Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1998, Page 17

Five Views

Lift the Embargo and Leave Saddam’s Fate to the Iraqi People

By Paul Findley

Debate mounts over what the United States should do about Iraq’s Saddam Hussain. I was about to add the words “if anything” to the above sentence, but I hear not a murmur that favors leaving the question of Saddam’s fate to the people of Iraq. The American people—at least their elected leaders—seem to have accepted unanimously the notion that they have the duty to depose Saddam.

The demonizing of the Saddam regime seems to intensify with each passing day, with television networks leading the way. So intense is the theme that one would think the United States had declared war, and the electronic media had assumed the responsibility of creating just the right atmosphere to get the nation on a war footing.

It is almost impossible to find a news channel on television that is not beating the war drums. The networks try to outdo each other in exposing lying, cheating and brutality on Saddam’s part. In one hour-long documentary, CNN showed footage—some of it never before presented—from the files of official inspection teams of the United Nations to document its contention that, despite solemn pledges to the contrary, the Saddam regime has been trying to retain the wherewithal to maintain stocks of biological and chemical instruments of mass destruction.

Other documents provide evidence that this stealth strategy is well-known to President Saddam Hussain himself, and not the work of rogues operating without authority.

The purpose of these documentaries is plain: to present Saddam as the new Hitler who must be removed from power before he destroys all that is worthwhile in the region and threatens the world beyond. They portray Saddam as a man of such evil intentions that the United States must assume the sole responsibility, if need be, of removing him from office.

I have not witnessed such demonizing since America’s publicity campaign, one that was well merited, against Germany’s Hitler and Japan’s Tojo.

The campaign is not confined to the media. President Bill Clinton and his foreign policy lieutenants never miss an oppor tunity to warn Saddam that America’s military might is ready to strike at the first evidence of non-cooperation in the program of inspection of Iraq by United Nations teams.

Trent Lott, majority leader of the U.S. Senate, leads the congressional cry for Saddam’s ouster. He wants Saddam indicted for war crimes and brought under steady assault through a newly constituted Radio Free Iraq. Lott would intensify, rather than lift, the economic sanctions. He would expand the no-fly zones that now cover about two-thirds of Iraqi skies.

Lott believes Saddam is hunted and haunted by his own people, most of whom, Saddam believes, would relish his departure from the scene.

In a guest editorial in America’s leading newspaper, USA Today, Lott dismisses containment as a failed policy that is without promise. He has frequently expressed disdain bordering on contempt for the United Nations. It surfaced last week when he announced that he would not have time to meet with Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary-general who is riding the crest of worldwide popularity

Annan is the diplomat who engineered the deal in Baghdad that enabled both Clinton and Saddam to claim victory and step back from a violent confrontation that would have ill served the interests of both parties.

Lott’s curt and discourteous reaction to the Annan visit was not his only back-of-the-hand to the United Nations. In his USA Today editorial, Lott did not mention the U.N. or any of its agencies, even though the inspection regime and the sanctions are products of the world body. Lott had earlier accused Clinton of giving the U.N. a veto over U.S. policy in the Gulf. (As a lifelong Republican and mem ber of Congress for 22 years, I hope fervently that Lott’s neanderthal attitude toward the U.N. does not become Republican policy.)

Sadly, the United Nations is almost as unpopular on Capitol Hill as foreign aid spending. In fact, the U.S. arrearage in U.N. dues—amounting to nearly $2 billion—was doubtless one of the main topics Annan wanted to discuss with Lott.

Much as I would like to see better, more humane leadership in Iraq, a U.S.-led initiative to topple Saddam is almost certain to fail and have the unfortunate side effect of inflicting new misery on the long-suffering Iraqi population. It would likely inspire new repression, new purges, harsh new police measures, and certainly a deepened hatred toward America, not just by Saddam and his team, but by innocent civilians who would find it easy to blame America for their new misery.

The wisest course for the United States is to face reality, which means the likelihood that Saddam will remain in power until the Iraqi people give their support to someone else.

Meanwhile, our government should deal with him in the most direct and constructive way possible.

One of our goals should be to find a dignified way to bring the economic sanctions to an end. Ending the sanctions would not personally benefit Saddam—six years of sanctions have not caused him to miss a single meal!—and should not be viewed as a compliment to him. Instead, ending sanctions would secure a convenience to the United States in its endeavors for peace, stability and justice in the region. And the termination of this failed policy might actually weaken Saddam’s popularity. It is probable that the U.S. sanctions against Cuba have served to keep Fidel Castro in power through the years and extended privation for the Cuban people.

The United States seems to be suffering from vestiges of the manifest destiny nonsense that inspired territorial expansion to the West Coast in the last century. A good many of my fellow citizens have the misguided notion that the United States has the God-given right and responsibility to police the world and depose tyrants. How else can Clinton and Lott presume to decide who shall rule Iraq? And if the United States topples Saddam, who will be next on the list?

The United States also suffers from a terrible case of myopia, It cannot see what is transparent to the rest of the world: the absolute, undiluted hypocrisy of its policies in the Middle East, where it rewards tyranny, repression, aggression and brutality that is meted out by the State of Israel but goes to war when the guilty party is Arab.

To many Arabs and Muslims, Israel’s abuse of Palestinians is as outrageous as Saddam’s aggression against Kuwait and repression of Kurdish Iraqis.

The American people seem oblivious to the fact that their government for nearly a half-century has followed a double standard in the Middle East, pretending to be an honest, unbiased broker but financing Israel no matter how awful its transgressions against the native Arab population.

As they denounce this hypo crisy—this double standard— the Arab people hopefully will recognize that a combination of fear and plain ignorance is the basis for this injustice. The American people can accurately be separated into two groups. One group knows that U.S. policy in the Middle East is controlled by pro-Israel political forces that work assiduously within the political system. People in this group are, with few exceptions, silent about this control. They are afraid to speak out and denounce this manipulation, because they are convinced they would pay a price by doing so. They might lose business, be passed over for employment, be ostracized as anti-Semitic, suffer socially.

The other group is uninformed. Its assessment of U.S. policy in the Middle East is badly biased, consisting of information filtered through a pro-Israel sieve that screens out injustice to Palestinians and wrong ly presents Israel as the resolute, beleaguered defender of ideals universally cherished in America.