Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 3, 1991 TAG: 9102040267
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Geoff Seamans/ Associate editor
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"Where once they were certain about so many things," Gross wrote in a story published last Sunday on the front page of our Horizon section, people of that - of my - generation "have discovered that life is more ambiguous, a palette of many shades of gray."
Count me among the ambivalent?
Sort of. In a way. Yes and no.
That stuff about discovering the ambiguities of "life" is empty chatter. It's true but unremarkable, and no different from the experience of other generations as they've aged. To suggest that it's a defining characteristic of the Vietnam generation is to recommit a folly for which that generation itself is often chided: assuming that it's special in a way that others are not.
But consider the narrower question of war in the Gulf - and yes, it is very difficult, at least for this member of the Vietnam generation, to know quite what to make of things.
Saddam Hussein is no Ho Chi Minh, a nationalist leader venerated by millions of his countrymen - though the ferocity of the U.S.-led coalition's response to Saddam's aggression may yet turn a tyrant into a hero for millions of Third World Moslems.
Neither, however, is Saddam another Adolf Hitler, capable of conquering a continent - though he might well have wanted to be, and been stopped only by virtue of that same ferocious response.
Already, as if on cue, have emerged demonstrations protesting war in the Gulf and counterdemonstrations protesting the protests. But the slogans on neither side help much in resolving the ambiguities:
Doves: Give peace a chance.
Noble sentiment. But peace was given a chance. Saddam had five months to withdraw - toward the end, to simply indicate serious intent to withdraw - the troops that in August had invaded Kuwait and since have brutally occupied it.
Granted, U.S. diplomatic mistakes, including America's "tilt" toward Iraq during its war with Iran, may have contributed toward the coming of war. But to expect flawlessly omniscient diplomacy is to expect the impossible.
Diplomatic error is inevitable, but its fruit is not inevitably (or even usually) war.
It was Saddam, not George Bush or the emir of Kuwait, who made war the stakes of this particular game, rather than more mundane prizes of diplomacy such as trade agreements or extradition treaties.
Hawks: Support our troops overseas.
Well, sure. But what does that have to do with the rightness or wrongness of this or any war?
It's the unspoken part of the slogan - that you can't support the troops if you don't support the war - that makes the argument absurd.
Whether a war is right or wrong doesn't depend on whether U.S. troops are in it. Rather, whether U.S. troops are involved makes the question of right or wrong more urgent.
If a war is right, the whole burden shouldn't fall on the troops in the field. Others should be expected to bear some of the costs, including higher taxes and a genuine commitment to the long-term care of troops who are physically and psychologically wounded in the war.
If a war is wrong, that commitment to those who were sent to the front is not abrogated. But if a war is wrong, the best way to support them is to bring them home.
Doves: Sanctions were working.
They were, in the sense that they were wreaking havoc on Iraq's economy. But let's be clear: Any sanctions effective enough to back Saddam down (or to get him overthrown from within) likely would have taken a long time and have had a devastating impact on Iraqi civilians. In the end, it might have taken a total blockade of all goods and communications, including food and medical supplies.
Before letting his military starve, Saddam almost surely would have let Iraqi children starve. Before letting his elite troops succumb to disease, he almost surely would have deprived civilians and conscripts of medical treatment.
Would that still have been better for Iraq, America and the world than its substitute, the aerial bombardment of Iraq and a probable ground assault on entrenched Iraqi forces in and near Kuwait? Maybe, but the answer isn't immediately self-evident.
Hawks: If we don't follow through, American troops will have died in vain.
True enough - if there's a legitimate goal to follow through on. But if the goals of war are illegitimate in the first place, or (as in Vietnam) based on arrogant and profound misconceptions of reality, raising the casualty count doesn't validate the deaths of those who went before.
Moreover, the aims of war, even when begun with just cause, are notorious for expanding during the course of war. In the Gulf war, some war aims (getting Saddam's troops out of Kuwait) are clear. Some (destroying Saddam's capability for waging biological, chemical or nuclear war) may already be close to achievement.
But the president's talk of a "new world order" is disturbingly resonant of Woodrow Wilson's effort to reorder Europe after World War I. In that war, millions of Allied troops died in vain - not because the democracies lost militarily (they won), but because the postwar settlement failed to lay the groundwork for a lasting peace.
It takes no more than a passing familiarity with the Middle East to be pessimistic about the aftermath of war in that region, regardless of what happens to Saddam Hussein.
The war, I fear, will be harder to win than most Americans are prepared for. So, I fear, will be a stable and peaceful Middle East once formal hostilities have ceased. And as U.S. casualties mount, I also fear, the question of whether war is the best of several distasteful alternatives will get harder to answer.
by CNB