World has no appetite for war

The international game of cat and mouse that has been played out to no satisfactory result since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait is in full swing again, with much the same players using much the same tactics.

What the international community seems to be saying is that Iraq could have whatever weapons it wanted when it was at war with Iran. That ghastly conflict over, Saddam's place in the great scheme of things has changed. As one U.S. president once said of a Latin American dictator: "He might be a son of a bitch but he is our son of a bitch."

The Iraqi leader possibly knows the feeling, as did Diem of South Vietnam and more recently Noriega of Panama. What is unsettling about the latest bout of saber-rattling is that the chances are that ordinary Iraqi citizens will suffer from the arrogance of their leader and the extraordinary behavior of the international community. During the Gulf War, the UN forces inflicted a horrible defeat on the Iraqi military and could have gone on to remove Saddam but they did not. The politicians issuing the orders left their son of a bitch alone and now they have come back to toy with him once more.

In the event of hostilities, the innocent will, of course, be caught in the crossfire of a remote-control war in which weapons lovingly described as "smart" demonstrate to deadly effect that they are little of the sort. Tomahawk cruise missiles, we were led to understand, could hit a pimple on the tip of Saddam's nose; nothing, absolutely nothing, gets past Patriot missile batteries.

What sort of message is being sent to the Iraqi people by an international community that arms Saddam, then demonizes and seeks to destroy him and then leaves him in charge of an unwilling, oppressed and cowed nation? Ordinary Iraqi people may have reason to be perplexed.

They, like the international community, do not like Saddam but have no choice because he is a ruthless killer and has the military at his disposal. As though their lot is not bad enough, after years of UN sanctions, they could once more be on the receiving end of the "will of the international community" and all of its wondrous weaponry.

-- The Bangkok Post