October 2, 2002

©rrk

None of The Above

The “Pro & Con” article in 9/29 Outlook [Sun-Sentinel ] is, I suppose, entertaining, but hardly worth the space of an important page. Most Democrats are going to follow their leanings and ascribe political motives to the much talked about war just as most Republican claimed Clinton bombed the bin Ladin’s camp and the “aspirin” factory to divert attention from impeachment. Obviously the Republicans perceive Bush’s motives as apolitical and engage in ratiocinations of pure motives.

But the real pro and con of the war is the following:

Pro

•   Bush is pushing the war because 9/11 mentality gives a nod to anything that suggests a threat. Of course, the logic ends here as it will not apply to true Islamic nations, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Syria even though they apparently encourage or harbor Al Qaeda.

•   Oil is a definite factor and can actually be to the advantage of the United States by taking over Iraqi oil fields for development and modernization.

•   Ad-hoc “regime change” has been popular with both parties ever since the errant decision during the Gulf War, which gave the UN and the US the motive not to take the resolutions too seriously, especially in never having labeled Hussein a war criminal.

•   Iraq is a proven loser by botching two wars and therefore the anxiety over his lashing out with a serious defense or counteroffensive is uncalled for, and body bags held to a minimum.

•   Because Sharon is at the Israeli helm, war mentality is a given and — there will be no peaceniks in Tel-Aviv to jeopardize the Jewish vote here at home. Consequently, if Saddam chances a strike on Israel, it will actually be their war not ours — our engagement will merely be mopping up.

•   Iraq is but a blustery power signifying a nation in shambles; despite the argument of his harboring mass destruction, the disarmament officiated by the inspectors was 90% effective. So take out the dictator for good when he is at his weakest.

•   In an age when the military draft is taboo, preemption is facilitated. Politicians don’t have to worry about their kids.

•   The cost of the war is immaterial because we’re already deficit-spending — so what’s another $100 or $200 billion? — but will not end the tax stampede to lower taxes because in the end — memories are conveniently short — voodoo economics will prevail and eventually put us back in the black.

•   Since bin Ladin’s fate is uncertain, the US needs a villain to sustain the bellicose national psyche.

•   There is little chance that Arab nations will vent wrath beyond the familiar demonstrations in the streets — after all, they need the US more than we need them, together with the obvious fact that Iraq is a secular renegade and thus no love lost.

•   Sustaining war mentality is of the essence because all of western heritage loves a Churchill and despises a Chamberlain.

Con

•   Forget Saddam for a moment and think of the Iraqi people. Should they not be entitled to a better life by the UN seriously investigating the human issue, such as how to improve strategy of oil for food and medical care?

•   Immediately the UN should instruct Britain and the US to shower the no-fly zone with medical supplies and food for the people.

•   First determine whether Saddam’s regime is ready to admit unfettered inspections under the security of armed UN forces and when the UN is assured there are no weapons of mass destruction or remnants disarmed, sanctions will be lifted and UN administered free-elections — with the condition that it must be secular — held the following year.

•   A preemptive strike may directly be at the expense of Israeli’s security, not ours.

•   If Saddam is as bad as the Pros say, oil fires will spread again throughout Kuwait.

•   If Iraqi obstinacy persists, forcing the UN to take forcible action, surgical air strikes — Kosovar style — on suspected targets of “mass-destruction” should be the strategy before committing troops.

•   If there is the art of persuasion for war, then it follows there is the art of persuasion for peace. Granted the UN can be unwieldy, it still should be the only sheriff in town to solve the Iraqi problem diplomatically by urging it is in Iraqi interest to accede and capitalize on the rewards of peace. There have been too many echos of the League of Nations and Chamberlain appeasement in defining diplomacy. This is a new millennium.

•   There is too much talk about the “only super power left” and therefore it is up to the United States to police the world. It is high time for a standing super UN force to police the world. Saddam and Al Qaeda must be made to understand that if they continue the threat to world peace, they will answer not only to the United States but trained fighters — including moderate Muslims — from the world organization.

•   Convincing argument must be made to Saddam Hussein that any preemptive strike or incursion on his part, however minor, will result in a torrent of pamphlets warning civilians to escape the premises before the UN totally destroys his palaces.

•   A major preemptive strike that the Cons claim he is contemplating will mean the end of Baghdad, but not before there is a safety exit for civilians opened up by UN special forces and paratroopers. In the end, Hussein shall be captured and tried before the World Court.

•   To test the true grit of the Kurds and Shiites arrangements should be made to land UN troops in their territories to protect the safe havens.

•   If we preempt, how will Muslims react and particularly Al Qaeda?

•   If there is a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda does it not follow that Al Qaeda will launch its own style of destruction?

•   When in the midst of fighting terrorism characterized by Al Qaeda — a highly charged extremist faction of Islam — why attack a nation that has Islamic extremists under control?

•   Saddam should be invited to the UN to state his case as to what evidence — point by point — he has concerning the hardships of sanctions; and to explain the rationale for his maintaining an arsenal of mass-destruction beyond the evidence that so many other countries have the same.

•   Finally, the UN should pass a resolution that no nation may act preemptively on the sandy soil of conjecture or theory without positive evidence from intelligence, surveillance and reputable eye-ball witnesses that there is immanent danger.

©rrk October 10, 2002

Contemporary War & Peace

To mask his having won the presidency by default and the inefficiency of the administration’s war on terrorism and the worsening economy, George W. — crowned a war president — looks to Saddam to sustain the symbol of a fighting president. After all, FDR gained two extra terms because of this crown. The very first president, had he not turned it down, could have been the originator of a royal dynasty, not because of his presidency, but that he had led an army to win independence for the Colonies.

In addition, Bush exacerbates the deception by taking over the function of the UN in order to save it from irrelevance as did Truman and Johnson both based on the vague domino theory and the vague premise of a clear and present danger to the peace of the world. Actually, the Iraqi issue is a hoax in order to strengthen the president as commander-in chief and at the same time divert focus on the glaring fact that he is an ineffective president on domestic and international issues. The prelude to this was in his state of the union address by conjuring the “axis of evil.” Obviously, Saddam being the most public and defiant, was the first chosen as the candidate for a unilateral attack. Since unilateralism was not accepted, however belatedly, by the opposing party. Since then the president, the “artful dodger” has had to modify his strategy by going to the UN and calling upon Congress for input.

This clearly shows the incompetence of his administration. At the moment he brought forth the “axis,” he should have immediately mobilized the American ambassador to the UN to embark on diplomatic channels to address this issue, including total reassessment of the Iraqi condition. However, because of his stratospheric poll numbers as commander-in chief he chose the path of exploiting the 9/11 paranoia and slipping in terrorism by way of WMD supposedly seething in Iraq based solely on assertions tailored to a country gripped by fear. The irony here is that from the outset of Bush’s term as commander-in chief he needed no authorization to react to Iraq firing on allied planes in the no-fly zone — he did nothing. Clinton in contrast reacted militarily innumerable times against Iraq, and in a major way with “Desert Fox.” In reality, had Bush been legitimately focused on Iraq, he would have already bombed strategic sites without ado on the strength of Saddam’s continuing violations, particularly in the no-fly zones.

The ostensible great drama in Congress is in reality without any real conflict because the theme is based on the absurd premise that because Saddam is evil he has the means and intent to destroy the world and therefore the question is only whether to preempt him now or later, particularly in the guise of self-defense. Every member of Congress introduces his or her address with “Iraq indeed is a threat to the United States”, thus, there is no point to real discussion. Yet they go on to cite the history of Saddam’s atrocities already known when US troops stopped a few hundred miles from Baghdad eleven years ago. They indiscriminately cite undocumented accusations of his evil intentions — if the horrid scenarios were true the President is derelict in not having attacked him months ago. Obviously war is inevitable, and Bush wants to go it alone, then the argument should be as it was in Kosova — whether to put ground troops in harm’s way or simply authorize surgical air attacks. Because of the 9/11 paranoia — and the shameless manner in which Saddam is now the reincarnation of bin Laden — the route of diplomacy is not discussed.

Perhaps there is another way such as encouraging emissaries from Arab countries to talk common sense to the dictator. And how is it other countries, however, perhaps, in violation of the truce, is able to enter trade negotiations with Saddam, as they do with Castro? — there is clearly an obstinacy to the character of the US. Just as Clinton was able to persuade the Palestinian parliament to no longer insist on Israeli destruction and acknowledge it as a sovereign nation, Kuwait was able to negotiate with Hussein the acceptance of its legitimacy. Renewing inspection is looked upon dismissively as though we hope Saddam defies the UN. Yes, the dogs of war have been unleashed.

The Great Debate Fizzled

Oct. 18, '02

With the exception of Senators Byrd and Levin, there was really no debate on War or Peace. The vast majority of both parties in the Senate based their arguments on how to go to war rather than whether or not to take up arms. Most agreed that Saddam was a “continuing” threat to the United States and therefore it was a matter of a nation having the right to arms in self-defense. No one but Byrd had the guts to question the president’s motives for conjuring a crisis out of thin air and thus casting an evil spell over the people already afflicted with paranoia. The Senate would not even allow an amendment to substitute “immanent” for “continuing.” The tradition of going to war based on a deliberate attack or in facing a clear and present danger was not even considered, thus relegating war to presidential whim, unsubstantiated intelligence and tin horn dictators’ phony swagger — while the State Department and Congress are but blustery institutions signifying nothing.

The continuing threat is George W. Bush himself: he lacks historical perspective and fails to the see the world in gradations of gray, but rather in black and white. He likens himself to Churchill as he equates Saddam to Hitler in the mid 1930s. He calls the UN irrelevant and just another League of Nations even though it has contained, however imperfectly, Saddam Hussein for eleven years. On the other hand North Korea is comfortably contained and potential conflict can be avoided diplomatically, lest critics question the priority of rushing to war against Iraq. He accuses the Democrats of engaging in class warfare because they opposed his tax plan favoring the rich, and recently unpatriotic in not intuiting a threat from Iraq as do Rumsfeld and Cheney who possess exclusive insight into the pits of Hell. Colin Powell is reluctantly tolerated because the Secretary’s popularity is greater even though in the end it was Powell’s war resolution, saving the President from foreign policy disaster. Sharon has the wings of an avenging angel while Arafat grows horns. There is no inherent, systemic theft in the corporate realm in dire need of reform, only some unusually wayward CEOs. He cannot administer homeland security with union employees because their heroics on 9/11 was an anomaly and cannot be trusted. Though the trickle-down theory doesn’t work, he’s determined to resurrect it. In his campaign he denied Clinton had anything to do with the growing economy of the 90s because it was simplistically the natural flow of Reaganomics; yet the abysmal showing of the economy today is Clinton’s fault. Global warming does not exist; pollution is but a fantasy of environmentalists; the World Court is a farce; Afghanistan has been liberated and no longer needs our focus; Iran is the next target — let North Korea stew awhile — unless China salivates over Taiwan.

©rrk '03

Pulitzer Arrogance

Self-appointed philosopher-king of the Mideast, Thomas L. Friedman, in his 1/ 23 column has reached new heights in Pulitzer egocentricity by lecturing liberals on the likely war on Iraq while promising his next column will be to lecture the conservatives — I assume the next day in the NY Times, since the Sun-Sentinel of 1/30 is another tangent of his. That liberals oppose regime change because it distracts from Al Qaeda, Friedman perceives a “bogus argument....And simply because oil is also at stake in Iraq doesn’t make it illegitimate either. Some things are right to do, even if Big Oil benefits.” This in itself is a bogus argument.

Friedman’s upside down chop logic endorses an ineluctable war as a lesson to the “undeterrables” likened to the 9/11 terrorists who hated America. Yet at the other corner of his mouth he ascribes the terrorists hatred for Mideast politics lacking “three things: freedom, modern education and women’s empowerment.” Does he really think these “boys” — these suicidal maniacs, are driven by these western concepts? These are fundamentalists that want to preserve the brutality of the Middle Ages and, incidentally, do not think of it as a “rental” concept.

Ironically Saddam wants modernity, though under his thumb, and learned his lesson twelve years ago that it doesn’t pay to terrorize neighbors, just his own people. To use Iraq, the only Mideast secular nation other than Israel, as a lesson to the rest of the Arab world is ludicrous. This unthinking commentator’s “logic” should actually cause us to send special forces into Palestine, and put to rout Hezbollah and intensify pressure on Al Qaeda while continuing the harassment of Iraq through inspections.

Friedman’s commentary is pathetic and unconscionable in risking American troops and thousands of civilians for the sake of an arrogant non-sequitur.

His recent column “Alternative...” is indicative of exhaustion in beating a dead horse and running out of “philosophic” analysis. This champion of Israel has resorted to cheap satire in addressing a serious situation by insulting the insights of Turks, and American Arabs, and suggesting they lack courage. Are we to infer that the US is the only nation that has courage to bomb the hell out of a nation and commit a 100,000 or more of our troops to reward this evil nation with liberation? And since the administration really wants a regime change anyway, overtures of a safe haven for inhumane criminals “somewhere in the former Soviet Union” — a slap at Russia for its cowardice? — is a way out for an administration that comically and tragically stepped into this...shrewdly to regain a majority in the Senate. This exhausted columnist concludes the “letter” that we should explore this ridiculous “amnesty” as a last resort to war.

What ever happened to the alternative of letting the inspections work? Moreover, if in fact there is evidence of Saddam madly moving and burying WMD where’s the courage of the President? Clinton bombed, targeted by “intelligence”, often; so what’s to prevent Bush from targeting these now? The coalition has had this privilege since the end of “Desert Storm.”

This ostensible war is a hoax. Bush from the outset could have shown his determination with far less criticism than he faces now, if he had done his job keeping tabs on Iraq and continued strategic bombing — not unlike Kosova. It sickens me that there is even one American for this war, let alone 50%. Where was our outrage two decades ago when the US armed the bastard with WMD? And don’t tell me that 9/11 changed everything. The entire world was behind us in defeating terrorism, not to change the subject.

January 30, 2003

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