Why is Pres­i­dent Clin­ton talk­ing about a reprise of
the 1991 Per­sian Gulf War?

We’re told it’s because U.N. inspec­tors believe that
Iraq has hid­den “weapons of mass destruc­tion.” But
of course so does the United States. And Britain,
France, Rus­sia, the Ukraine, China, India and
Pak­istan. Iraq doesn’t even hold a regional
monop­oly, as Israel cer­tainly has atomic weapons
atop U.S.-designed rock­ets aimed this very moment at
Hussein’s Bagh­dad palaces.

Insanely-destructive weapons are a fact of life in
the fin-de-Millennium. There’s already plenty of
coun­tries with atomic weapons and the mis­sile
sys­tems to lob them into neigh­bor­ing coun­tries.
Hus­sein prob­a­bly doesn’t have them, and the weapons
U.N. inspec­tors are wor­ried about are chem­i­cal. This
is the “poor man’s atomic bomb,” a way to play at
the level of nuclear diplo­macy with­out the expenses
of a nuclear program.

Clin­ton seems obliv­i­ous to the irony of oppos­ing
Iraq’s weapons of mass destruc­tion with our own. The
air­craft car­ri­ers and bat­tle fleets that have been
sent into the Gulf in recent weeks are loaded with
tac­ti­cal nuclear missiles.

If the pos­ses­sion of weapons of mass destruc­tion is
wrong for Iraq, then it is wrong for every­one. It is
time to abol­ish all weapons pro­grams and to build
real world peace along lines of cooperation.

He’s our Bully

Most Amer­i­cans, on hear­ing a call to let Hus­sein be,
will react with dis­be­lief. Con­di­tioned to think of
him as our mod­ern Hitler, any­one oppos­ing a new Gulf
War must be crazy, some­one unfa­mil­iar with the
his­tory of the appease­ment of Hitler prior to World
War II that allowed him to build his mil­i­tary to the
fright­en­ing lev­els of 1939.

But Amer­i­cans have alas not been told too much of
more recent his­tory. Sad­dam Hus­sein is our cre­ation,
he’s our bully. It started with Iran. Obsessed with
global mil­i­tary con­trol, the U.S. gov­ern­ment started
arm­ing regional super­pow­ers. We gave our cho­sen
coun­tries weapons and money to bully around their
neigh­bors and we looked the other way at human
rights abuses. We cre­ated and strength­ened dic­ta­tors
around the world, includ­ing the Shah of Iran. A
rev­o­lu­tion finally threw him out of power and
ush­ered in a gov­ern­ment under­stand­able hos­tile to
the United States.

Rather than take this devel­op­ment to mean that the
regional super­power con­cept was a bad idea, the U.S.
just chose another regional super­power: Iraq. We
looked the other way when the two got into a war,
and started build­ing up Iraq’s mil­i­tary arse­nal,
giv­ing him the planes and mil­i­tary equip­ment we had
given Iran. This was a bloody, crazy war, where huge
casu­al­ties would be racked up only to move the front
a few miles, an advance that would be nul­li­fied when
the other army attacked with the same level of
casu­al­ties. The United States sup­ported that war.
Inter­na­tional human rights activists kept
pub­li­ciz­ing the abuses within Iraq, and denounc­ing
him for use of chem­i­cal weapons. They got lit­tle
media atten­tion because it was not in U.S. polit­i­cal
inter­ests to fight Hussein.

Nothing’s really changed now except U.S. polit­i­cal
inter­ests. Hus­sein is still a tyrant. He’s still
stock­pil­ing chem­i­cal weapons. Why are U.S. polit­i­cal
inter­ests dif­fer­ent now? Why does Bill Clin­ton want
U.S. media atten­tion focused on Iraq? Look no
fur­ther than Big Bill’s zip­per. Stop the next war
before it starts. Abol­ish everyone’s weapons of mass
destruc­tion and let’s get a Pres­i­dent who doesn’t
need a war to clear his name.