Posted on 02/16/2003 7:34:53 AM PST by Clive
On CBC Radio's drive-home show the other day, the host did a telephone interview with a Canadian woman in Baghdad. She and other people from the peace faction had gone there to see for themselves. They'd just toured the children's hospital -- stop No. 1 on Saddam Hussein's itinerary for the gullible.
The hospital is an awful place, she told our (equally gullible, I fear) radio host. Children are dying for lack of medicine. She saw them herself. Choking with emotion, she said she wished she could stay there to stand shoulder to shoulder with the suffering Iraqi people.
I used to think people like this woman are well-meaning but naive. Now I believe they are blind idiots. How much effort does it take her not to wonder how Saddam manages to purchase his guns and missiles, his palaces and fleets of Toyota Corollas for his Baathist loyalists? How can she not know about the billions he's made from smuggled oil, or about how he manipulates the oil-for-food program? He could buy all the children's medicine he wants. But then he wouldn't have sick kids to use for propaganda.
What effort does it take a reasonably intelligent person not to be aware that any Iraqi who utters an unkind word about the regime risks his life? Are any of the peace marchers this weekend the least bit curious that hardly any of the millions of Iraqis driven from their homes are marching with them? Well, at least you know where these folks stand. You can't say that for the leader of our country.
In the speech that was supposed to lay out his position, we learned that he stands everywhere and nowhere. He's for the U.S., except if it acts on its own, because that could provoke a "clash of civilizations." He says the world should act against Saddam only through the United Nations. But how? When? And under what conditions? Uh, he'll leave that vague for now.
Temperamentally, Jean Chrétien is a charter member of the axis of weasels. If only he weren't a hypocrite as well. We are the peacekeepers, he assured the Americans and us once again. If only it were true. But it's not. Mr. Chrétien knows we contribute less to peacekeeping than Bangladesh does. We don't have the soldiers and we don't have the weapons, and you can't keep peace in a war zone with a popgun. And you can forget about our role in helping to rebuild shattered nations. Our anorexic foreign aid budget makes our claim to compassion a sour joke.
As for Saddam, he's laughing at us. At the UN, the days of reckoning come and go, but nothing ever happens. The chief weapons inspector solemnly reported yesterday that Saddam is co-operating "in process," if not exactly on substance, and that even though the inspectors have no idea where all the bad stuff went, at least they haven't found it.
Hans Blix said Saddam has agreed to cut down on all the minders minding the inspectors, which sure is a relief. Meantime, one scientist who met the inspectors this week was so frightened, according to UN sources, that it took an hour for him to stop shaking. "Iraqi scientists and researchers are under a lot of pressure and influence by the Iraqi authorities," a recent defector told ABC News. "They were scared and threatened in different ways, including threatening to go after their families if they leave Iraq to meet with inspectors and going after their relatives if their families go with them and going after them even if they were in exile."
Maybe we should just get honest with ourselves and simply say we'd rather give the old tyrant a pass. That's the argument made down at my local pub, and there's some logic in it. Inspections may not be coming up with anything, but who cares? So long as the inspectors are at work, Saddam won't dare to get out of line.
I respect this argument. It has integrity. It avoids a phony moral high ground or fake appeals to the sanctity of multilateralism. But it doesn't answer the question: Then what? Inspections are a joke without consequences to back them up. The only reason Saddam co-operates at all is the U.S. troops massing at his borders. Which consequences would we prefer this time?
Tony Blair, a man of admirable clarity, says we must weigh up the moral consequences of war. "The alternative is to carry on with a sanctions regime that, because of the way Saddam implements it, leads to thousands of people dying needlessly in Iraq every year."
My bet is, we'll go for a few dozen more feel-good UN resolutions while Saddam hides his anthrax in Lebanon. We're quite happy to be Charlie Brown. Saddam is Lucy with the football. She pulls away that football every time. And then she tells him she won't do it again. And he gives her one last chance. And she does it again. He never understands that she always will. It's her nature.
Great article and very illustrative comparison.
I sent out email to everybody I know with a copy of this article. I have not seen the fact that Iraq flatly rejected the compromise made by France, Germany and Russia anywhere on the news. Get that news here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/844319/posts
Is it not amazing that Saddam flatly told the UN to shove it? He does not want 1,000 UN inspectors in blue helmets running all over his country. Because they would certainly find evidence of some of his chemical, biological and nuke facilities.
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