Alighieri Re...Which is that the war on Saddam is but a distracting sidebar whose consequences are far from understood. I myself think further that it is a convenient sideline, aimed at distracting America's attention from more difficult tasks, and particularly aimed at election results, which is why the administration is hell bent on doing it now.
Fair enough. If I show that the US has a very good reason for starting with Saddam, would you agree, that the administrations course isn't solely motivated by election results. Read your next paragraph. Let's face it...defeating Saddam is a relatively safe bet that works very well to woo like minded Americans at an electorally favorable time, certanly safer than to fail at many more difficult tasks, such as capturing AlQueda leaders, destroying the organization worldwide, solving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, stabilizing Afghanistan, solving the Pakistan/India conflict, putting the economy on better footing, reducing budget deficits, and a pletora of other domestic issues.
Bingo. Saddam is by far the safest bet. Isn't that what I said all along. Saddam's weapons of mass destruction aren't the real reason GW wants to take out Saddam. Iraq is the perfect place to start the war. Its a no brainer, it has impoverish people, it has a brutal dictator, it has a source of money, it has vital US interests. As a kicker, Saddam is a major exporter of terrorism, with his $25,000 rewards for suicide bombers in Israel. The US needs a beachhead in the middle east; Iraq will be our beachhead in the upcoming war. Afghanistan is too far away from the center to be effective. If the US can control the most powerfull area in the middle east, the rest will follow. Iran, with its growing student revolt, could easily go to a democratic, non secular gov. with a democratic Iraq leading the way. And Alaweed in Saudi Arabia will get a big boost with his democratic reforms we hope. So, all of those things you say about Saddam and Iraq are true in a way. It is much safer to start there, but while you are making some connections, why not look at all of the connections. Here is a good read at a site provided by Ted. It is a good, mostly neutral site.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/EA03Dg01.html
Korea
ANALYSIS
Why Iraq matters more than North Korea
By Marc Erikson
It's odd, isn't it? North Korea probably has at least a couple of nuclear warheads and the ballistic missiles to deliver them to the South and to Japan, perhaps even to Alaska. Iraq most likely doesn't have nukes - unless some bandits of a former Soviet republic sold it some. Why then, as none other than Saddam Hussein has noted, is the United States on Iraq's case and threatening and preparing for military action against it while it wants to resolve the nuclear row with self-admitted nuke constructor North Korea by diplomatic means?
In an article in this edition of Asia Times Online, Beijing correspondent Francesco Sisci provides part of the answer. "North Korea was once strategically important because it had the Soviet Union and China behind it. Now this is no longer the case; moreover, China and South Korea, which fought against each other over North Korea half a century ago, have an idyllic relationship and both work in strong partnership for a peaceful transition in North Korea. The mainstay of the Cold War in East Asia, the confrontation between Beijing and Seoul, has disappeared since the two countries established diplomatic relations and even more so after the launch of South Korea's Sunshine Policy toward the North. With China having possibly a better relation with the South than with the North, with Russia following suit and much weaker than it was 50 years ago, Pyongyang's threat can no longer be the trigger for a global crisis, but is only a worrisome issue, strictly localized ... the US can't accept being pushed around by threats coming from a country wielding its missiles like a bully in a saloon in a spaghetti Western."
But that's not the whole story. The reasons the administration of US President George W Bush, in the words of a Washington insider, has adopted an attitude of "if the fellow [North Korea's 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-il] wants to be clobbered, let him take a number and wait his turn; let the UN worry and deal with this" are not limited to North Korea's diminished strategic significance and clout or, for that matter, the inconvenience of dealing with two members-designate of the axis of evil at the same time. The Bush team - rightly as I see it - regards Kim Jong-il's regime as an ossified ideological relic with no future potential for attracting adherents to its creed, while Saddam Hussein's regime, while it lasts, in effect anchors Islamist fascism in the Middle East and the Muslim world beyond.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his Tikriti clique are not themselves the principal exponents of the Islamist fascism invented in its current form by Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb (see the AToL series Islamism, fascism and terrorism, November-December 2002) and practiced and promoted by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and the network's chief theoretician and strategist al-Zawahiri. But by controlling a nation state with substantial resources, they backstop and support several Islamist terrorist (mainly Palestinian) outfits and, more important, function as a reference point for other corrupt and dictatorial Arab regimes. Disarming this clique and, if need be, expelling it from Iraq would send the strongest possible signal to the rest of the Arab world as well as the mullahs in Iran that in-depth political change can no longer be postponed. It would at the same time at least begin the process of and create the circumstances for undermining the ideological hold and initiative Islamist fascism now has as an admired protagonist force among Muslim youths worldwide.
In that sense, disarming Saddam is no end in itself of US foreign policy. It is envisaged as a catalyst for comprehensive political transformation in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, with democratic Kemalist Turkey as a model. It is envisaged as well as a critical stepping stone for constructing a global security consensus and system with the support of China and Russia in which proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorist action under whatever spurious guise is anathema and dealt with promptly and comprehensively. The United States could have gone it alone in Iraq and still could and might do so. Its choice of going to the United Nations Security Council and building a consensus there reflects the desire and determination that broader regional and global goals stay untainted (or at any rate least tainted) by the charge of self-serving unilateralism.
In a post-Saddam context defined by a new security regime, the North Korea problem can be dealt with in the fashion German unification was achieved peacefully in the post-Soviet context. The one critical caution and danger is that Kim Jong-il, perfectly able to read the handwriting on the wall and already having taken dramatic unilateral steps, can and will not step back from the brink and will not let Washington's benign-neglect attitude pass, but will instead up the ante. For that, he has several options: withdrawal from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, launching a ballistic missile across Japan as in 1998, testing a nuclear warhead if indeed he has one at the ready.
Simply to stand down after mobilizing the population for war won't be easy. But even in the face of new Kim taunts, Bush can maintain his give-diplomacy-a-chance stance. Kim is not suicidal. The likelihood that he will launch full-scale war against the South is minimal.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
Jan 3, 2003
There it is in a nutshell. Especially this part. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his Tikriti clique are not themselves the principal exponents of the Islamist fascism invented in its current form by Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb (see the AToL series Islamism, fascism and terrorism, November-December 2002) and practiced and promoted by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and the network's chief theoretician and strategist al-Zawahiri. But by controlling a nation state with substantial resources, they backstop and support several Islamist terrorist (mainly Palestinian) outfits and, more important, function as a reference point for other corrupt and dictatorial Arab regimes. Disarming this clique and, if need be, expelling it from Iraq would send the strongest possible signal to the rest of the Arab world as well as the mullahs in Iran that in-depth political change can no longer be postponed. It would at the same time at least begin the process of and create the circumstances for undermining the ideological hold and initiative Islamist fascism now has as an admired protagonist force among Muslim youths worldwide. |
