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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paul_philp who wrote (56442)	11/10/2002 2:55:47 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I still believe that Iraq is strictly a tactical move in the war on terrorism. The real targets are Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Americans need to ensure that Hussein doesn't do anything crazy to destabilize the region even more With regard purely to the war on terrorism, I agree, but that doesn't mean that Saddam isn't an enemy who needs to be dealt with on his own account. Iraq is an untenable situation, with sanctions designed for the short-term being practiced ever more feebly over the long term. Either we give up on them, and wind up trying to deter an undeterable nuclear-armed Saddam, or we finish him off now. The problem would exist on these same terms even if 9/11 hadn't happened. Put crudely, 9/11 provided the political momentum to make the war possible. The educational and ideological foundations for the Islamists war on modernity are in Saudi Arabia and until these are transformed all else is tactical. That's certainly one of the pillars of Al Qaeda and others of like ilk. But there are three others: what Hitchens calls the "nexus of the rotten client-states" for which the US is blamed, the weakness of US foreign policy that has made anti-American propaganda and even attacks a cost-free option for far too long, and US support for Israel. This last, the only one the Arabs want to talk about, is far less one-sided than they make out, unless your vantage point is that Israel doesn't deserve to exist, as theirs is. By now of course, the US will take punishment from the Arab world for whatever it does on Israel. Support Israel's existence, and the policy is "unjust and one-sided" regardless of what concessions Israel is pressed for; throw Israel to the wolves, and the value of US friendship will be marked down to zero on the world market.