It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it...
n the 1980s, Saddam Hussein was a U.S. ally, largely because he was at
war with Iran, a U.S. enemy. Washington chose to see Hussein then as a
potential force for good in the Middle East. Ronald Reagan thus took Iraq
off the terrorism list. That made it possible for Reagan and his
successor, George H.W. Bush, to authorize American corporations to sell
Hussein materials for his early chemical and biological weapons, such as
the anthrax virus. Bush's son, George W. Bush, now says these weapons are
among the prime reasons our armed forces must besiege and occupy Iraq.
Is it any wonder that so many Americans are confused about the second
President Bush's call to war? Confusion, in fact, has become the dominant
subtext of the campaign to convince Americans and the world of the war's
necessity. Clarity and truth have been kept out of sight. It's a murky
world, they whisper in the corridors of power, and sometimes we have to
do business with dictators and madmen. But it wouldn't be wise to tell
the people about it; that would only spread insomnia. Well, you didn't
tell them and yet their anxiety is palpable. Let them eat duct tape, one
patriot remarked.
We know that this man Hussein is an international outlaw, a certified bad
guy, but wasn't he a bad guy back in the '80s, when President Reagan sent
Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad as special Middle East envoy to tell Hussein
we would do our darnedest to make sure that his country did not fall to
Iran? And that's the way it stood until Hussein overran Kuwait in late
1990 and the first President Bush went to war to drive him out of that
autocratic oil kingdom, purportedly to preserve its so-called democracy.
Next came Osama bin Laden and his followers, who have sworn themselves to
lay waste to the United States of America and other "infidel"
societies in the name of an Islam that many Muslims find unrecognizable
and abhorrent. For a while, America thought that bin Laden, with his
global terrorist network, was the primary enemy.
Washington retaliated appropriately for the terrorists' murder of 3000
souls on 9-11 by attacking bin Laden's Al Qaeda training camps and
hideouts in Afghanistan and sweeping aside the fundamentalist Taliban
government that had given bin Laden sanctuary. The American assault sent
these legions into the country's mountainous regions�and also across the
border into remote areas of Pakistan, a longtime backer of the Taliban
with its own large and powerful bloc of Islamic extremists.
In Afghanistan, too, there is troubling history for those trying to
understand Bush's call to war against Iraq. Back in the 1980s, the
Russian army had invaded Afghanistan, and a guerrilla army, with
mujahideen recruits from all corners of the globe, was fighting the
occupation. The United States took the side of the Islamic guerrilla
army, with the CIA supplying money and weapons. In the end, the bloodied
Russians pulled out, and the Taliban emerged from the resistance as a new
force�as did bin Laden and his Al Qaeda movement. Washington, still
frozen in its Cold War mind-fix and willing to help almost anyone who
opposed the Russians, wasn't paying attention to the long-term aims of
these nascent groups.
Maybe all this is just the ebb and flow of history�or maybe, instead, it
has something to do with partnering up with nations and groups we have
nothing fundamental in common with. First we get behind somebody because
they're hostile to somebody we're also at odds with, eventually lifting
our "brave new allies" into power. Later, when it all turns
sour, we pretend the marriage never happened and brand them as hoodlums.
The real hobgoblin of our fears and conflicted thoughts these days is the
awareness that too many of our monsters of the moment were created in our
own laboratories.
MORE ON...
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0311/schanberg.php
