. Here is where a new world order comes in. What was called for was not an American but a United Nations occupation, with a multi-national force keeping order for an administration appointed by the Security Council. This would have spread the burden, and by-passed regional sensitivities about Western "imperialism." The Bush administration spoke, properly, about the limits to its mandate. We had a mandate from the Security Council to liberate Kuwait, but not to overhaul the government of Iraq. True enough, but why all of a sudden act like the Security Council has spoken once and for all time? Throughout the fall, the Bush administration displayed extraordinarily deft leadership in extending that mandate. Why did the US not even propose to the world community that it join together to replace an outlaw regime? There were two junctures when this might have been attempted. First, as the war was ending, and while both the atrocities inflicted on the Kuwaiti people and the environmental terrorism of the oilfield fires were inflaming the world's consciousness. Backed by an appropriate resolution, the coalition could easily have taken Baghdad with minimal losses to its own forces. The second moment of opportunity was when Saddam went beyond suppression of the rebellion to take wholesale vengeance on entire populations. The same allied airpower that had neutralized Iraq's planes and helicopters, tanks and artillery, could have intervened with the same relative immunity to casualties on our side. But, it will be objected, the Security Council would not have endorsed the takeover of Iraq at either point. The world's governments are too attached to the sacred mantle of inviolable sovereignty. The Soviet Union and China, who have the power of the veto, as we do, are too sensitive about their own suppression of restive peoples within their boundaries. Perhaps that is true. Perhaps the world community would not have followed American leadership that next step. But even if we tried and failed, our moral position would be better than it is now, when we have stood by idly while the peoples we encouraged to rise up have been ruthlessly struck down. At least, by our trying, we would have pointed the way toward a more humane world order. Even if we had failed, we would have defined the issue so that the heart-rending cry of the Kurds and Shiites would be heard as calling for a world order that holds fundamental decency higher in value than the sovereignty of criminal regimes. And if we had succeeded, our achievement in Kuwait would have been magnified instead of nullified. We would have reinforced, rather than allowed to have been diminished, the progress of humankind through this crisis toward a truly new world order where justice prevails over brutal power.

Andrew Bard Schmookler is the author of The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution. ??