Ed, At 15:35 09/09/02 -0400, you wrote: >What I have trouble figuring out is why the US singles out Iraq on grounds >of being controlled by a madman who may have weapons of mass destruction. >Iraq is not the only volatile place where weapons of mass destruction may >exist. And there are plenty of madmen in present or potential positions of >power. After George Bush "gits" Sadam, will he then proceed to stamp out >the other madmen one by one? For each madman he stamps out, might not >another one (or more) emerge to take his place?
I've been trying to explain in the past few weeks why the Bush chose to single-out Saddam -- he's by far the best pretext in order to put pressure on Muslim fundamentalism generally and the Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia in particular. If my argument doesn't count for much then you've possibly missed the extract from last week-end's article in the FT, "Smoke on the horizon" by Sir Michael Howard, President of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and formerly Professor of Modern History at Oxford U. which I posted yesterday. See the fourth paragraph in particular: <<<< Now [America] is poised on the brink of war against Iraq, a state whose connection with the events of September 11 is at best remote, and seems prepared to wage it against the advice, not just of its western allies and most of the other states normally taken to be the "international community", but virtually the entire Arab world. Even in Britain, America's most loyal ally, the widespread doubts expressed by experts in the fields of military and international -- not to mention legal and ethical -- affairs suggest that any participation in such a war would divide the nation as profoundly as did the disastrous Suez adventure in 1956. So why is the US apparently operating on a different wavelength from the rest of the world? There is one very simple answer. Ever since September 11, Americans have felt themselves to be at war. Their emotion is not just the stunned anger felt after Pearl Harbour. It has more in common with the high-minded spirit of crusade that swept the nations of Europe so disastrously in August 1914. But it is not enough to be at war with an abstract entity described by their president as "Terror". They need a specific adversary who embodies the spirit of evil against whom national sentiment can be mobilised, as it was mobilised against Hitler in 1941. Osama bin Laden proved too evasive and evanescent a figure to provide the necessary catharsis, but prominent among the usual suspect was Saddam Hussein. There was little evidence to link him with this particular crime, but he was a bad guy, with whom many members of the Bush administration had unfinished business. [Saddam] was in default of his UN obligations; he was almost certainly manufacturing chemical and biological, if not nuclear, weapons that might fall into the hands of the Al Qaeda or its associates; he treated his own people abominably; and he was a clear danger to America's ally, Israel. [Saddam] was, in short, the most powerful and dangerous figure among the declared enemies of the US, which in itself gave them the right -- indeed the duty -- to destroy him. >>>> Keith ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
