TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/022591/0225992.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.7 KB | 84 lines

                                                                                THE GULF WAR, Page 24

AMERICA ABROAD

Living with Saddam


By Strobe Talbott


    In the heat of battle, too much victory may be hard to
imagine, but the leaders of the coalition arrayed against Iraq
should remember Versailles. By imposing an excess of defeat on
Germany in 1919, the winners inadvertently stirred resentment
among the losers that led to political extremism and eventually
to another war.

    Many Arabs and, more generally, many Muslims identify with
Saddam Hussein precisely because he is losing on what they see
as a heroic, even mythic scale. For them, his plight is a
symbol of their own victimization by the rich and powerful
nations of the world. No matter how and when the war ends,
Islamic rage already threatens the stability of traditionally
pro-Western regimes from Morocco to Jordan to Pakistan.
Blunting that trend is more important than seeing Saddam get
what he deserves.

    His opponents want him not just out of Kuwait but off this
planet. That goes for all the active combatants and many
interested bystanders as well. The government in Tehran hopes
that someone other than Saddam will eventually present the
claim check for the Iraqi warplanes now parked in Iran. The
Israelis have a tacit deal with Washington: they stay out of
the fighting, and the U.S. rids the neighborhood of its No. 1
menace.

    For George Bush, too, this thing is personal. While the U.S.
Army and Marines prepared to go whirring and clanking and
blasting their way north, U.S. government lawyers were
beavering away on a brief for the prosecution of the ground war
all the way to Baghdad. Certainly by Scudding Israel and
launching oil slicks at desalination plants, Saddam justified
expanding the war aims beyond the liberation of Kuwait. A
presidential adviser remarked, "We're almost counting on this
guy to use chemical weapons to clinch the case for dealing with
him as a war criminal when this is over."

    Instead his opponents may have to deal with him for a while
longer as President of Iraq. First came signals from Moscow
that Saddam's former benefactors in the Kremlin are determined
to save his skin, his face, even his job. Then came the news
from Baghdad that Saddam's battered legions might get out of
Kuwait one step ahead of a coalition offensive. Hence the note
of frustration in Bush's voice Friday as he all but begged the
Iraqi armed forces to "take matters into their own hands," thus
doing what not even the smartest bomb in the U.S. arsenal has
been able to accomplish.

    From the beginning, Saddam's objective has been his personal
survival. His strategy has been to play for a lopsided
stalemate, sacrificing pawns (his citizens' lives) and pieces
(his best weapons) as long  as the king is still standing.

    So let it stand, at least for the next phase of the game.
When this battle was joined on Jan. 16, Saddam had two major
assets: the ability to conquer other countries and, in his
occupation of Kuwait, proof of his willingness to do so. He has
already lost much of the first, and he may abandon all of the
second. If so, the coalition can deprive him of a third asset,
his political appeal as a martyr, by ending hostilities.

    The U.N. sanctions, meanwhile, can and should continue. When
Saddam emerges from his bunker, blinking into the sunlight, he
will face the devastation he has brought down on his people as
well as an embargo that could last as long as he is in power.
Perhaps then, finally, there will be a genuinely Arab --
indeed, Iraqi -- solution to the real problem Saddam
represents, which is aggression and its consequences for
everyone involved. Checkmate: the king is dead.