Posted on 02/21/2003 2:37:31 PM PST by Isara
Iraq: Those under Saddam Hussein's thumb have reason to resent America - for failing to free them when it had the chance. It's time for the U.S. to make amends.
To most of the anti-war protestors who took to the streets last weekend, the idea that the U.S. might owe the Iraqis a war, or at least regime change, is the height of absurdity. In their view, a war against Saddam is somehow a war - and a crime - against the Iraqi people.
You might hear a much different view from expatriate Iraqis, who are free to speak their minds. They have grounds for complaint against America, indeed, but not for military actions past or future. The U.S. has caused far more suffering for their countrymen through inaction and by letting them down when it could have helped free them.
The Kurds have been sold down the river repeatedly in this way. They were encouraged to rise up, then were left in the lurch in the 1970s. They were gassed by Saddam in the late 1980s, and the U.S., convinced at the time that Iran was the greater evil, failed to hold Saddam to account.
After the Gulf War, the U.S. urged the Kurds (in the north) and the Shiites (mainly in the south) to rise against Saddam. They did, but the U.S. stayed away. Not only that, but it spared Saddam's elite troops, who then went back home to crush the rebels.
The U.S. did make partial amends to the Kurds by clearing a homeland for them in the north of Iraq. There was no such relief for the other rebels, who were killed if they couldn't flee the country.
One of those who fled was Zainab Al-Suwaij, now executive director of the American Islamic Congress. As she tells her harrowing story in a recent issue of The New Republic, certain facts stand out vividly. One is that the people of Karbala, her city, were ready to welcome the Americans as liberators. Another is that they were crushed in body and spirit when the Americans didn't come. Al-Suwaij describes the moment when she understood all was lost:
"By now, it was clear the Americans were not coming. President Bush had promised to help us if we rose up against Saddam, and we had believed him. But the help never arrived. American troops did not interfere as Saddam turned his helicopters and tanks against us, sending more and more regiments of his troops to Karbala. . . . Within a few days, the uprising was crushed. Now it was about our own survival. We said goodbye, cried and spread out on our own."
America's tough talk has no doubt raised new hopes inside Iraq. But just as in 1991, the fate of the Iraqi people is treated by most players, including the Bush administration, as a worthy but peripheral cause. And for the record, we would not pin a case for war solely on Saddam's human rights record. The main reason for war is that Saddam has the means, motive and opportunity to put weapons of mass destruction into terrorists' hands for use against America.
But any war that truly deals with this threat will liberate Iraq in the process, because Saddam cannot be allowed to stay in power. This time we need not, and we must not, force Iraq's people to repeat tragedies such as the one lived by Al-Suwaij - tragedies that came from trusting America too much.
IIRC, in Desert Storm, under UN sanction, we agreed to the rather limited role of kicking Iraq out of Kuwait.The roars of the international community to stop the "war" after we had accomplished that goal were rather deafening.
The only overt points in involving the UN now, was to spin time and provide cover for troop deployments and to prove the irrelevance of the UN.That has been accomplished.I smell some nasty covert reasons,but I have the feeling those are nearly complete, or have already been resolved.
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