It is a tradition among Americans that when the guns fire, we rally behind
our fighting men and commander in chief. Yet even this tradition seems to
have fallen victim to this president.
Three days after his disastrous grand jury testimony and speech to the
nation on Aug. 17, Bill Clinton launched an attack on a "poison gas" factory
in Sudan, a factory oddly unguarded, since it was said to be a site that
produced the most awful of outlawed weapons.
Now, hours before his impeachment vote, the missiles have flown again. No
one can know what is in a man's heart, but it is hard to believe that Bill
Clinton's political crisis did not figure in the timing of that attack. And
who among us did not wonder, on hearing that U.S. cruise missiles were
winging toward Baghdad, whether the president might be cynically exploiting
America's patriotism?
All the trust is gone; even the president knows it. Twice on Wednesday, he
was compelled to assure us the strikes were "the unanimous decision of my
national security team." The smug youth who wrote that the best and
brightest of his generation "loathed" the military now depends on its
credibility, as he retains almost none of his own. But if we have a failed
president, it is also time to ask if U.S. policy toward Iraq is not also
deeply flawed.
Clinton declared on Wednesday that he is acting to protect the "people
throughout the Middle East and around the world." How does Saddam threaten
"the world"? If we "fail to respond," said Clinton, Saddam "will make
strikes again at his neighbors ... make war on his own people (and) develop
weapons of mass destruction, deploy them, and he will use them."
Let's deconstruct that. Yes, Saddam makes "war on his own people," but who
inflicts the greater suffering -- Saddam or a U.S.-led embargo that has
claimed the lives of 239,000 children, 5 years old and under, since 1990?
Michael Powell writes in The Washington Post, "That (239,000) is the
latest -- and most conservative -- independent estimate of the number of
Iraqi children who have died of malnutrition, wasting and dysentery since
sanctions were imposed."
If sanctions have failed to topple Saddam and have snuffed out the lives of
a quarter million children, can such a policy be moral? Where is the
proportionality? Indeed, the embargo, not the strikes on military targets,
appears the immoral element of our Iraqi policy.
"(Y)ou can't lay that guilt trip on me," snapped Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright when asked about the embargo and the children. OK, but
who do we lay it on? Without America, there would be no sanctions, no 25,000
Iraqi kids 5 and under dying each year of deprivation.
Clinton said we are protecting Iraq's "neighbors." But Iran is larger and
more powerful than Iraq, is building weapons of mass destruction, and has
been cited more times for supporting terrorism. And why should we defend
Iran?
Turkey's troops march in and out of Northern Iraq with impunity. Another
neighbor, Syria, is also on the honor role of regimes that harbor terrorists
and is smuggling contraband into Iraq.
Jordan sided with Iraq in the Gulf War. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are under
the shield of a United States that could pulverize Iraq in 10 minutes if a
Scud arrived with mustard gas or anthrax. That is why Saddam never used a
chemical weapon on us or on Israel.
It is time to ask how grave a threat Iraq is to America. In the Gulf War,
Iraq did not attack us; we attacked Iraq. We launched the 'round-the-clock
air strikes with 2,000 planes for six weeks; Iraq fired back a handful of
Scuds. Iraq killed scores of Americans; we killed thousands of Iraqis.
Yes, Iraq was a enemy, but Hanoi killed 58,000 Americans and turned South
Vietnam into a Stalinist hell that makes Iraq look like Vermont. Yet we have
normalized relations with Hanoi.
China is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers
in Korea. Its regime has on its hands the blood of tens of millions of
Chinese and is targeting U.S. cities with ICBMs. Yet China is now our
"strategic partner." Is Iraq, with no air force, no navy, no ICBMs and an
economy not 1 percent of ours, the greater threat?
If constructive engagement was the right policy for the Evil Empire, why is
there no other way with Iraq than total sanctions? If deterrence held the
Red Army at bay in Europe, can it not hold Saddam? Can we not contain him
and deny him his worst weapons -- without denying Iraq's people the
necessities of life?
Again, it is not the U.S. policy of containment of Iraq, or even of air
strikes on missile or military bases, that raises questions of morality. It
is a sanctions regime that is killing the Iraqi people in body and spirit.
Surely, a humane republic can devise a wiser and more moral policy than
this.
