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

To: quehubo who wrote (138140)	6/27/2004 4:08:42 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 281500

He can indeed! Here's another of interest...'We're Removing Saddam Hussein' Proceedings: March 2003 Naval Institute Interview: Victor Davis Hanson usni.org >>>>>>>>Proceedings: You've written about differences between the situations in Iraq and North Korea. What about Iran? Hanson: Until 9/11, I think one could make the argument that Iranian-inspired terrorists had killed more Americans than any other group. Iran has actively funded terrorism and is an enemy of the United States. The question is what do we do about it? Unlike the Saudis, who have funded terrorism and who are duplicitous friends, or the Jordanians and the Egyptians who tolerate it and who are also sometimes duplicitous friends, and unlike the fascist dictatorships that are overt enemies—Syria, Libya, and Iraq—Iran is a little different. First, the government is theocratic. But more important, the people—who were exposed to Western tradition under the Shah and who are far more literate and in some cases secular—seem to be in a dilemma. The old socialist critique of America—just let us be indigenous and we'll be happy—was given to them by default with the abdication of the Shah. The people have had two decades of misery, or the miasma that the Mullahs have brought to Iran, and they are quite nostalgic about their earlier Western secularism. This is the best example I know of a government that hates us and a people who like us. When these countries flip, they usually flip in directions that are favorable to the West. So I think that is our policy right now to contain North Korea and to contain Iran, because they give some indication that they may, in fact, adopt a Western-style consensual government in reaction. The Saudi government is parasitic. It wants the patina of the West—capital affluence, technology, airlines, weapons, shopping malls, air conditioning, antibiotics, everything it imports from the West. But it is careful not to swallow the West whole. It has gender apartheid. It is anti-Semitic. It has a dictatorial government. And it has a closed, fascist press that publishes things we haven't seen on the world scene since the 1940s in Germany. That should bother us. So what is our hypocrisy in foreign relations based on? Two things: One, Saudi Arabia is responsible for 25% of current oil reserves; and two, it was a bulwark against Soviet communism and Soviet aggression beyond its shores. I think both of those considerations are becoming more problematic. The world oil market is more complex now. We don't import as much from Saudi Arabia; oil is being found in Russia and off the coast of Africa. New technologies are on the horizon. As those two pillars of past U.S diplomacy start to lessen in importance, or topple, we are forced to look at Saudi Arabia in a very different way. I don't know what we're going to do. I don't think our people in Washington have even contemplated what we're going to do if, in fact, there is a consensual government installed in Iraq. We're going to have 5,000 troops protecting a monarchy from a democracy. And that won't be tenable or morally or logically defensible. <<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>>>>Proceedings: In light of the 11 September attacks and anthrax and threats of weapons of mass destruction, what scares you most? Hanson: I suppose it would be two or three vaccinated terrorists with 300 or 400 pounds of anthrax, driving around Washington, D.C., throwing baggies of it out the door. It's a type of biological weapon I think we underestimate. We know Saddam Hussein literally has tons of it in machine-grade, dried, aerosol form. And he has terrorists who want to use it. The only thing saving us now is that, so far, no one has quite figured out the logistics of it all. But I'm very scared about that. The problem is not weapons of mass destruction but who has control of them. England and Russia, right now, have anthrax. I'm not worried about them. It's him. We're going to leave it as a legacy to our children if we don't solve the problem. We've got to remove the man who can make and abuse weapons of mass destruction, not just the weapons, per se.