What better way to justify the blowing up of buses filled with children
than with solemn pronouncements about War Crimes Tribunals in the Hague
whose warrants need to be executed? Warrants against Slobodan Milosevic
that is, not the NATO bombardiers.

To those who felt cheated out of a "ground invasion" last year, General
Barry McCaffrey must seem a hero. In 1991 he alone stood up to do in
Iraq what the "on to Baghdad" armchair warriors had been baying for. He
set out to smash Saddam Hussein's "war machine." He cut off the
retreating army and unleashed massive firepower on a ragtag force of
defeated, demoralized Iraqis.

The same crowd who last year were signing petitions pleading with Bill
Clinton launch a "ground invasion" were in 1991 fiercely attacking
George Bush for ending the so-called "turkey shoot" just two days after
the entry of US forces into Kuwait.

The United States was allowing Saddam's military machine to escape!
That
the Iraqi army ran away as soon as they saw the US forces arrived did
nothing to dim the ardor of the armchair warriors. Had George Bush
heeded their hysterical advice there would have been many more
incidents
like the ones Seymour Hersh describes.

Waging a war against people who are fleeing for their lives is
certainly
not the bravest of enterprises and has a tendency of being somewhat
bloody. There is a sight even less edifying that that of a conquering
army beating the living daylights out of much weaker opponents thanks
to
its infinitely superior weaponry.

And that is the self-righteous zeal by which it justifies every
atrocity
with tales of "Hitlers" who need to be stopped in their tracks. Imagine
the horrors that would have taken place during the seizure and
occupation of Baghdad! US forces would still be there today,
alternately
hoisting into – and kicking out of – power a variety of stooges,
sneaks and toadies.

In the meantime, Human Rights Watch would be telling us about how
dramatically the human rights situation has improved. US AID and the
National Endowment for Democracy would be busily funding fraudulent
elections in which only pro-American Arabs could take part. George
Soros
and Rupert Murdoch would take over the media outlets and feed the
hapless Iraqis a steady diet of soaps, quiz shows, sport, talk
shows…oh and lectures about "democracy."

Yet the brutality of the Gulf War was as nothing compared to the
murderous onslaught on Yugoslavia. Lawful force is rarely as lethal as
unlawful force. In 1990, unlike last year, the United States had some
justification in going to war. The initial act of aggression back then
was perpetrated by Iraq.

Last year the initial act of aggression was perpetrated by the United
States. Whatever one may think of the Al Sabah fiefdom known as the
state of Kuwait, it was a sovereign member of the United Nations. It
had
every right in international law to invoke Article 51 and ask any
nation
in the world to come to its defense.
In addition, the force that the United States used to dislodge the
occupying Iraqi army was in accordance with a number of United Nations
Security Council Resolutions. Unlike every other Administration since
the Second World War, that of George Bush sought and obtained
Congressional authorization for US military action.

All this, needless to say, served to enrage the warriors at the Wall
Street Journal and National Review. They foamed at the mouth at the
notion of a United States bound by international law. As they see it,
the United States should be able to do whatever it wants to do whenever
and wherever it wants to do it, and that's all there is to it. Nor
should any President bother about going to Capitol Hill to seek the
support of the "535 Secretaries of State" – to use the cliché of
those years.

Thus began the "neo-conservative" flirtation with Bill Clinton. Perhaps
it had something to do with the personalities involved, but the
'neo-conservatives" proved to be an extraordinarily ungrateful lot. For
Bill Clinton gave them the US foreign policy of their dreams. Unlike
George Bush, Clinton has never bothered with the United Nations.

The daily bombing of Iraq that the United States has been carrying out
for the better part of the last decade has never been authorized by the
United Nations. The sanctions on Iraq remain in place, even though the
majority of the UN Security Council wants them gone. Neither the UN
Security Council nor Congress ever authorized the aggression against
Yugoslavia. Clinton's world – like theirs – is full of "rogue
states" and "falling dominoes."

Yet Clinton's war and George Bush's war did have something in common.
Both wars served as pretext for the assertion of US imperial power.
Iraq
had invaded Kuwait. Though there was legal justification for going to
war, the fact is we do not go to war every time one country invades
another.

Even the newly-aggrandized Iraq posed no threat to the United States.
Iraq may have posed a threat to Saudi Arabia. But the United States has
always been heavily committed to the survival of the Royal House of
Saud. It is extremely unlikely that Saddam Hussein would have tried his
luck against this US client state.

As for Iraq supposedly controlling vast reserves of oil, basic
economics
would suggest that there was little Iraq could do to affect the price
of
oil. Since Saddam Hussein badly needed dollars to rebuild his country,
it was highly unlikely that he would want to withdraw oil from the
world
markets.

If anything, he would have probably overproduced and thus driven down
oil prices. In any case, even if he had withdrawn oil from the world
markets, there were enough producers to make up for the shortfall. To
be
sure, there was always the possibility that the ungrateful Saudis would
have teamed up with Iraq to cut back oil production and thus drive up
world prices.

No doubt it was just this sort of independent policy making on the part
of its client states that the United States sought to avert when it
launched the war on Iraq. Crushing Iraq would ensure United States
dominance in the region for decades to come.

This is why the pre-Gulf War diplomacy was as meaningless as the
Rambouillet "talks" – though perhaps not quite so transparently
dishonest.

Just before the War, there was an opportunity that would have allowed
Iraq to withdraw completely from Kuwait without the launch of a single
cruise missile. Columnists and editorial writers shrieked that this
would be interpreted by the world as a victory by Saddam. It would be a
shot in the arm for the ailing Soviet Union. Yet it was obvious that
the
Iraqis wanted out.

Nonetheless, the Bush Administration rejected any possibility of a
peaceful resolution that would have denied the United States the
opportunity to exert itself. As it turned out, the Gulf War was a huge
disappointment. After all the scare stories about Saddam as the latest
"Hitler" and his invincible war machine, all we saw was Arab boys
running for their lives. A somewhat shocked George Bush put an end to
the pointless slaughter.

To the "neo-conservatives" as well as to General Barry McCaffrey, this
was a traumatic event. McCaffrey went on to massacre defenseless Iraqis
en masse, doubtless to justify to himself the waging of this one-sided
non-war.

As for the "neo-conservatives," having whipped up hysterical fervor
against the supposed determined enemy – the subsequent justification
for huge arms expenditures – it seemed we had nothing much more to
worry about than a weak, impoverished Third World State.

A fervent search for enemies was swiftly undertaken. Happily, within a
few months the flak-jacketed, soft-featured Potomac bombardiers were to
discover new – and with luck, more formidable – adversaries: Radovan
Karadzic and Slobodan Milosevic.
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