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

To: JohnM who wrote (69163)	1/27/2003 3:34:47 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

I certainly would not call the Bush bit with the Kurds a human rights campaign; it was clearly part and parcel of a "strategic interest" bit, if that's what you wish to call Iraq. I would disagree on two counts: First, if we were content just to "contain" Saddam according to the realpolitik school, that meant we didn't care much what he did inside Iraq so long as he didn't invade the neighbors. Therefore, the Kurdish campaign was not a strategic interest to us at all, though it might have become a refugee problem for Turkey. Second, I don't buy the logic that human rights campaigns don't count for anything if the US has any strategic interests in the region. That amounts to implying that the only legitimate use of US foreign policy is when it does not benefit the US. That is meshugge. There is no doubt the Clinton folk were not eager to go into Bosnia even though they campaigned on doing something about it. However, they did go. And whatever else you say about the Bosnian effort, they certainly, finally, managed to make it a center piece. Clinton campaigned about Bosnia in 1992 and did something about Kosovo in 1998. What had happened in Bosnia in the intervening years? 200,000 dead, that's what. What finally pushed Clinton over the edge to do something? Pictures of fleeing Kosovars on CNN. Message: Pictures matter more than what happened or the numbers of dead.