
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 15, 1991                   TAG: 9104160462
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CORRUPT EMIRATE SAVED; NOT KURDS

WHY DID the United States use its military might to help the Kuwaitis and then stand by and watch the Kurds get slaughtered? Is it because Kuwait has oil and money and the Kurds are only people?

How could we come to the aid of a corrupt and spoiled emirate created by colonial whim only decades ago and utterly betray an ancient, proud and long-oppressed people who desperately needed a friend? How could the America of Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry come to this?

It is not totally our fault. Relief of the Kurds through the United Nations was blocked by nation-states that have a lot to lose from any collective recognition of the rights of rebellious ethnic minorities. These nation-states are actually empires.

The revolution that created the United States was a war against an empire. If we want to be on the side of truth and justice, we must help oppressed and stateless nations become free of all the "evil empires" that hold them captive. The principles of freedom and democracy demand self-government for people who want it, and many ethnic groups and populations around the world are cruelly abused and want freedom very badly.

Is President Bush's "new world order" a time in which the rights and lives of native peoples are completely discounted as the United Nations and the United States protect instead the rights of dictators and empires to operate without interference in their internal affairs? This is indeed a new order for the United States, which has seen fit to meddle in the internal affairs of many nations, including rebellions in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola.

It is certainly meddling in the internal affairs of a nation-state to sell or give its unelected government sophisticated arms with which they can crush any opposition. To pretend that destroying the infrastructure of Iraq was not meddling in internal affairs is absurd. The United States intervenes in the affairs of other countries when it suits our purposes.

Our soldiers performed the tasks this nation gave them with great bravery and devotion. Unfortunately, their commander in chief is guilty of moral cowardice. WILLIAM A. BASON JR. FLOYD

by CNB