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The following is from the Wall Street Journal. No doubt there
are some who would say that "at least Gore might get us a few more day care
centers." etc. etc. etc. But both candidates are committed to the
continuing and intensified slaughter of Iraqi civilians. Should we regard
supporting Gore as "at least getting a few reforms but having to reluctantly go
along with his mass murder" or should we regard those few reforms as the bribe
to some of the American people to go along with this mass murder and imperialism
in general? Now that's a different way of looking at the old
expression "Half a loaf is better than none."
Alan Spector
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The following is from the Wall Street
Journal. No doubt there are some who would say that "at least Gore might get us
a few more day care centers." etc. etc. etc. But both candidates are
committed to the continuing and intensified slaughter of Iraqi civilians. Should
we regard supporting Gore as "at least getting a few reforms but having to
reluctantly go along with his mass murder" or should we regard those few reforms
as the bribe to some of the American people to go along with this mass murder
and imperialism in general? Now that's a different way of looking at
the old expression "Half a loaf is better than none."
Alan Spector
Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2000 Gore, Bush Seem Committed To Ousting Saddam Hussein UNDERSTANDABLY ENOUGH, most Americans are only starting to take a close look at the coming presidential election. Six thousand miles from here, though, stands a man who ought to be watching very closely -- and getting a little worried. He's Saddam Hussein, the maddeningly resilient dictator of Iraq. Slowly but surely, he's becoming an issue in the presidential race, and inspiring a bitter war of words between the presidential camps of Al Gore and George W. Bush. Through the rhetoric, though, one
reality is becoming clear: Saddam next year will face a new American president who is publicly committed to get rid of him, not merely contain him. On the Gore side of the equation, the vice president himself met just this week with the leaders of the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella organization of Saddam foes. The meeting was loaded with symbolism. The intended message was that Mr. Gore isn't interested in simply humoring the Iraqi opposition, which critics charge the Clinton administration has done, but rather in working with the opposition to drive him out. Lest anyone miss the point, Mr. Gore's office issued a statement declaring: "The vice president reaffirmed the administration's strong commitment to the objective of removing Saddam Hussein from power, and to bringing him and his inner circle to justice for their war crimes and crimes against humanity." There also was one tangible move to buttress those words, Gore aides say. The Iraqi opposition leaders delivered to Mr. Gore a list of 140 candidates for American training in ways to build the opposition into a meaningful force. PRIVATELY, GORE ADVISERS talk of a kind of three-step process for going after Saddam. Step one would be to turn the Iraqi National Congress, still a young and frequently querulous organization, into a unified voice that can win international respect. Step two would be to use that international respect to persuade Iraq's neighbors to let the opposition operate from their territory. Step three would be to figure out how to move -- and whether to try to precipitate a crisis that creates an opening. Such talk leaves some Bush backers sputtering in anger and charging that the words are hollow after the Clinton-Gore administration has let the opposition wilt over the last seven years. "I have never seen, in 30 years in Washington, a more sustained hypocrisy, never," says Richard Perle, a former senior Pentagon administration aide who now advises the Bush campaign. In his own remarks, Texas Gov. Bush hasn't been particularly specific, saying merely that he would hit Iraq hard if he saw any clear sign that it is building weapons of mass destruction or massing its military forces. But look for Mr. Bush to hold his own meeting with the Iraqi opposition soon. And Mr. Bush's lead foreign-policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is explicit: "Regime change is necessary," she declares. She is careful not to overpromise, asserting: "This is something that could take some time." Like team Gore, she talks of the need to rebuild the anti-Iraq coalition, including Persian Gulf states and Turkey, as a precondition for eliminating Saddam. Others in the Bush orbit, offering their personal ideas, sound more aggressive. Both Mr. Perle and Robert Zoellick, a former top aide to Gov. Bush's father, advocate specific steps to oust Saddam. Mr. Perle calls for giving the Iraqi National Congress tools such as radio transmitters to beam an anti-Saddam message into Iraq and for more extensive training for Saddam's foes in ways to mobilize opposition, particularly in the Iraqi military. THEN, MR. PERLE suggests, the U.S. should help the opposition "re-establish control over some piece of territory" inside Iraq and remove international economic sanctions from that toehold of Iraq. Saddam then would have to either accept losing a chunk of his country, a humiliation, or mass his army to take it back, leaving his forces vulnerable to American air attack. Either way, he says, Iraqi military defectors will "come in droves." In a similar vein, Mr. Zoellick talks of turning the existing "no-fly zones" in northern and southern Iraq, where American planes now patrol to keep out Iraqi aircraft, into "no-move zones," in which ground movements by Iraqi forces would be blocked as well. That, he argues, would open the way for the opposition to occupy a piece of the country, where they could be protected by U.S. forces. This kind of talk leaves Gore partisans sputtering in their own anger, for they contend that the best chance to take such steps was squandered in 1991, when the Bush team was in power right after the Persian Gulf War. Mr. Gore, one of the few Democrats to back the war, called then for ousting Saddam. In the end, both sides are right: The chances of ousting Saddam were best back in 1991, and the Clinton administration hasn't made the Iraqi opposition into a serious force. But that shouldn't obscure the basic fact: Both presidential contenders are talking a different game now. < ====================================================================== |