March 7, 2003
R L Norman
Email:
Jmkeynes@SecularStagnation.Com
Brigid O'Shaughnessy : I deserve that. But the lie was in the way I said it. Not at all in what I said. It's my own fault if you can't believe me now.
Sam Spade: (smiling and grinning) Now you are dangerous.
Spade: (smiling) You are a liar.
Brigid: I am. I've always been a liar.
Spade: Don't brag about it. Was there any truth at all in that yarn?
Brigid: Some...not very much...Oh, I'm - I'm so tired, so tired of lying and making up lies, not knowing what is a lie and what's the truth. I wish...
Quote from The Maltese Falcon, 1941
www.Filmsite.Org
Introduction
In discussions of Saddam Hussein, President Bush frequently notes how bad a leader Saddam is and what a liar he is, but the real question is how did Saddam ever obtained this much power and how much American policy assisted Saddam in his efforts. No doubt every major country in Western Europe had a hand in the rape of Iraq through Saddam, but no country supported the man more consistently and steadily in the 1980s than the United States.
If there exists a country in the Middle East with a serious attitude problem against Saddam, surely Iran is that country. After the 1978 fall of the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlevi, Saddam took the opportunity to settle an old land dispute around the Shat Al-Arab, an area near the mouth of the Persian Gulf. This in turn inflamed the Iranians, who moved solidly into the fundamentalist camp of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A war proceeded between Iran and Iraq throughout much of the 1980s. Some casualty figures approach 1.5 million.
The United States had been dead set against the further spread of Iranian Islamic fundamentalism and supported Saddam throughout the 1980s. It is reported that Henry Kissinger once said, that in the best of all worlds, that both Iran and Iraq would lose the war. But in the choice between Iraqi thuggery and Iranian religious fervor, America unequivacally chose to support Saddam.
So, after several hundred thousand casualties in the 1980s from Saddam, some with biological warfare formulas mostly likely obtained from the United States, Iran could reasonably be expected to favor Iraqi 'regime change' . Yet, the precise opposite is the case, especially if the United States is involved. People in that part of the world are just GD tired of meddling by America and if stick our long noses too far into that hornet's nest, a lot of Americans are likely to get stung. No doubt many Middle Easterners would like to see Saddam visiting Nicolae Ceausescu late of Romania, but it is meaure of just how unpopular America is in most of the Middle East; that overwhelming the entire population would just as soon we stayed the H out.
Possible United States Admission of Guilt to United Nations
If the United States would just admit, that we were a major factor in Saddam lasting as long as he did, and that we were at least partially responsible for his crimes, I'ld feel a lot better about this D war which Bush seems very determined to get started. If we went to the United Nations and simply said that Saddam was a mess which we had helped to create and which we were now offering to apologize to the international community for and to help make it right; I believe that our position would be somewhat strengthened. Probably the UN would still reject the offer, but at least we would be have confessed to our part in the creation and survival of this thug. This public admission of guilt would not only be good for the soul, but might actually tend to undermine Saddam's Middle Eastern claim to Islamic leadership, in that he would be seen as little more than a Westernizing puppet for much of his early existence.
Out smugness is stifling to all who understand how we have operated in the Middle East since 1945. Our overweaning arrogance is offensive to all who know that we were significantly responsible for the Iranian casualties in the 1980s war with Iraq. Our kind offers to assist in the creation of an Arab democracy are simply not taken at face value in the Middle East. In this light, Bush is not likely seen as another Woodrow Wilson or Winston Churchill, but more likely as an evil worse than Saddam. The Middle Eastern perceptions from fifty years of oil-based diplomacy are not likely to fade in the wake of a few words by Bush, not matter what he ultimately intends to do after a 'successful' takeover of Iraq.
Playing a Game of Global Chicken: Bush versus Saddam
Our military intervention in the Middle East must be done sparingly, with great care and with a lot of smooth talk. George Bush is simply not capable of providing the type of delicate negotiation absolutely required for the long-term success of the war on terror. There is just something not there, some something which denotes common sense or raw fear in a very dangerous situation. In my youth, I occasionally rode with people who seemed to enjoy 'playing chicken' on the highway with approaching cars. High speed did not bother me too much, but games of chicken were not my drink of choice on a slow Saturday night. I soon learned after several close brushes with the hereafter, to avoid riding too often with such people. I later learned not to ride with them at all. I am beginning to believe that either Bush played such games once too often in his youth and developed a taste for them, or worse yet, he never did get to actually put his life right on that yellow center line while young and he is now engaging in adolescent behavior, in a post-adolescent age.
Bush as Bogart
Bush has got to stop Bogarding us and get serious about a non-war solution, to a problem in Iraq which has the United States's finger prints all over it. And Tony Blair has got to stop playing Joel Cairo to Bush's Sam Spade, develop some spine and push a non-war solution as if his own political survival depended upon it. It probably does. Lastly, the 'peace-mongers' here, the French and the Russians, who have only recently in historical terms stopped killing Muslims wholesale, need to develop a reasonable and fairly rapid way of not only removing the vestiges of the 1980s American-supported weapons of mass destruction which Saddam unquestionable holds, but of verifying this removal in a way which may allow George Bush a fig leaf with which to cover the withdrawal of about 200 thousand of America's finest. The returning soldiers should not however settle in too comfortably, as George Bush's earlier 'Axis of Evil' speech still has the leader of North Korea in a spasm of anger. War could easily break out in Korea again and America could again lose 50,000 more soldiers in a war with North Korea, unless the Chinese cross the Yalu to help America. This last possibility should help keep Kim Jong-il at bay for a while. The country with the world's largest supply of American dollars, easily China, is unlikely to bite the hand which is feeding fairly well.
And if civilization should remain intact until 2004, the military can correct their 2000 electoral mistake and either support a more sensible Republican in the primary, say John McCain, Elizabeth Dole or even Rudolf Guliani; or the military can vote for whatever Democrat survives the primaries. Whomever wins the election, George Bush should be returning to Texas for the duration.