HUSSEIN’S BIG MISTAKE : Terrorism: If the Iraqi leader thinks using hostages as shields--as was successfully done in Lebanon--will work again, he’d better think twice.

Saddam Hussein’s seizure of hostages and brazen attempt to manipulate public opinion should come as no surprise to the international community. Though he tried to cultivate a more benign image among Western leaders and the media, the Iraqi leader has consistently used terrorist tactics to advance his own and his country’s strategic objectives since his emergence on Iraq’s political scene in the 1950s. In the current crisis, however, his tactics seem likely to backfire.

Using blackmail and threats, Hussein tried to coerce Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates into reducing their oil output, thereby driving up the price of oil in July. Unable to achieve the desired results, he invaded Kuwait. Taking outright what he could not achieve through intimidation, he calculated there would be minimal Arab or international opposition. Clearly, Hussein miscalculated.

The surprising determination of the Arab and international community to stand up to Hussein’s aggression is unprecedented. Unprepared for such unity, Hussein has resorted to the one weapon he had reasons to believe could enhance his staying power while eroding the endurance of the international community--hostage-taking. Furthermore, reports that the Iraqi leader has re-established ties with such international terrorists as Abu Nidal, Abul Abbas and Abu Ibrahim, the world’s most notorious bomb maker, must be taken at face value. Whatever else occurs in the coming days and weeks, the world must brace itself for a resurgence of international terrorism.

While he openly taunts that the foreign “guests” in Iraq and Kuwait are “human shields” protecting his regime from international “aggression”--and where U.S. and international forces in the Middle East might appear as irresistible targets--Hussein’s terrorist lackeys are likely to try to divert international attention and alter the psychological balance of power by hitting “soft” targets or taking other hostages in Europe, Israel or elsewhere.

One aim of the terrorism strategy is to create an environment in which the buildup of conventional military power appears ill-suited to the violence being directed against Arab and international interests. Another is to create divisions within the international community that would undermine President Bush’s leadership and international resolve.

If Hussein believes terrorism will succeed in the Persian Gulf as it succeeded in Lebanon in 1983 when Syrian and Iranian state-sponsored terrorism defeated the United States and its allies, he is wrong. While he might believe that the situations in the gulf and in Lebanon are comparable, there are a number of important political, military and bureaucratic differences.

America’s adversaries in Lebanon were able to exploit terrorist tactics successfully by taking advantage of a range of vulnerabilities that do not exist in the current circumstances. Consider:

Domestically, there was no unity of purpose in Lebanon. President Ronald Reagan decided to commit military power in support of U.S. diplomacy in Lebanon. But he failed to generate strong, bipartisan support in the Congress or among the American people and the media.

Reagan also failed to exert discipline among his Cabinet members to ensure coherent implementation of his policy. Indeed, the guerrilla struggle within the national-security bureaucracy in Washington was surpassed in intensity only by the brutality of the conflicts on the ground in Lebanon.

Finally, while it was of vital interest to the United States to prevent an Israeli-Syrian war in Lebanon from escalating into a U.S.-Soviet one, there was no consensus that the restoration of Lebanon’s sovereignty and the removal of all foreign forces from the country represented a similarly vital interest.

Internationally, the world community was divided over Lebanon, with most of it against the Israeli invasion and the ensuing American-led, multinational peacekeeping effort. Even among members of the multinational force, disagreements over basic objectives were stark and clearly defined.

Simply put, in Lebanon President Reagan failed to exert necessary, steady and measured leadership.

While the most devastating blows in Lebanon were the destruction of the U.S. Embassy in April, 1983, and the Marine Corps and French barracks in October, it was the calculated and successful use of hostages to deter military strikes against strategic targets that is of the greatest immediate significance to Hussein.

U.S., French and Israeli military options were decisively circumscribed by the terrorists’ positioning of Western hostages at key targets and by locating terrorist infrastructure at or near Arab civilian sites, such as schools, mosques and medical facilities.

Of particular significance was the U.S. decision not to bomb--and to emphatically discourage the French and Israelis from doing so--the Shaykh Abdullah Barracks in Baalbeck, Lebanon, and other facilities where Hezbollah forces trained, resided and operated behind their civilian “shields.”

Because of the political importance attached to the “safe release of all Western hostages” and of the tendency of Western democracies to subordinate the realities of power and violence in the Middle East to the painful pressures of hostage politics, air strikes were not carried out for fear of harming the hostages or providing terrorists with a pretext for retribution. In the end, the United States defeated itself.

The situation in the gulf is dramatically different. Working closely with the Arab world and the United Nations, Bush is decisively exerting U.S leadership to generate a unanimous and determined international effort to rollback Hussein’s aggression in Kuwait, while deterring further expansion of Iraq’s de-stabilizing influence in the Middle East.

The President has also succeeded in shaping a national consensus on the use of force and its associated risk of loss of life to protect vital interests capable of restoring the status quo ante bellum and of potentially ridding the world of Hussein’s regime in Baghdad.

This consensus is neither ephemeral nor jingoistic. The public, the Congress, the national-security bureaucracy and the media are united in their resolve to stand down Hussein.

The moral and realistic rationale for using force to protect vital interests and shield international vulnerabilities from the manipulations of a terrorist leader like Hussein is clear: craven submission to terror only begets more terror and aggression. The bombing of Libya reduced Col. Moammar Kadafi’s use of terrorism. Although lives were regrettably lost, including innocent Libyans, more lives were saved in the long run.

The naked use of terrorism as an instrument of Iraqi state policy has been completely exposed. Myths about Iraq, the “unity” of the Arab world and the declining role of power in world affairs have been swept aside by Hussein’s “gangsterism.”

Still, it should be emphasized that the mantle of global leadership, in this situation, was only reluctantly assumed by the United States. The President did not seek a confrontation with Hussein. Indeed, America went the extra mile over the past 10 years to save Iraq from Iran and then to help Iraq join the community of civilized nations. In the end, Hussein betrayed everyone.

In these circumstances, Hussein is certain to find that shielding his regime with hostage-civilians will backfire, as world leaders painfully, but necessarily, choose to subordinate the needs of individuals to the common good. World leaders are not, as yet, succumbing to “hostage pressures,” although some in the media have begun to allow themselves to serve as Hussein’s public-relations tools.”

Hussein’s behavior has cleared away any remaining illusions that accommodation can succeed in appeasing terrorists. If international resolve an be maintained, one of the first achievements of the post-Cold War era may be the dramatic reduction of state-sponsored terrorism as an instrument of politics and the readiness of world leaders to act forcefully against those who wage war through terrorism.