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

To: carranza2 who wrote (139330)	7/8/2004 2:38:18 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Did you read what you posted? "It is possible to ague, however (and many have done so), that Glaspie's statements that "We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts" and that "the Kuwait issue is not associated with America" were interpreted by Saddam as giving tacit approval of his annexation of Kuwait. Since it is not now possible to know what was in Saddam's mind, this matter cannot be resolved. Saddam was a dictator who had never visited a western country, and who lived a in a world where disputes were routinely resolved by force. It is therefore quite possible that he wrongly interpreted Glaspie's remarks. It seems unlikely that Saddam would have invaded Kuwait had he been given an explicit warning that such an invasion would be met with force by the United States, but Glaspie can only be criticised for not giving such a warning if it can be established that she knew that Saddam was planning an invasion. There is nothing in the transcripts to suggest this. " This is pretty much in line with what I said. I said Glaspie telegraphed the wrong message. I said Saddam was naive but logical. I said he wrongly interpreted it- but I don't think his interpretation has anything to do with mental illness. I thank you for posting the URL- but I can't see how it supports your position. Is it possible she made things clearer ? yes. Do we have facts to support that? no. Glaspie being sent to Capetown doesn't make one think her bosses had great faith in her.

To: carranza2 who wrote (139330)	7/9/2004 10:53:15 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Respond to of 281500

Carranza, you want to "debunk the whole Glaspie folklore" with this transcript: Later the transcript has Glaspie saying: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America." Another version of the transcript (the one published in the New York Times on 23 September 1990) has Glaspie saying: "But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late '60s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi [Chadli Klibi, Secretary General of the Arab League] or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly." No matter how hard you try to read this as "debunking" those who claim that we gave the green light to Saddam to do what he wanted with Kuwait, it seems clear that at the best her message was ambiguous and at the worst it was sending a message of American "hands off." Or maybe you think it wouldn't have been possible for her to say; "I have a very clear message to deliver, if you attempt to invade Kuwait we will consider that an unprovoked aggression against a sovereign nation and will, in conjunction with our allies and the United Nations, take action to stop such aggression including the possible use of military force." The author's point that Glaspie asked why the "troops were massed so very close to Kuwait's borders" and, by that statement, revealed ignorance of the intent of Iraq, is simply not convincing. You have to ask why they thought Saddam was massing troops on the border if not to threaten an invasion of Kuwait? Whether that was a bluff or not was not relevant. What was relevant was that America inform Saddam of our intentions if we wanted to deter his possible aggression. So why didn't we? In order to analyze why we didn't, take a look at what we gained by Saddam's invasion and it looks a lot like what we gained by our second military intervention in the Middle East. We gained a military footprint in the region from which we could exercise the threat of immediate and substantial force to protect the flow of oil, all in the name of "protecting" something. While at first we claimed to be there to "protect" other nations from Saddam, now we are there to "protect" the Iraqis from....themselves. But the 14 military bases we are reportedly building in Iraq certainly enlarge our footprint in the region. And I bet we get "asked" to stay by the government we are assuring will be in place in Iraq since it will clearly need protecting. The bottom line is that if you consider that America was intent on maintaining and enlarging it's military presence in the Gulf for the purpose of assuring the flow of the most valuable resource in the world today; cheap energy, then the trigger of Saddam's invasion makes as much sense as the trigger of Saddam as a world wmd threat. In both cases it appears that other avenues of attempting to deal with the "crisis" were available but that we preferred to enter with, and then maintain, massive military force. We just find more and more way, to "help" the Arab world.