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Fear-Mongering At Its Worst
Having confronted the giants of the
past, who could have imagined the United States, the biggest
military power in history, worried silly over some two-bit tyrant
who might have a canister or two of poison gas hidden somewhere or
who, years from now, might get a pint-sized nuclear weapon.
by Lawrence Martin
It's intriguing, having lived in the military
monstrosity that was the Soviet Union for a few years, to witness
all the paranoia over a fifth-rate power like Iraq.
The Soviets had the military muscle, at a rough
guess, of about a hundred Iraqs. You could stand in the gray chill
of Red Square for the annual pageant of military hardware on
Revolution Day and get a sense of it. The Red Army and the Pershings,
the MXs, the PL-5s, the ICBMs. An endless expanse of staggering
might.
The Soviets had 8,000 strategic nuclear warheads.
At last count, Saddam Hussein's Iraq had zero. The Kremlin had the
capacity to incinerate the American continent in a matter of
moments. The eunuch of Baghdad has a few missiles with a launch
capacity of 140 kilometers. His combat strength is estimated at
one-quarter of what it was in the Persian Gulf war when the U.S.
rolled over him in a matter of days. His naval fleet has a reported
one frigate.
In comparison to the old days, to the old Soviet
Union and the old Germany, when the Americans confronted enemies
worth the name, what we are hearing from Colin Powell today is
pip-squeak stuff.
Having confronted the giants of the past, who
could have imagined the United States, the biggest military power in
history, worried silly over some two-bit tyrant who might have a
canister or two of poison gas hidden somewhere or who, years from
now, might get a pint-sized nuclear weapon.
Gerald Ford may well have summed up it up best
when, Mr. Ford being Mr. Ford, he said: "If Abraham Lincoln
were alive today, he'd roll over in his grave."
Someone should tell George W. Bush that Super Bowl
champs don't spread fear among their followers at the sight of a
rundown high school team.
Clearly, we would be better off without Saddam
Hussein. But beating the war drums for a year over a puny dictator
who has not been the source of the terror we have lived through is
something that seriously needs explaining.
Mr. Powell tried in his appearance before the
United Nations Security Council on Wednesday. He brought forward
good evidence of Iraq's playing hide-and-seek. But if perspective is
everything, the world got very little of it from the Secretary of
State's big show.
What he did say was interesting. What he didn't
say was more interesting. Such as: This is a war on terror, and we
have no real proof that Saddam Hussein is linked to any of the
terror of recent years. Therefore, every last ounce of energy must
go into bringing down Mr. Hussein.
Mr. Powell made no mention of the fact that, while
Mr. Hussein is considered such an immediate threat, he hasn't so
much as swatted a flea outside his own borders for a dozen years.
Mr. Powell made no reference to the fact that,
while Washington has become paranoid about chemical and biological
weapons, (a) the United States rejected an international biological
weapons pact two years ago, (b) Mr. Hussein had bio-chem weapons
available in the gulf war but didn't use them, (c) when he did use
such weapons in the 1980s, the U.S., then a semi-supporter of Mr.
Hussein, gave him the old wink wink, and (d) for all the fear that
Washington is trying to generate over these weapons, the death toll
in modern times is greater from the flu bug and soccer hooliganism.
Mr. Powell could hardly be faulted for failing to
bring some perspective to the debate. There is a history to be
considered here, a history of Washington's chronic practice of
exaggerating threats. One need only recall the McCarthyist Red
Scare, the alleged missile gap in 1960, the domino theory to get the
Vietnam War going, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, Grenada and the
dreaded Sandinistas of Nicaragua who, as Ronald Reagan put it, could
have led a charge right up through Mexico and lay siege to the
American heartland.
Mr. Powell did a fine job of keeping threat
inflation alive and well. Given that Saddam Hussein should be
toppled, given that the Iraqi people should be able to live in
freedom, his big show may be for the better. The goal is good, if it
can be achieved without setting off a chain of war.
But for the Americans, who have faced real
threats, to present him as some kind of immediate and dire threat --
who must be attacked before diplomacy can work its way -- is
fear-mongering at its worst.
Franklin Roosevelt, who faced giant powers such as
Germany and Japan, had it right when he said something about there
being nothing to fear but fear itself. Apparently, no one in the
Bush White House has ever read the speech. They are the biggest
peddlers of fear we have ever seen.
Lawrence Martin, a former Moscow and Washington
correspondent, is the author of eight books.
© 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive
Inc
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