“The U.S. bombings of Iraq have achieved their initial strategic purpose. They have delayed the vote to impeach President Clinton,” wrote Greg Sheridan, foreign editor for The Australian. Caught by surprise, many world leaders expressed disdain and even disgust at what cynics concluded was fine timing on the December 1998 exercise to coincide with the U.S. President’s hour of trial.
As Sheridan opines, the surprise bombing of Iraq by the U.S. “may have changed the political context in which the impeachment vote is taken…. Every president who takes a military action enjoys a surge in public support” (ibid.). Whether or not this cynical view is justified, it is at least interesting to note that when the U.S. bombed Osama bin Laden’s training camp in Afghanistan last August, the Administration was prepared to sacrifice the element of surprise to allow the evacuation of all U.S. civilians as far away as Pakistan to guard against reprisals.
But on this occasion, some civilian U.S. aid workers were still in Iraq, let alone surrounding Muslim countries. To consider even the remote possibility of a U.S. Administration using national security matters of the most serious import for the most questionable of political ends is an open shame.
The world has reacted. The U.S. and Britain have deeply damaged their relations with the world. Britain’s standing in the eyes of a condemning European Union has suffered in the wake of this tawdry operation in the Persian Gulf.
What has it achieved of any real value to the respect of the U.S. and Britain internationally? Only further denigrating world opinion against these two brother nations. Saddam Hussein has emerged stronger in his resolve to resist the West. The key software and intelligence that drives Saddam’s crazy bio-chemical weapons industry is safely locked away on floppy disks ready to continue his underground program.
The plain fact is that the U.S. and Britain are in grave error in their judgment of this petty despot. Punitive attacks on a nation acting out of tune with world peace only work on legitimate nation-states in the Western context. Iraq is not such a state. “It is a family fiefdom based on patronage and terror, and where rational governance—and thus effective deterrence—is impossible” (The Observer, Dec. 20, 1998).
The probability of Saddam responding rationally to these attacks is remote. The prospect of Saddam being replaced by an Iraqi leader different from one set in his own monstrous mold is even more remote. The U.S. and Britain have been plagued by Saddam Hussein’s innate stubbornness and their own juvenile actions in a no-win situation in the Persian Gulf.