In 1979, the Kurdish politician Mahmoud Toman met with the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. The dictator received him in a small office in one of his palaces. It was early in the morning, and Saddam was wearing a bathrobe when Toman entered, making him wonder if the Iraqi leader had slept there the night before. In one corner of the office there was a cot. Next to the bed were more than a dozen finely made shoes. As for the rest of the office, it was filled with books--dozens of them, all of them biographies, all of them about one man. Apparently, Saddam Hussein curled up at night with bedtime stories about Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader who pioneered the use of torture, murder, and terror as tools of political control.

As George W. Bush noted earlier this month, Saddam is a "student of Stalin," a brutal dictator who has tortured and killed thousands of people in his country. The most appalling episode in the Iraqi leader's reign is the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88)--a war in which the United States provided intelligence and tactical advice to the aggressor, Iraq. As that bloody conflict winded down, Saddam used chemical weapons against Kurdish dissidents in northern Iraq. Between February and September 1988, his soldiers seized 100,000 Kurds, transported them to remote parts of the country, and executed them.

Of course, a tyrant does not need war as an excuse for murder. During the thirty years of his reign, Saddam has tortured and killed thousands of his political enemies: politicians, activists, and clerics, as well as their wives, mothers, fathers, and children. In 1981 and 1982 alone, he executed 3,000 of his citizens. In 1990, one of the officers in his army, Lieutenant General Omar al-Hazzaa, dared to criticize the Iraqi president. On Saddam's orders, soldiers first cut out the general's tongue. He was then executed, along with his son.

Saddam Hussein may lack the global reach of an Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, but he stands squarely in the tradition of sadistic tyrants like Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic or Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who turned statecraft into another word for mass murder. This has been clear for decades to any observer of the Middle East. Finally, the United States seems poised to do something about the Butcher of Baghdad. For the past several months President Bush has reminded us--as his father did a decade earlier--that Saddam Hussein is a violent criminal who needs to be stopped. "On Saddam Hussein's orders, opponents have been decapitated, wives and mothers of political opponents have been systematically raped as a method of intimidation, and political prisoners have been forced to watch their own children being tortured," Bush said in a speech last month in Cincinnati. If Bush has his way, the United States will overthrow Saddam, end Iraq's "long captivity," "lift" the oppression of its many peoples, and usher in an "era of new hope."

This all sounds well and good--until you listen to the other reasons that the administration puts forward on behalf of its all-but-certain war. After all, Bush did not focus his speech this month upon the atrocities committed by a rogue nation upon its own people. His key consideration wasn't even that Iraq was oppressing or threatening its neighbors. Rather, the Iraqi regime must be stopped, Bush declared, because it has somehow become a threat to the United States. To win the war against America's chief enemy, terrorism, the United States must overthrow a cruel despot half-way around the world. Only then will Americans know peace.

"You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," Bush said in September. It is true that the war against terror and the war against Saddam Hussein are linked--but not in the way that the Bush administration affirms them to be. A war to stop Saddam Hussein can be justified morally. But it will also do tremendous harm to the war against terrorism, and to overall relations between Western countries and the Muslim world. Before the United States rushes blindly into a conflict that will likely cost thousands of lives on both sides, and further radicalize sectors of various Arab countries, Americans must weigh these two goals--fighting terror, and fighting tyranny--and find a prudent balance between its two aims. It is possible to deal with Saddam Hussein in a way that does not harm the fight against al Qaeda. But so far, the Bush administration isn't inclined to look for better solutions--and ordinary people, in America and abroad, will pay the price.

Let's consider some of the president's arguments in favor of the war:

Point 1: What threat?

We must never forget the most vivid events of recent history. On September the 11th, 2001, America felt is vulnerability--even to threats that gather on the other side of the earth. We resolved then, as we are resolved today, to confront every threat, from any source, that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America. --George W. Bush, October 7, 2002

How great a threat does Iraq pose to the United States? According to the Central Intelligence Agency, not much--unless the United States attacks first.

At a congressional hearing earlier this month, Senator Bob Graham read a letter written to him by the head of the CIA, George Tenet. According to Tenet, intelligence showed that "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical and biological weapons] against the United States."

That said, Saddam would likely attack under a different scenario, Tenet went on to say: "Should Saddam conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions." In other words, the biggest "threat" that Iraq poses is if the United States invades Iraq, allowing--and provoking--Saddam to unleash terrorism or chemical or biological weapons upon the thousands of American soldiers who descend upon his country.

What about the threat that Iraq will pose several years down the line, if he is allowed to develop nuclear weapons? A tough program of weapons inspections could thwart Iraq's nuclear program. But even if Saddam acquires nuclear weapons, it is highly unlikely that he would ever use them. Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser under Presidents Ford and Bush Sr., made this case in a recent commentary piece in The Wall Street Journal. "He [Saddam] is unlikely to risk his investment in weapons of mass destruction, much less his country, by handing such weapons to terrorists who would use them for their own purposes and leave Baghdad as the return address," Scowcroft writes. "Threatening to use these weapons for blackmail--much less their actual use--would open him and his entire regime to devastating response by the U.S. While Saddam is thoroughly evil, he is above all a power-hungry survivor."

A week ago, Saddam announced an amnesty for nearly all of the regime's political prisoners. Critics dismissed the move as a ploy to rally international support against the impending American attack. That's clearly the case, but Saddam's newfound respect for human rights also says something telling about his motivations. This is not the behavior of a man who seeks messianic glory through a bold confrontation with American military might. It is the act of a petty dictator who wants to cling onto his rapidly dwindling power.

Truth be told, Iraq is no more a threat to the United States than North Korea is. North Korea, another country in the "Axis of Evil" clubhouse, already has nuclear weapons--though oddly, the United States isn't talking about a military strike against that country. But North Korea, like Iraq, will never use its weapons, given its leaders' fears of retaliation from countries that have stockpiled many, many times their nuclear arsenal. The real threat would be if Saddam Hussein (or, say, President Musharraf of Pakistan) was overthrown and replaced by a particular kind of religious zealot who saw an attack on the United States as a holy war, and self-destruction as a worthy sacrifice. Unfortunately, that is all too likely a scenario if the United States rushes into war against Iraq.

Point 2: Weren't we fighting a war against terror?

Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary; confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror. When I spoke to Congress more than a year ago, I said that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves. Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction. And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them, or provide them to a terror network. --Bush, October 7, 2002

Saddam Hussein may call himself a devout Muslim, but he is notorious throughout the Muslim world for his murders of Shiite clerics and their families, and rules his country with little regard for Islamic law. Not surprisingly, Saddam is passionately despised by Muslims throughout the region, and even more so by the extremists who fill the ranks of terrorist organizations. As Daniel Benjamin recently noted in The New York Times: "To contemporary jihadists, Saddam Hussein is another in a line of dangerous secularists, an enemy of the faith who refuses to rule by Shariah and has habitually murdered Sunni and Shiite religious leaders in Iraq who might oppose his regime."

Nevertheless, there is some evidence that al-Qaeda and Iraq have collaborated in recent years. In his letter to Senator Graham, CIA Director George Tenet wrote that there is "solid reporting" of "senior-level" contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade, and that the two parties "have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression." Other intelligence reveals that al Qaeda members are hiding out in Iraq, and have even "sought contacts" in the country to help them acquire nuclear weapons, Tenet noted. And the most damning finding: "The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."

It may be true that Iraq has aided al Qaeda. But what country in the Middle East has not? It is estimated that al Qaeda terrorist cells exist in seventy nations. Iran is apparently harboring dozens of al Qaeda operatives right now, including two of the network's most senior leaders. Charities, non-governmental organizations, mosques, and other private groups in Saudi Arabia are a major source of funding for Osama bin Laden's network, and the government there has allegedly turned a blind eye to their activities.

Compared to other Arab countries, Iraq is at best a minor ally of the al Qaeda network. But U.S. military action may change that, by giving Saddam the legitimacy he so desires within the larger Muslim world, and encouraging him to expand his cooperation with terrorist groups. "Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD [weapons of mass destruction] attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him," Tenet wrote in his letter. For these reasons, it's not clear that invading Iraq would reduce the number of terrorists attacks against the United States, in the short-term or long-term.

In fact, the war on Iraq will likely do great harm to American efforts to fight terrorism. To hunt down terrorists, the United States needs the helps of many countries, especially Arab nations. It needs the free flow of intelligence, flexible policies of extradition, and firm commitments by governments to crack down on private funding for terrorist operations. All these types of cooperation would be put in jeopardy by an act of aggression against Iraq. To this day Muslims throughout the Middle East remain outraged by the presence of American soldiers in the holy lands of Saudi Arabia. The Persian Gulf War of 1991 brought those troops there and energized the terrorist activity that ultimately resulted in al Qaeda; the war against Iraq will likely raise the anger to an even higher pitch, considering that the United States this time around will be striking with no clear provocation.

Think, for a moment, what the war on Iraq looks like from the perspective of a young Arab person in the Middle East. The United States, the most powerful nation in the world, with an invincible army and huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons, declares the puny country of Iraq to be a "threat," and demands that it disarm or be destroyed. Little is done in the way of making the case to the world that Iraq is a country that systemically violates its citizens' human rights, even though many Arabs might agree with the assessment. Instead, an arrogant superpower decides to act on its own to coerce compliance, all the while ignoring the exhortations of Middle Eastern countries (among them a country that Iraq actually invaded, Kuwait) that it should first give negotiations a chance.

It's a recipe for widespread resentment and rage. It will create more terrorism, and even worse conditions for combating it. It will also dangerously destabilize the Middle East. Should extremists in Pakistan overthrow the government of President Musharraf, for example, they would take control of a country with six times the number of people in Iraq, one that already possesses nuclear weapons. This would never happen, you say? Something much like it happened in 1979, after U.S. efforts to prop up the dictatorial Shah of Iran prompted a popular revolt and the ascendancy of the vehemently anti-American regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

As the histories of Northern Ireland and Algeria show, terrorism is difficult--perhaps impossible--to defeat with more violence. A more effective strategy would be to act through both legal and political venues: using courts and law enforcement networks to root out terrorists in each and every country, and waging a "public relations" war that turns young Arabs away from violence and saps public support for the terrorist groups. This war of ideas--pitting American ideals against bin Laden's seductive call for armed resistance--will demand more than just talk; it will also require serious action to address the poverty, repression, and violence in the Middle East that fosters terrorism. Even the CIA recognizes this. "While we are striking major blows against al Qaeda ... the underlying causes that drive terrorists will persist," the agency wrote in response to questions posed by members of Congress last April. "Several troublesome global trends--especially the growing demographic youth bulge in developing nations whose economic systems and political ideologies are under enormous stress--will fuel the rise of more disaffected groups willing to use violence to address their perceived grievances."

Right now, America's policies have seriously harmed its credibility abroad. It speaks of Iraq as a dictatorship that must be overthrown, and yet says and does nothing to end the authoritarian rule and atrocities perpetrated by its political allies, such as Saudi Arabia. Justifiably or not, it has also acquired a reputation as an untrustworthy broker in the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, through its sales of arms to Israel, the huge amounts of foreign military financing it pumps into the country (about $2 billion every year), and its reluctance to criticize Israel or vote against it in the Security Council.

It is obvious that the terrorists who attacked America on September 11 will never be appeased. The world should not try to appease them. At the same time, reasonable policies should not be rejected simply because terrorists favor them. Without weakening its commitment to either Israeli statehood or human rights in the Middle East, the United States could advance more moderate and more constructive policies that actually help bring democracy to the region and improve the lives of citizens throughout the region--Arab and non-Arab. In doing so, it could finally chip away at the armor of public goodwill that protects al Qaeda's network in almost every Muslim-majority country.

Point 3: What is to be done?

There is no easy or risk-free course of action. Some have argued we should wait--and that's an option. In my view, it's the riskiest of all options, because the longer we wait, the stronger and bolder Saddam Hussein will become. We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I'm convinced that is a hope against all evidence. As Americans, we want peace--we work and sacrifice for peace. But there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. --Bush, October 7, 2002

So, if the war against Iraq will inflame Arab sentiment, does that mean we should just allow Saddam Hussein to continue to oppress his people? Absolutely not. It simply means that we have to make a better case for overthrowing Saddam--one that speaks clearly to justice, rather than just the narrow interest of the world's most powerful nation.

First, the United States must drop the rhetoric of Saddam's supposed "threat" to the United States. The Bush administration is emphasizing this dubious argument because it believes that this is the only way that it can make the case for attacking Iraq, pre-emptively and unilaterally. But this narrow-minded focus ultimately undermines the effort to end the dictatorship, because, frankly, most of the world doesn't believe it--and neither should the American people.

Second, the United States must seek international support for whatever action it takes. Acting alone will surely brand it a "rogue nation" in the eyes of the Arab world. The UN Security Council's unanimous vote this week in favor of renewed weapons inspections is a step in the right direction; a similar coalition should and must be built around any plan for military action, if it comes to that. But even more crucial is the firm backing of Arab nations. The United States still has a long way to go in convincing the people of those countries that Saddam must be overthrown.

One of the things that the United States could do to bolster international support for its foreign policy would be to indict Saddam Hussein in the International Court of Justice in the Hague. The "go-it-alone" United States has belittled the court and its work. But an indictment in the court would make the case--in the way that the United States alone cannot--that Saddam is a murderer who needs to be removed from power. In doing so, it would strip away the remaining shreds of Saddam's legitimacy, encouraging internal dissent and signaling to world leaders and businesspeople that, sooner or later, Saddam is on his way out.

Third, the United States must move forward slowly and carefully. If there is no real threat, there is no real need to rush. The Bush administration says that weapons inspections, economic sanctions, and limited military strikes have failed to stop the Iraqi regime. The latest proposal by the United Nations, too, may fail, even with broader authority granted to the inspectors. That said, the administration would gain much-needed legitimacy in its effort against Saddam if it simply went through the process, clearly exhausted all options, and then--as a last resort--turned to armed force.

The mass killings that occurred in the 1990s in Rwanda and Bosnia were a painful lesson that the world must not stand by while innocent people lose their lives. But there are many ways to act, and some will serve the interests of long-term peace better than others. We would be wise to consider our options carefully before we embark upon a war that leads not to peace and security, but to more hatred and terror.

Last month, one of America's boldest champions for the rights of the poor and disenfranchised, Senator Paul Wellstone, died in a plane crash. Inspired by the civil rights movement of the '60s, the Minnesota Democrat had fought consistently and courageously on behalf of welfare recipients, working families, individuals afflicted by mental illness, and others too frequently at the losing end of the political struggle. During his two terms, he had won friends and admirers on both ends of the ideological spectrum--from St. Paul to Washington to Liberia--for the depth of his convictions and the compassion of his politics.

Wellstone opposed the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and in a speech he gave to Congress earlier this month he came out against the resolution authorizing the use of military action against Iraq. He was the only senator in a competitive race for re-election this November to vote against the resolution. In his speech, Wellstone denounced Saddam Hussein as "a brutal, ruthless dictator who has repressed his own people." But Wellstone also pointed out that "acting alone" to stop the Iraqi leader could "jeopardize our top national priority, the continuing war on terror."

"Despite a desire to support our president, I believe many Americans still have profound questions about the wisdom of relying too heavily on a pre-emptive go-it-alone military approach," Wellstone said. "Acting now on our own might be a sign of our power. Acting sensibly and in a measured way, in concert with our allies, with bipartisan congressional support, would be a sign of our strength." Amen, Senator.

Victor Tan Chen
Editor, Inthefray.com

Mailbag

Feeling kinship
Philippe Wamba, a member of the magazine's Advisory Board, died on September 11 in a car crash. Inthefray.com deeply mourns the loss of a friend and inspiration. For more information, please see the editors' statement ("Philippe Wamba, 1971-2002") or the personal essay by Zachariah Mampilly ("Kith and kinship") published last month. Below is a letter from a reader who also knew Philippe.

I am a Tanzanian journalism instructor currently attending training in Berlin, Germany. In August of this year, before I left Dar es Salaam for this training, I met with Dennis Maryogo (a friend of Philippe Wamba), who, after a discussion we had about Pan-Africanism, handed me a copy of Kinship. Just a week or so before I left, I personally met with Philippe in Dar and told him how I was enjoying the first chapter of his book. When I asked him about the situation in the Congo, he was positive and optimistic. Now that I have finished reading his book, I feel like I have known Philippe for years. I feel like I know his family, too, though I have never met any of them, apart from seeing Professor Wamba [Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, Philippe's father] from a distance. No words are sufficient to express how personally sad I feel for this untimely robbery. Like he wrote about his brother Remy, but even in more profound ways, Philippe will always be alive in the hearts of those who held him dear. My heart goes out to Philippe's parents and his brothers James and Kolo, whom I've never met, but have known through kinship!

Ayub R. Chacha
ikwabei@yahoo.com
Tanzania School of Journalism
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The Latino explosion

I have wanted to comment on what I see as a terrible thing arising on the race relations horizon and that is the new power struggle. When I moved to California there was a mix of all races--black, white, Hispanic. It made me feel good that everyone was so cool about getting along. But then I started becoming a victim of racism by a group of people that totally took me by surprise. Spanish people began walking in front of me in stores when they saw that the cashier was "Latino." I would go to restaurants and order first and wondered why I was served last. As this became more and more obvious to me, my jobs started becoming affected by this same nasty conduct: Latinos would be issued the best of everything and always first, and blacks last or not at all, whenever the manager or supervisor was of Latino background.

I am black, and for most of my life I have lived with a very objective and fair-minded view, but this is something that is rapidly putting us (blacks) out of work. Latinos today treat us worse than whites did back in the sixties. It is their faith and belief that they should put their own first. They truly look out for their own and any others will just come second. As a result, I see a power struggle that might border on war in the near future. My feelings are that we gullible black people better wake up before we end up back in chains on the plantation, because this Latino thing is vicious and they will do anything to get this power. I, for one, will not sit by and be pushed down or aside. I am awake and will remain awake. It has really bothered me because I have given every race, including my own, the chance to come before others equally, but truly there exists a different scenario here with the Spanish situation because there are some very powerful people behind the scenes orchestrating this and only a few are aware of this. My hope is to open minds of all races and bring awareness to something I believe is prophetic in nature.

Of all the nationalities in this country, why is Spanish right up alongside English? Why? This is America, isn't it? Then will someone tell me why Spanish is on cereal boxes, and next to nearly every commercial form of communication they put a Spanish interpretation of English? Why? Africans are here, Koreans are here, Haitians are here, Russians are here, Filipinos, Jews, Chinese, Indians, Iranians. But do you see any translations in their languages on billboards, magazines, etc.? No. So what is behind all the Spanish interpretation? Why are they so special that they get their language alongside of the American language, which is English? If you travel to Japan, do you think you can get the Japanese government to put English on all their products? If you visit Japan, you best believe you better learn the language. And then here in the United States, our immigration policy is strict, but it is not enforced. How stupid is the government to not know that if you have someone who cannot speak the language they most likely are illegal. But do they do anything? No. And guess who pays for the welfare? We do ...

The Latino explosion is a political one and they know it but are trying to keep it hush until it's too late. God help the black man if our next President is Spanish because if the way I am treated is a sign, we will be begging to leave this country and go to Africa or anywhere. Years ago, one of my best friends since childhood and I were walking to go to the store. My next-door neighbor had moved out and there was a new couple moving in. As we walked past this couple, I politely said, "Hello, how are you?" They did not respond. In fact, they gave me major attitude, as if to say, "How dare you say hello to us?" I said, "Damn, this is my house," which is an Ebonic saying for "I've already been living here in this community." And my friend, who is Latino, started speaking up for his own people: "But we were here first." I was so shocked by this. Here I was talking about a neighborhood thing, and my childhood friend is talking about a global/national "we were here first" thing. So I have firsthand proof that this is their mentality ... no matter how close you are.

Spanish people have a global take-over-the-world mentality. They think that because the United States took some of the land that belonged to them through war, it's still theirs. They truly, by any means necessary, will put their race first above anyone else. All I can say is this is a serious thing. It seems to me that if you are an intelligent black person, Spanish people hate you with a rage. I see it in them when they look at me. I have asked my own family, how could a race that I have never done anything to hate me so much? Why hate my race? And I truly have to say it goes deeper than race. It is a spiritual conflict of biblical proportion. This conflict is between those of us that know Jesus and hold true to his teachings and those of the Roman Catholic persuasion who worship the Pope and the Virgin Mary. This migration to the United States by Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Brazilians, and other Latin Americans is because of the money and power of the Vatican in Rome. How else could Spanish become the only language to stand alongside English? Wake up America. Wake up.

Michael "Rahim" Howard
Burbank, California

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