Operation Desert Shame
Ledeen, Michael
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 24, NO. 6 / JUNE 1991 Michael Ledeen OPERATION DESERT SHAME As President Bush has learned to his chagrin, Realpolitik can justify short-term tactics, but not...
...But we don't seem to be encouraging him, either to share power or to join in a partnership with Israel...
...The dirty secret was that the secret strategy was the public strategy, and the assumed strategy was not the real one...
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...And since Bush and the Baker Boys really like the Saudis, they wouldn't do anything that makes the royal family nervous...
...Those in the White House and the State Department who say they do not wish to get involved in the Iraqi Civil War ignore the fact that we unleashed the anti-Saddam forces in the first place, in the name of the just struggle against a tyrant who threatened to become the paramount force in a strategically sensitive area of the world...
...And it was not just the logic of the situation that led most of the world to assume that Bush and Baker wanted the destruction of Saddam Hussein...
...Unfortunately, it does not appear as if King Fand is going to do this, or take the great opportunity given him by the war, and make a deal with Israel...
...At the moment, given the constraints of the kind of respectable society in which this administration likes to travel, it is hard to imagine the Secretary of State explaining to his buddy King Fand that it is better to democratize now than to face insurrection later on...
...Then, in 1948, someone shot and Michael Ledeen is resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute...
...He took great pains to define his objectives and limit them, and there was nothing about removing Saddam in the various U.N...
...We should have said that to Gorbachev some years ago, as to the inscrutable masters of Peking, but we opted for good manners and polite chitchat...
...The Shi'ites and Kurds assumed that this meant the United States would at least act to give them a fair shot at winning, but they forgot the lessons of Hungary in the fifties, and Poland and Nicaragua in the eighties...
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...So it was assumed that there was a more serious, albeit unannounced objective all along, and what could it be but thedestruction—that is, removal—of Sad-dam Hussein...
...The answer must be that the Saudis don't want to see any other Arab country partitioned, because they think that somebody might get the idea of partitioning them...
...Indeed, as the President has said so many times, he never promised to march on Baghdad, he only promised to liberate Kuwait, which he did...
...Of course, with very few exceptions, nobody believed him...
...That is why no longterm relationship with the Saudi royal family can work without the liberalization of their regime...
...29 U.S., $35 foreign...
...This is foolish, because it puts us at loggerheads with our own principles, and with the great democratic tidal wave that is sweeping the world at this moment...
...The world was surprised because most people refused to believe that the President had actually sent all those troops such a long way, just to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait...
...S o it is with Bush and the Gulf War...
...If he offered that, he could undoubtedly get some kind of timesharing arrangement for parts of Jerusalem—after all, the Temple Mount, which is what matters most to him, is currently under Arab rule (one of the least-known facts about the Middle East) and Israeli security...
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...They certainly wouldn't qualify for membership in the sort of club that the Baker Boys like to frequent...
...More's the pity...
...The world's dictators hate the United States because of what we are, not because of what we do...
...It is also why our embarrassing nuzzling of Hafez al-Assad, one of the world's outstanding mass murderers, won't work either...
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...But ragtag people with high incomes are just fine, so the Palestinians—thanks to longstanding Saudi funding—sit at the big table...
...If the partitioning of Iraq is so bad, then why is the partitioning of Israel so desirable...
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...In America, Realpolitik can justify short-term tactics, never long-term strategy...
...With such a THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1991...
...He said this over and over again, but hardly anyone believed him—least of all, the Leninist members of his own party...
...And yes, he feels bad about the poor Kurds (there has been no sympathy expressed for the Shi'ites in the south, even though they seem to make up 60 percent of the country), and hen help the Kurdish refugees, but don't expect us to occupy Iraq, impose a government, and manage the place...
...At the end of World War II, the Italian Communist leader, Palmiro Togliatti, announced that the Communist party had abandoned the insurrectionist strategy of the Leninists, and would only come to power through parliamentary means...
...If he were truly smart, Fand could offer a 12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1991 partnership between Saudi money and Israeli entrepreneurship that could transform the region and really make the desert flower (think of all those Russian Jewish scientists and engineers...
...Those hostile to our values are automatically hostile to us, and they will attack us, regardless of our policies toward them...
...Up to a point, the President has been quite consistent about his Gulf policy...
...He has only to substitute himself for Little King Hussein as protector of the Mount...
...Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, Fand in the Middle East...
...The secret was that the public strategy was the real strategy all along, to most of the world's astonishment...
...N o one should have been surprised at our government's decision to stay out of the way when Saddam Hussein slaughtered his Kurds and Shi'ites...
...Kings are also okay, even when they call us names (this administration's love affair with the wretched little king of Jordan, who has elevated appeasement of Arab radicals to the basic principle of his foreign policy, is the most dramatic case in point...
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...There is no cause too worthy to be abandoned by the American government...
...Desert Storm was a victory for American power and American values...
...or check to: CRITICAL REVIEW, 942 Howard Street, Dept...
...There are too many Western-educated Saudis now, who share our notions of fairness and accountability, for the Kingdom to go back to business as usual...
...When Togliatti was told of this, he was furious: "How could they...
...But we are a revolutionary nation, and our objective must be to advance our revolutionary values in the world...
...vat wow.% as MCC Vi-1 t.m11,10400,40404 "Fraternal societies were the leading providers of social welfare before the Great Depression...
...I believe that our objective, in the Middle East as elsewhere, must be to support the democrats...
...After all, that would truly serve notice on future would-be aggressors that, in the New World Order, no leader would survive an act of gratuitous savagery on his or her neighbor...
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...Their membership reached an estimated 30 percent of the adult male population and they were especially strong among African Americans...
...And, between you and me, I don't think that this administration thinks of the Kurds and Shi'ites as particularly worthy...
...Just liberating Kuwait...
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...6 / JUNE 1991 Michael Ledeen OPERATION DESERT SHAME As President Bush has learned to his chagrin, Realpolitik can justify short-term tactics, but not long-term strategy...
...the Saudis are Abucome-latelies, after all...
...And Bush was surprised that everyone was surprised...
...By betraying our own principles, we paradoxically hasten the doom of our high-society friends in the region, for American politics do not permit stable, long-term relations with dictators...
...Leading scholars debate the viability of the democratic welfare state...
...After a while, we begin to ask why we are being so nice to people who are opposed to our values...
...It is as inevitable as it is proper, for we are the world's one truly revolutionary society, and when we abandon our own principles, those principles reassert themselves, sometimes to our embarrassment...
...its aftermath—let's call it Desert Shame—has left us and our principles bloodied and battered...
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...resolutions and congressional votes...
...Everyone thought these statements were a ruse to lull the bourgeoisie into a false sense of security, the better to slit their throats while they slept...
...Most everyone out there assumed that, while the publicly announced policy was Liberate Kuwait, the real policy was Smash Saddam...
...If the Palestinians are entitled to an entity, why not the Kurds and Shi'ites...
...This is a respectable administration, and there are certain things that respectable administrations just don't do, like meddle in an Iraqi "civil war...
...We're not playing our music, but theirs...
...Strange to say, there is a status ele- ment in our current Middle East policy...
...I told them, no insurrection...
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...It seemed inconceivable that so much power would be mobilized for such a limited objective...
...That is why we are obliged to support the Kurds and the Shi'ites in their just struggle against the tyranny of Saddam Hussein...
...world view, one invariably adopts a traditional, balance-of-power foreign policy, just as Bush and the Baker Boys did with regard to the Kurds and Shiites...
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...That means Yeltsin, that means the Africans struggling for some sort of multiparty system in country after country, that means the Kuwaiti reformers as against the Emir, the Chinese students (and the Dalai Lama) against the gerontocracy, and the anti-Castro forces in Cuba...
...It most assuredly does not mean the Saudi royal family, which, I believe, will have to reform and share power if it is going to survive this period...
...same lyrics, slightly different tune, but the message is the same in each case...
...it was also the President's words, urging the Iraqi people to rise against Saddam...
...wounded Togliatti in Rome, and the insurrection broke out...
...Ragtag people without much clout are not good dinner partners, so Kurds and Shi'ites just don't qualify...
...The current administration doesn't see it that way, for, in good conservative fashion, the President and his men seek to defend traditional boundaries as, in like manner, they enjoy the company of traditional leaders (or their concept of traditional leaders...
...This reminds me of an interesting episode in the history of Italian Communism...
...The peoples of the region see the defeat of the Kurds and Shi'ites as our defeat, and we should see it that way, too...
...We seem to love the upper class neighborhoods, like Saudi and Kuwaiti palaces...
...That is why, in the end, we will have to abandon the Saudi royal family, just as we abandoned the Shah, and Ferdinand Marcos, and the others...
...King Fand is going to have to share power with these people, or share the fate of the Shah of Iran (in Iran, a Westernized middle class joined with an alienated radical Islamic movement to remove what was at the time the most civilized regime in the Muslim Middle East...
...21G, San Francisco CA 94103 ISSN 0891-3811 13 T he United States has never been I very good at this sort of diplomacy, because it means that you have to bring bad news to people...
...The Israelis are the unwanted guests, accepted because somehow they got an invitation, but snubbed because of their shabby dress and poor manners...
...Status must be a large part of the ex-planation, because there isn't very much logic in the distinctions currently being made in the White House and Foggy Bottom...
Vol. 24 • June 1991 • No. 6
