EDITORIAL: SADDAM, THE U.S. AGENT
Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, 10/15/02
nytimes.com
KUWAIT - Terrorists once more fired at American troops here in Kuwait on Monday, although no one was injured this time. As with last week's attack, in which two Kuwaiti men shot one American marine to death and wounded another, we don't know whether the shooting was sponsored by Al Qaeda or was a purely home-grown affair.
But there's no doubt that even in Kuwait, where Yankees have the best possible claim on Arab gratitude, a significant minority of men and women regard us as worms. Some Kuwaitis are even hailing the terrorists who killed the American soldier as martyrs…
On Monday evening I attended a lecture at Kuwait University about the prospective American invasion of Iraq. In the question-answer session, one earnest young man began: "I'm totally convinced that Saddam Hussein is an agent of the U.S."
Yup, that's actually a common view in the Arab world. The idea is that the U.S. asked its pawn Saddam to invade Kuwait, so that Washington could respond by establishing military bases in the region and steal Arab oil…
Last week's elections in Pakistan resulted in huge gains for fundamentalists who are vehemently anti-American. The fundamentalist parties, which used to be a fringe element in Pakistani politics, now will control two of the country's four provinces. If we gain friendly governments in Afghanistan and Iraq but see the rise of an Islamist nuclear power in Pakistan, that will have been an appalling trade… |
