NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/5782

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From: [e-mail] (Harel Barzilai)
Subject: Election 92: Democrats' Suicidal "Moderation" on Mideast (ARTICLE)
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[_The Nation_ article follows]

    "George Bush was foully and deliberately wrong on the Persian
    Gulf, and mildly if reluctantly right on Israel and the
    Palestinians.  Clinton applauded him when he was wrong and
    denounced him when he was right.
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    "[..] At once, the entire moral case for Desert Storm, a case that
    has been decaying to the point of rot in any event, simply blows
    away.
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    "The State Department, which blithely used to repeat Bush's random
    charge that Saddam Hussein was Hitler, has shown no interest in
    this vast Nuremberg dossier.  Instead, it has charged that
    Galbraith broke the law in going to get hold of it.

         ============================================
       _Minority Report_ column by Christopher Hitchens
           in _The Nation_, July 20/27, 1992, p.79
         --------------------------------------------
           [See bottom for more about _The Nation_]
         ============================================

MINORITY REPORT

Nothing has been more dismal, in a political year that has seen the
Democratic Party decline into irrelevance at a hypnotic rate, than the
decision of the party leadership to cede "the high ground" in foreign
policy to George Bush.  In some unfathomably crass fashion, the entire
apparat has bought the line, fed partly by its pollsters and partly by
its own parochialism, that Americans do not care about the rest of the
world.  From Tom Harkin's doltish isolationism to Bill Clinton's
me-too-ism, the field has been left to the Republicans, with
consequences that are nothing but pathetic. How can you bleat "Come
Home America" one day and demand that the President travel to Rio the
next? Most surreal of the instances that come to mind is an interview
I had with Jerry Brown on the night before the California primary.  He
brought up the subject of Bush's pre-war collusion with Saddam and the
biting articles that had exposed it by Murray Waas in the _Los Angeles
Times_. "It's amazing," said the Governor, "how it hasn't come up in
the presidential election." Well, I replied, don't _you_ be telling
_me_ that, Mr. Candidate for Leadership of the Free World. Brown had
the grace to smile and admit the contradiction. The rest of the party
has yet to get that far.

A defining moment, as we used to call it, occurred recently. The State
Department intervened vigorously to prevent Americans from traveling
to northern Iraq, in official of unofficial capacity, in order to
observe the first free elections ever to be held in Kurdistan. This
piece of cynicism was justified on the grounds that U.S. passports
were invalid for travel to Iraq under the "sanctions" policy and that
Americans should not be interfering in Iraqi internal affairs. At
once, the entire moral case for Desert Storm, a case that has been
decaying to the point of rot in any event, simply blows away.

Last November 21, John Kelly was questioned by the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee as part of his confirmation process to be the
Ambassador to Finland.  As Assistant Secretary of State during the
Desert Shield and Desert Storm period, he was competent to answer all
questions about the betrayal and abandonment of the Kurds. Here is his
_written_ answer to the question Why did the United States leave the
Kurds to their fate after President Bush, on February 15, 1991, had
called for a general uprising against Saddam?

     We did not expect a general rebellion nor was such predicted by
     outside experts. I am not aware that anyone in the Administration
     predicted an expectation of support for a rebellion we were not
     anticipating.

In other words -- deep breath here -- the Bush Administration, which had
been funneling covert credits to Saddam in pursuit of a
divide-and-rule strategy vis-a-vis Iran at a time (1989) when it knew
that Saddam was applying the economic and military sinew thus acquired
to a genocidal "final offensive" in Kurdistan, and which _later_ used
the Kurds (whose plight it had done much to worsen) as a bait to lure
Congress into a war that maimed Iraq but not Saddam, and which _then_
energetically called upon the Kurds to revolt, now admits that it
never gave a moment's thought to what would happen if the Kurds took
America at its word.

The American voters are not as gullible as the foreign policy
professionals [pretend to be --HB].  There is a generalized, if
imperfectly informed, revulsion against what is widely understood to
be a very shabby and nasty _Realpolitik_.  This revulsion might even
turn into active disgust if the voters appreciated, for example, what
happened to Peter Galbraith, a staff member of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee.  Hearing that a vast trove of Iraqi secret police
material had fallen into Kurdish hands, Galbraith made haste to see
that the archive was preserved. He went this April to the disputed
areas, helped to gather up the torture videos and the execution and
"strategic hamlet" documents, and insured that they were brought here
for safe-keeping.  The State Department, which blithely used to repeat
Bush's random charge that Saddam Hussein was Hitler, has shown no
interest in this vast Nuremberg dossier.  Instead, it has charged that
Galbraith broke the law in going to get hold of it.

Here, if you collect such analogies, is the real "Munich." The Kurds,
having served their purpose of helping to inflame a bogus war fever,
are on their own, their election unrecognized and their agonizing
history viewed with official contempt.  An issue for 1992?  What a
question! If the Democratic Party doesn't think voters can be moved
when they discover that their moral temper was ignited and then
exploited, that they were regularly lied to about a matter of life and
death, then it doesn't have much chance of stirring them to action on
its prescriptions for free trade.

There was, however, one good if unintended outcome of Desert Storm.
Perhaps embarrassed by the regular chant of "double standards" by the
antiwar movement, the Bush administration partially ceased its
automatic subsidy to the expansionist and racist policies of Shamir
and Sharon. As an indirect result, the Israeli electorate has turned
its back on Likud and AIPAC.

Bill Clinton, of course, was opposed root and branch to any American
pressure on Shamir, and never lost a chance to say so. On the Sunday
after the Israeli election, he told _The New York Times_ in his
major-foreign-policy-blah-blah interview that he was _still_ opposed
to the idea of "linkage." So here ends my song to the convention
delegates: George Bush was foully and deliberately wrong on the
Persian Gulf, and mildly if reluctantly right on Israel and the
Palestinians. Clinton applauded him when he was wrong and denounced
him when he was right. As you survey the ruin and discredit of your
party, and its failure to take advantage of Bush's evident decline, do
you ever suppose it might have anything to do with the candidate?

Transcribed by Bill Lear ([e-mail]) and Joseph Woodard
([e-mail])

##################################################################
Reprinted with permission - granted by The Nation magazine/The Nation
Company, Inc.  Copyright 1992
##################################################################

Subscriptions to _The Nation_ -- published since 1865 and the oldest
weekly magazine in America --  are $32 per year (47 issues):
The Nation // Dept MAP // 72 Fifth Ave. // New York, NY 10011
Or a half-year subscription (24 issues) is $22.

Regular contributors include Alexander Cockburn, Katha Pollitt,
Christopher Hitchens, Molly Ivins, Gore Vidal, Calvin Trillin, and
Kirpatrick Sale. See also _Why I Am Not Running for President_ by
Gloria Steinem in a recent issue.

You can also send for a sample issue, but I'm not sure what the price
would be (certainly no more than the $2.25 cover price) -- if you're
considering that, why not email me at [e-mail]  -- the
Nation recently got a PeaceNet account and *begun* using it but as
they're not yet fully fluent in even setting up their teminal type
correctly, I'd rather not give out their email address publicly at
this time.

Send me your inquiries (e.g. more about the Nation or cost of a sample
issue) and I'll forward them by email right to the Nation. Yes, the
"Dept MAP" refers to misc.activism.progressive which I co-moderator;
no, I/we don't get ANY money from the Nation nor are we associated
with them in any way (and feel free to drop it; it's my idea on the
spot, the "Dept MAP" not coordinated with them); I am "working on
them" (the Nation, as well as other publications like _Z_) to try to
convince them to get more online is what's at issue. That would mean
more of their articles would be distributed online for the UseNet
readership.

The Nation also features regular book reviews and Departments on film,
music, theater, etc. [Last year Margot Kidder (yes, "Loise Lane")
wrote about her opposition to the Gulf "war" and what she got for
taking her courageous stand in _Confessions of Bagdad Betty_]