FINISHING THE JOB
Phoney wars are the hardest ones to sustain. International sabres have been rattled at Saddam Hussein for two months now, but the longer we do nothing but rattle, the harder it will be to convince taxpayers in Peoria or Maidenhead that the effort is worthwhile. Once war is unleashed it ceases to be such a problem, for wars have their own bloody momentum, but as we sit and wait it is as well to define our alms.
One way to invest the cause with right- eousness is to keep on invoking Hitler's ghost. 'Hitler revisited' was President Bush's description this week of Iraqi be- haviour in Kuwait. Mrs Thatcher wants a UN Security Council resolution to call for a. Nuremberg-type trial against the Iraqi leaders and to demand war reparations for turning Kuwait into a wasteland.
This is stirring stuff, but is it realistic? As for a war crimes trial, the United Nations already has endorsed the principles and procedures of Nuremberg, in the 1948 Convention on Genocide and the 1950 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms. But there never has been a second Nuremberg trial (except in Tokyo, which was an extension of it), for the simple reason that there is no international tribunal to punish those who are guilty of crimes against humanity. One can set up such a tribunal, after defeating a nation at war, but justice dispensed in that way is always a form of victor's justice, particularly when the be- haviour of the judges — as was the case with Stalin's Soviet Union at the time of Nuremberg — is hardly better than that of the accused. So far as Saddam Hussein's,
or anybody's else's, crimes against his own people such as — arguably — the Kurds
are concerned, they are even more difficult 10 deal with in an international court of !aw, since they were crimes committed inside a sovereign nation which was, in
_ addarn's case, recognised and supported by the very people who would sit in his
judgment.
. Reparations may be desirable in theory, but impossible to enforce if the country cannot pay them. Iraq went to war because 1,t, was unable to pay back its loans from Kuwait, so it is hardly in a position to pay
even more for the damage it has done. We could force the country into penury, of course, but the consequences of that would probably be a whole nation of embittered and vengeful Saddam Husseins. Punishing Saddam by destroying his country, or even his regime, is a dubious aim. It would be as though Britain went to war in the Falklands to topple the military government of Argentina. This was a satisfactory outcome of the war, but it could not be its purpose. Certainly Saddam is a menace and he cannot be allowed to dictate by force the affairs of the Middle East, and when he attempts to do so, as with his invasion of Kuwait, he should be opposed. But that is not the same thing as destroying his power in Iraq, however desirable that might be. That job should be left to the Iraqis, many of whom would be quite happy to comply.
If Saddam can be forced to retreat, his humiliation would make their task easier. Liberals — in the American sense — try to keep their faith in the anti-Iraqi cause by demanding a complete revamping of the Middle East. In the great Democratic tradition of Kennedy-style crusading, they advocate a new democratic order in the Gulf. The ruling Saud and Sabah families would have to go, elections or plebiscites instituted; and all this, one supposes, under Western supervision. After all, to ask such present allies as Assad of Syria to teach his fellow Arabs lessons in democra- cy would be quite absurd. To complete the new order, we would also presumably sort out the Palestinian problem by leaning on Israel to hand over the West Bank.
Now all these things might be fine in themselves, but it is hard to see how the UN, let alone the Western powers, can impose political solutions on the Middle East without returning to old-fashioned colonialism, the very thing that Arabs blame for the mess they are in today. Bush talks of Iraqi atrocities and war crimes trials to divert attention from the killing last week of Palestinians by Israeli police in Jerusalem and the embarrassment this has caused to the United States in its present alliance with Arab countries. If, as Israeli intelligence claims, the Palestinian provocation was encouraged by Iraq, Sad- dam Hussein is playing a clever hand and Bush an ill-judged one by threatening war crimes trials of doubtful legality, which are probably quite impractical — and will certainly do nothing to deter Saddam Hussein on his present course.
There are people, by no means all sympathetic to Saddam Hussein, who argue that at least some of his territorial claims against Kuwait are justified. But by Saddam's attempt to settle his differences by force he has forfeited his right to bargain about them now.
It is hard to resist the conclusion that there is only one way in which this thing can be finished, and the status quo ante which means Saddam Hussein's retreat from Kuwait — achieved.
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