160 Packard Avenue - Tufts University - Medford, Massachusetts 02155-7082 USA - 617.627.3700
Comments to: FletcherWeb@tufts.edu
 |
 |
|||
 |
||||
 |
||||
|
||||
 |
||||
Iraq - it's the right war, but at the wrong time. |
|
18 March 2003 The Nation (Thailand) Let's start with the most important point - Saddam Hussein is a monster. Any man who uses a chain saw to cut a cabinet minister into pieces and delivers the pieces in separate body bags to the surviving wife hardly deserves an anti-war demonstration. An international coalition to rid the region and the world of a monster is a good thing. Why then does Washington have so little international support for its imminent war to achieve "regime change" in Iraq? Why are the only supporters apparent "rentals" as some call them - countries who badly need American backing for their own objectives, for example the new states of East Europe? There are many good reasons that help to explain the opposition - by French and German governments, by diplomats and crowds in Jakarta and Manila, Cape Town and Seoul. But there is also a real reason. The good reasons are obvious but often unstated. Paris, Berlin, Moscow and Beijing are reluctant to see Washington get its way, unilaterally to assert its right to intervene militarily anywhere it sees an implicit or explicit threat to its interests. There is no superpower to countervail against America as there was during the cold war; but that doesn't mean there aren't ways major powers can trim the sails of the superpower, to send it a message that it can't just bust into any port and have its way. An additional good reason is that Iraq, however nasty a regime it has, hardly poses a threat to Europe or the United States. Some of us recall how Nasser, dictator/leader of Egypt, was built up in Europe and America as a "new Hitler" on the Nile, who must not be appeased. This laid the popular basis for Israel, Britain and France's failed "tri-partite aggression" against Egypt in late 1956. But Nasser had no Ruhr, no industrial base to threaten the West. It was a silly analogy. We have the same case today - Saddam Hussein also is no Hitler. He may have weapons of mass destruction but these days anybody can have those if they have enough anger and a willingness to risk the wrath of the West. The real reason why America can't get support for its war can be summed up in one word, Palestine. We have to review where we stand to see why this is so. Meantime a man came to power in Israel who had a long history of making nasty statements like "the only good Arab is a dead Arab". The present phase of intifada II started because this man, Ariel Sharon, insisted on provocatively ascending the Temple Mount, sacred to Muslims. My own awareness of him came when, as an adviser to the US delegation to the United Nations in 1982, I read American government reports of his brutality in the Israeli attack on Lebanon and Beirut. Indeed some American senior officials, allies of the group of Israeli friends now all but running US foreign policy, bragged about "Arik's" brutality. It became clear that for all intents and purposes, Ariel Sharon was a terrorist. Now once again he has let loose the dogs; his troops destroyed the computers and files of the Palestinian authority, bulldozed its headquarters and held Yasser Arafat at cannon point at his Ramallah headquarters. So American policy has been to protect Israel throughout this phase, tapping its wrist occasionally for "overreacting". But American leverage on Israel is absolute. Even while hypocritically condemning Palestine for trying to bring in a small boatload of arms with which to defend itself, the US government continued to deliver vast shiploads of arms to Israel. Every missile lobbed into the Gaza strip by Sharon's army says "made in America", but Washington has not threatened to tighten the spigot to bring about Israeli compliance with UN resolutions or just to comply with past American policies of maintaining a peace process. Small wonder governments around the world object to Washington's hypocrisy in going after Saddam while letting Israel off for its aggression in the region. Had the United States had an even-handed policy in the Middle East and achieved a Palestinian state - which it would have had to impose on Israel, let's face it - it wouldn't have meant that terrorism would have dried up overnight. But it would have begun the process. The seedbeds for terrorism - Islamic hatred around the world for Israel and America's imbalanced support thereof - would begin to dry up in a few years, and one would see the decline of Muslim mobs around the world. The balance would have tipped against Muslim terrorists: again not overnight. But bit-by-bit those engaged in building a legitimate Palestinian state would present to terrorists a viable alternative to targeting civilians throughout the world. On a broader front the creation of a Palestinian state would remove the sting that young Arabs have felt so poignantly. And then, instead of seeing the West's inevitable victory over Saddam Hussein in Iraq as yet another humiliation, they could look to the building of new foundations of - we hope - democratic Arab states throughout the Middle East. It certainly beats seeing Muslims in Kuala Lumpur and Lagos burning US flags. W Scott Thompson The writer has held four presidential appointments in Washington and is Adjunct Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School ofand Diplomacy. He is the author of 11 books, including two on Thailand. |
 |
2002 The Fletcher School, Tufts
University |
|
|
| |