A postwar agenda
Cohen, Mitchell
Comments and Opinions After the smart bombs, America needs an intelligent agenda. For over a decade, Americans have heard that "big" government ruins everything. The public weal—everything save...
...One is, of course, Iraq, where Kurds are about 20 percent of the population and have been particularly victimized by Saddam's regime...
...In 1974-75 the Shah of Iran, with American collaboration, backed Kurdish guerrillas against Iraq...
...The Kurds are as wary of the West as of their neighbors...
...All good people know how to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: mutual recognition...
...The Palestinians have enlisted in their cause: each Palestinian cheer for a SCUD meant a vote for the Likud and a blow to the only real friends the Palestinians have—the Israeli peace movement, now struggling against the most extreme right-wing government in Israeli history...
...thus the plight of Iraqi Kurds was not "linked" to the Palestinians, when Saddam "linked" the latter to Kuwait...
...A truly multinational United Nations force should take on peacekeeping responsibilities, securing the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the integrity of Iraq, and the safety of the Kurds...
...The Security Council should be responsible for it, so that the prelude to the 1967 Mideast war cannot be repeated...
...Sobriety should be the hallmark of the United States's Mideast agenda...
...q lames B. Buie 160 • DISSENT...
...As a result, they have gained support from a diverse array of Iraqi oppositionists...
...If Palestinians want Israeli flexibility, they must convince Israelis that it is in their interests...
...When Desert Storm ends, the United States should promote a Palestinian-Israeli peace process— but with open eyes...
...Desert Storm must not become Desert Fortress...
...The Kurdish leadership—united in 1987 as the Kurdistan Democratic Front—has demonstrated remarkable savvy in formulating demands and subordinating bitterness at past betrayals to political exigency...
...Instead, Palestinians have taken the opposite tack, apparently believing that nothing they do will carry a political cost...
...Search the last two centuries of Mideast history for a decade of calm—you will not find it...
...When Saddam gassed 5,000 Kurds in Halabja in 1988, the White House averted its eyes...
...force separating Egypt and Israel, and U.N...
...The recent inclusion of "Gandhi" —the Orwellian nickname of Rehavam SPRING • 1991 • 159 Comments and Opinions Zeevi, a moral primitive who advocates expulsion of the Palestinians—in Shamir's cabinet engendered dismay among Israel's friends...
...Bush speaks of creating a new world order, but when the desert storm clears, what will be most visible is deep domestic malaise born of the Reagan order...
...One can almost read their lips: If 158 • DISSENT Comments and Opinions we fought for a "New World Order" and the "American Way of Life," just what is the American order to which we return...
...Bush could not afford to offend them...
...If we can make sacrifices abroad, why are sacrifices for the domestic good met with refrains of "No New Taxes," with regressive taxation masked as "reform," with "big" government kept off the backs of S&Ls and firms selling technology to Iraq...
...His successor is, to borrow a phrase, a tactician without a concept...
...The United States can begin to make amends by insisting on a fair deal for the Kurds when Desert Storm winds down...
...The Israeli right wing has long confused its integral nationalism with Israeli security needs, thereby precluding territorial concessions...
...Peacekeeping should be accompanied by rebuilding and redistribution...
...Then, when the Iranian monarch reached an accord with Baghdad, they were sacrificed, with American connivance...
...When the war is over—I assume Iraq's defeat—America's massive military presence in the Gulf should end as quickly as possible...
...But when events made this inconvenient to bigger powers, Kurdistan was expendable...
...The Gulf's great oil wealth could fund a regional development program to relieve the brutal poverty consuming Egypt and other Mideast lands...
...For eight years an actor-president molded America into a welfare state for the wealthy, manipulating media images to obscure socio-economic venalities...
...Yet when the government decides, half a million Americans can be transported halfway around the globe, quite efficiently...
...They are tragically wrong...
...Cognizant of their nervous neighbors and appreciative of their own limitations and need for allies, they are pressing not for a maximalist program—independence—but for Kurdish autonomy in a democratic Iraq...
...But this should be an Arab affair, with America offering only technical assistance...
...If a peace process commences, what will reverberate in Israeli ears is not just the sound of exploding SCUDs but also of Palestinian applause for them—and for Saddam Hussein proclaiming that Tel Aviv would become "a crematorium...
...Secretary General U Thant simply complied...
...It is perhaps misplaced: he is only the unrepressed id of much of the Likud...
...All sober people know how tortuous the situation is...
...The Arab-Israeli struggle, the Kurdish question, Syria's occupation of Lebanon—all these need to be addressed, but only with studious recognition of their complexities...
...It is not just that Arafat embraced Saddam or that the "moderate" West Bank editor Hanna Siniora describes Iraq's chief as an "Arab Garibaldi...
...Iraq—that is, a Saddam-less Iraq not squandering vast oil wealth on military machines— could play a major role...
...Consider the Kurds, who compose the fourth largest ethnic group in the Mideast...
...Why does this country need a cut in the capital gains tax but not a serious energy policy or national health insurance...
...America can contribute to conflict resolution, but giddy notions of "Pax Americana" are a lure into diplomatic quicksand...
...Whether one favors the Gulf intervention or not, the question needs posing: if this country can summon energy, resources, and lives for war, why can it not mobilize against its own domestic rot...
...Two others are American allies in the Gulf conflict (Turkey and Syria), and another is neutral (Iran...
...Clearly, the Kurds did not learn politics from the Palestinians...
...Naive formulae about solving all of this volatile region's problems at a stroke must be resisted...
...The public weal—everything save flag waving and arresting flag burners—is best left to private enterprise...
...After World War I, the Treaty of Sevres promised them independence...
...Nasser demanded the removal of the U.N...
...They are mostly spread across four countries—all opposed to their self-determination...
...Veterans of the Gulf War are likely to ask this question, particularly those—the poor and minorities— who enlisted in the military because it offered what the Reagan-Bush era has systematically denied them: life options...
Vol. 38 • April 1991 • No. 2
