Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 8, 1991 TAG: 9103080730
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Saddam, who by the brutal conquest and occupation had made himself the Mideast's madman of the moment, retains a semblance of power and may regain some of its substance. But no longer can he threaten his neighbors with overwhelmingly superior military strength and the possible capacity to wage nuclear war.
More doubtful is whether the Middle East and the world are better off than before the whole mess started. But the odds seem better after President Bush's speech Wednesday night to Congress. The president displayed a welcome grasp of the fact that much is yet to be accomplished if military victory in the gulf is to do more than put down one threat so others may arise.
The president's outline of a Middle East agenda is as good as any: providing for Israel's security but also "legitimate Palestinian political rights"; creating a system of collective security for the region; fostering economic development; and controlling the proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction.
Before and during the war, the administration and America's allies rightly resisted Saddam's near-comical attempts to link his rape of Kuwait with Arab hostility toward Israel. But there can be no stable Middle East peace until there is a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The hope is that the cohesiveness of the anti-Saddam coalition, which implicitly included Israel as well as the formal Arab partners, can hold in the war's wake. The fear is that, with common enemy Saddam much less a threat, old antagonisms will re-emerge.
Creating a collective-security system for the region already has begun with announcement of a war-bred alliance of Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The United States, Bush said Wednesday night, will take part in joint military exercises with its wartime allies.
The hope is that, through such means, security can be maintained in the Middle East without a large permanent presence of American troops, a possibility the United States neither wants nor can easily afford. The fear is that such a presence will prove inescapable.
The oil-rich "haves" of the Arab world aligned themselves against Saddam, as did "have-nots" Egypt and Syria. Egypt and Syria may well be in line for assistance from the gulf states.
The hope is that such assistance will spread the wealth, ease the conditions of poverty in which most people in "have-not" states live, and dampen revolutionary fervor among the Arab masses. One fear is that Arab nations where sympathy for Saddam ran high, cut off from assistance, will become even more restive.
"Iraq," said Bush, "requires special vigilance . . . [and] must not have access to the instruments of war." On that, surely, the president was correct. But Iraq is hardly the only unstable nation in the world with access - including from the United States - to modern armaments.
The hope is that the Gulf War has shown would-be aggressors that such weaponry isn't worth the cost: You still can't outgun a superpower. The fear is that the temptation - both by industrial nations to sell and Third World regimes to buy - will prove too strong to resist.
Bush's speech was in part a celebration, but attention should be paid to the other parts as well. Successful prosecution of the war has raised hopes for solving riddles that long have been among the world's most intractable. But hopes have been raised before in the Middle East, only to be dashed.
by CNB