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1996-09-11
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Foreign Correspondent
Inside Track On World News
By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>
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CAMPAIGNING BY CRUISE MISSILE
by
Eric Margolis 10 Sept 1996
TOKYO - Bill Clinton's latest blasting of Iraq gave him
the expected bump in the polls. Few Americans cared that it
cost $300 million in missiles, and the lives of five Iraqi
civilians.
But abroad, last week's US attack on Iraq was viewed with
dismay and anger - even here, in ever so polite Japan.
The real target of Clinton's attack was, of course, Bob
Dole, not Saddam. By blasting Iraq, draft evader Clinton
looked commander-in-chief-like and neatly pre-empted war
hero Dole, who was about to deliver a rousing speech to
veterans on national defense.
Dole was skunked, and forced to back Clinton's raid -
instead of criticizing it for the cheap, brutal election
stunt that it was. Saddam and Iraq have been so demonized
and vilified that no intelligent debate is possible on this
question. The only good Iraqi, is a bombed Iraqi.
The State Department announced `the US is sending a
political message to Saddam,' by launching waves of cruise
missiles against Iraq. Iraq, by moving troops a few miles
into autonomous zones set up for Kurdish rebels at the end
of the Gulf War by the US and Britain, was `threatening US
vital interests. ' .
Let's see. Terrorist Ramzi Youssef was just convicted in New
York last week in New York for planning attacks on
airliners. Youssef said the attacks were designed to `send
a political message to the US' to stop supporting Israel.
So, it's diplomacy when Uncle Sam sends explosive messages,
but terrorism when those on the receiving end of such
missile missives RSVP.
Don't get me wrong. I have no love for Saddam: his secret
police threatened to hang me for spying on my last visit to
Baghdad. But Iraq, a sovereign nation, is being treated
like a rebellious 19-century British imperial colony. .
Iraqi troops were invited into the Kurdish zone by Kurdish
Faction A, which was battling Kurdish faction B - after
Faction B invited Iranian troops to enter northern Iraq. Is
an Iranian incursion into northern Iraq not a `vital
interest' of Baghdad? Washington claimed its latest bombing
of Iraq was to get Saddam to stop being nasty to Iraqi
Kurds. But half of them sought Saddam's aid. And what about
Turkish Kurdish Faction C, that is being bombed by US ally
Turkey?
The US had no legal right to attack Iraq- even under the
flimsy UN Security Council rules imposed during the Gulf War
by Washington and London. The latest attack was pure,
gunboat politics. .
Far more important, this column has been steadily warning
for the past five years that George Bush's poorly conceived
strategy in the Gulf War would eventually produce an
earthquake in the Kurdish ethnic regions of Iraq, Iran,
Syria and Turkey. The avoidable Gulf War, and Bush's
empty exhortations to the Kurds to revolt, planted the seeds
of today's growing crisis.The US and Britain then compounded
he mess by partitioning Iraq.
Last week, Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish troops all moved into
the US-created Kurdish autonomous zone of northern Iraq, an
explosive power vacuum that is drawing the three hostile
neighbors into military confrontation. Civil war is raging
between the two main Kurdish factions, with the marxist PKK
about to join in. Turkey, which has suffered enormously
from the Gulf War, now threatens to permanently annex part
of northern Iraq - which just happens to have oil.
The befuddled Americans can't tell one battling Kurdish
faction from another. Saddam is trying to exploit this chaos
- and why not? Any Iraqi ruler would try to reassemble his
sundered nation. Even if the CIA or Mossad do manage to
assassinate Saddam, another equally nasty Iraqi soldier will
without doubt take up his work.
Blundering by the Bush and Clinton Administrations has
turned the irksome, but formerly manageable Kurdish problem,
into a major international crisis.
copyright eric margolis 1996
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Eric Margolis
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