Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 24, 1992 TAG: 9201240593
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS arm Iraq with its own nuclear weapons remains.
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
HEY, GEORGE
SILLY GEORGE Bush caromed off to New Hampshire last week in a frantic effort to arrest the decline of public confidence in his policies, especially his domestic policies, and to try countering the rising appeal of his Republican challenger, Pat Buchanan.Whether he was successful will not be clear until the New Hampshire primary a month from now; but none of the reporters covering him as he flailed his arms and whined his complaints (Bush is often "sick and tired" of this or that) appears to have found him impressive, though none is ready to write him off.
For me, however, the most curious feature of his New Hampshire blitzkrieg was not what he had to say or promise about the economy but what he avoided talking about, as far as I can tell, altogether.
What he avoided talking about was his great "triumph" in the Persian Gulf War just a year ago, a victory that boosted his popularity to unprecedented heights and made him seem, last spring, an invincible candidate for re-election to the presidency in 1992.
But time passes swiftly, as do political reputations, and the glory in which the American people appeared willing to wrap Bush, like a returning Caesar, evaporated as the economy worsened; so it may be just as well, at least for Bush himself, not to remind his fellow citizens of the legacy of his Middle Eastern War.
The rest of us will be pardoned, though, for wondering whether the war was a "triumph," as Bush and his cohorts want to believe, or a disaster containing the elements of a series of even more serious disasters in coming years.
Bush's personalization of the conflict - his repeated comparisons of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to Hitler and his determination to make the war a struggle between good and evil - did not, in fact, lead him to rid the Middle East of Saddam and the threat his regime poses to the peace of the world.
On the contrary, Saddam remains in power - weakened by the war, some say, or strengthened in the Arab world because of his resistance to the United States, as others contend. He continues to wage cruel destruction on his own Kurdish minority. He calls for restoration of his army, and his determination to Bush, who feared domestic criticism if he allowed the war to continue, let him go.
The "liberation" of Kuwait, nominally the casus belli, is a hollow triumph. Instead of encouraging the Kuwaiti royal family to take the first steps toward political democracy, the war appears to have hardened its absolutism. Summary punishment of dissidents, deportation of foreign workers, severe limitation on the right to vote are hallmarks of the restored regime.
Pollution of the air and water of the Persian Gulf from the burning oil wells Saddam left behind remains a serious environmental consequence.
The substitution of military force for alternative diplomatic and economic measures to restrain Iraq only perpetuates the illusion that war settles complex strategic problems, scarcely the "new world order" Bush touted so loudly.
American demand for oil has risen to new heights despite the fact that American oil dependency is the essence of the war.
The folly of Desert Storm is that it not only failed to achieve its putative aims but produced imponderable, possibly more dangerous long-term results. One cannot be surprised that Bush chose, in New Hampshire, to speak of other things. But has he learned his lesson? One wonders, as his polls fall, what madcap foreign conflict he will cook up next.
\ AUTHOR Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.