A Chat about Chad

Once again, our friend Humphrey dropped into the office. He had a combative gleam in his eye.

Q Well, I suppose you're going to tell me that there's nothing wrong with Qadhafi's sending troops and bombers into Chad

A Whatever gave you that idea? I'm not in favor of any country sending its troops, uninvited, onto the territory of another country. Why on earth do you think I'm opposed to Israel's presence in Lebanon, the West Bank, Golan and so forth?

Q Hmm. Well, since we agree, there's not much point in my sticking around. I'll come back when another

A Whoa, there! Don't you want to hear the rest? I mean, I don't think our government's approach to the Chad problem is anything to cheer about either, my friend.

Q For Pete's sake, all they're trying to do is save Chad

A Sometimes I wonder about you, Humph. Look, even the Administration isn't claiming that Chad itself is the issue. Firstly, there's nothing of strategic value about the country. It doesn't control any world trade routes or any sea-lanes. Secondly, it's mostly desert and swamp with less than five million inhabitants, and its per capita income is the fourth lowest in the world—just ahead of Bhutan, and far below economic basket-cases like Upper Volta, which is the fifteenth lowest, and Haiti, which is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere but has a per capita income twice as large as Chad's. Thirdly

Q For crying out loud, howdya know all that stuff? Memorized it, or something?

A As a matter of fact, I did. I figured your night come in today, so I looked it all up in the latest World Bank Development Report. A useful book.

Q Okay, okay, but does there have to be a "thirdly?" I hate it when you start lecturing

A Thirdly, it's not as though the current regime has a long record of good and stable government or has been considered a close ally of the United States. After all, the man in charge now, President Habre, has held power only since last summer, when he ousted the rival warlord who is now, with Qadhafi's help, trying to make a comeback.

Q But isn't Habre supposed to be a pretty good leader?

A Perhaps he is—but he has a background that would be unlikely to appeal to Reagan. When Habre was a student, he had Marxist inclinations, and later he became leader of a revolutionary guerrilla group which preached "anti-imperialism." Even though his views may now have changed, he hardly sounds like Reagan's kind of man.

Q But

A So you can see, Humph, it's not particularly for Chad's sake that the U.S. is sending in help. The real reason is to stop Qadhafi. Do you know why?

Q Sure. It's because if we stop Qadhafi we also stop the Soviet Union. It's all part of the global struggle against Communism.

A Well, I can't fault you for thinking that, because this is what top people in the Administration have been preaching for some time. President Reagan himself referred in a speech the other day to "Qadhafi's superintendents in the Kremlin." But the funny thing is that just about everyone I've ever talked to who really knows Libya, and they include a number of government analysts, say that Qadhafi is by no means Moscow's puppet. Sure, he gets lots of arms from them—which he pays for, incidentally—but then he goes on and does his own thing. It's easy to see why the President paints the picture as he does, of course. It plays well in Peoria-helping to justify our involvement over there. But it's not the real reason for wanting to stop Qadhafi. Try again.

Q We're doing it so that Qadhafi cannot subvert all of Africa and build up an Islamic empire.

A Yep, that's something else the Administration has been saying. It's even trying to give the impression that Qadhafi is well on his way to achieving that goal. Just the other day, State Department spokesman John Hughes said: "Some people collect antiques. Colonel Qadhafi collects countries—by force."

So where are the countries he's collected? He's now been in power for 14 years, and as far as I know, Libya is still the only country he runs. Yes, he has tried to achieve "mergers" with other countries over the years—at various times with Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Syria and Chad—but they have all fallen through. He also hasn't made any secret about wanting to lead an Islamic union in Africa, and he has used some of his oil revenues to provide support to sympathizers in some African and other nations. But if he was hoping that some of them would gain control and then invite him in to take over, it certainly hasn't worked out that way.

As for building an empire by sending forth his 45,000-man army to "collect" countries—as though he had the military clout of Adolph Hitler—this idea is ridiculous, Humph. Libya is essentially still a small, weak, semi-literate developing country. This is true even though its economy has come a long way since 1952, when the U.N. rated Libya as the poorest country in the world.

Stop shaking your head, Humphrey—I used to read development reports back in those days, too!

Q I'm only shaking my head because I'm wondering when in the world you're going to get around to telling me what the real reason is why the Administration is trying to stop Qadhafi in Chad.

A You've got to learn patience, young man

Q Hey, I'm 43!

A First let me tell you what I think is the real reason for Qadhafi's invasion of Chad. He is trying to put into power a government which he has reason to believe will grant him legal possession of Aouzou. This is a strip of Chadian territory on the Libyan border which he has controlled for ten years and claims was an integral part of Libya during colonial times.

As for the Administration's real reason for wanting to stop Qadhafi: the way I see it, the Administration badly needs a foreign policy "success," particularly one in the Middle East-where its position in Lebanon is bogged down, and its plan for the West Bank is dead. When Qadhafi moved against Chad, the Administration figured it had an ideal opportunity. For one thing, there was not likely to be a political backlash from any quarter, since Qadhafi has few friends even in the Arab world, where most countries view him as a troublemaker, at best. That made him a sitting duck, so to speak.

But more than that, "victory" over Qadhafi would be viewed as a substantial one by the voters-because for years, the Administration has been building him up into a much more important and threatening figure on the world stage than he really is. Remember all the hoopla about the Libyan "hit team" that was supposed to have come to the U.S.? That was typical. Instead of quietly investigating an unsubstantiated report, Administration officials hyped it up with deliberate "leaks" to the media, sent decoy limousines through the streets of Washington, and had snipers placed on the White House roof. It turned out later, according to the head of the FBI, that there never had been any evidence that even one member of a Libyan hit squad had set foot in the U.S.

Q So by building Qadhafi up, they make themselves look very macho when the day comes that they knock him down? Say, you gotta admit that they're pretty smart

A I admit no such thing, Humph. Fakery is not smart. And in any case, the way the Chad operation has been conducted up to now seems pretty feckless to me.

Q How do you figure that?

A When we started out, we made it look as though the U.S. was on its way, with flags flying, to the rescue of little Chad. An aircraft carrier was sent to the Libyan coast, where it immediately had an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with two Libyan jets, which blinked and turned back. Then, Redeye antiaircraft missiles were flown into the Chadian capital by U.S. military instructors; and two AWACS electronic surveillance planes were despatched to Sudan, just across the border from Chad. It all looked very macho. But there had been one tiny misunderstanding.

Q What was that?

A It turned out that the AWACS were sent in as support for French fighter aircraft which the Administration had expected France to put into the air to shoot down Libya's bombers. But France says it has no plans to send any aircraft into combat, so the AWACS support planes have nothing to support.

There's been lots of confusion on this and other dealings with France on matters connected with Chad, and I'm not saying it's been all the Administration's fault. But President Reagan really put his foot in it when he said publicly that he believed Chad was in the French "sphere of influence." This was just the thing to make President Mitterand go up. the wall. And he did. "Spheres of influence" smack of colonialism, and the coalition of Socialists and Communists which Mitterand heads has been trying to disassociate itself from France's colonial past. In any case they are not obsessed, as the Reagan Administration appears to be, with the idea that Qadhafi is a major threat to the world.

Q Anything else?

A Well, it turns out that our Redeye missiles weren't of any more help than the AWACS. They were installed in the town of Faya Largeau before it fell to the rebels, but they weren't used. Some sources said they had failed to work because of the extreme heat. But the Chadian information minister, perhaps trying to put a better face on it, said—I've got the quote right here: "It would be wrong to claim that the Redeyes were not functioning well. But the Libyan air attacks were so overwhelming that they could not be effectively deployed."

Q So what happens next?

A We could have got ourselves into something which will bring even more embarrassments before we're out of the woods.

Q You mean before we're out of the desert and swamps? Heh, heh.

A I wish it was really funny, Humph.

Q Why are you the only guy allowed to make jokes?