Failed President, Flawed Policy
Creators Syndicate, 12/18/1998
By Patrick Buchanan
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.
Originally Published on 12/18/98
