Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 14, 1992 TAG: 9202140444
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CLEANING UP THE CIA
TESTY GEORGE Bush, who gets "sick and tired" of things with amazing volatility, is busy playing international town marshal again, and every American who values peace ought to tremble at the prospect of what he may do next.The target this time, as it was a year ago, is Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, of whose continued role in world affairs Bush obviously is as "sick and tired" as ever. Bush has thus authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to undertake covert action to weaken or topple Saddam Hussein, and last weekend was reported additionally to be considering air strikes against the Iraqi strongman.
Bush naturally avoids discussing the fact that his "victory" in the Persian Gulf stopped well short of removing Saddam last year, when Saddam would have been a legitimate target of American action and when by his own inflamed rhetoric Bush had made Saddam a demon of Hitlerian evil and importance.
But he failed to rid the world of Saddam, his Hitlerian traits notwithstanding, and now it is election year, Bush's polls are falling badly and there is widespread evidence that angry American voters hold him responsible, great "victory" or not, for their present economic woes. Bush would not be the first president to try a piece of melodrama to restore his waning popularity. And as his invasion of Panama and the Gulf war show, the public is easily gulled by Bush's tough talk and martial ardor.
No one denies that Saddam is a nasty piece of work, to be sure, a bully and a nuisance; and few would grieve if he were removed from power. Nor could he be permitted to possess the ability to make and use nuclear weapons.
But the use of new American force against him, whether it is "covert" CIA operations or outright air strikes, would do more harm than good: Its results would be imponderable, and the long-term consequences could make the touchy Middle East even touchier than it already is.
"Covert" CIA operations already enjoy a bad name with most Americans, who've come to suspect that spy games beyond the control of any accountable authority are dangerous and contrary to American expectations of open government.
Recent months have seen an increased demand in some quarters, in fact, that the CIA be stripped altogether of its operational side and be restricted, in the future, to intelligence-gathering. As respected a figure as U.S. Senator Pat Moynihan, in particular, argues that CIA "covert" operations have had dire results again and again and ought to be abandoned, leaving the CIA the job it was originally created to do, i.e., gathering intelligence that the elected government uses.
Former State Department official George Ball, another respected senior figure in recent American diplomacy, makes a similar case in The New York Review of Books for Feb. 13.
Ball, a veteran of service under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and one of the few who foresaw the outcome and consequences of the Vietnam War, believes that a high degree of "adolescent fantasy" governs most CIA "dirty tricks," and cites numerous examples of CIA stunts against Fidel Castro, with whom the Kennedys and Johnson were obsessed, to make his case.
Other cases abound: Eisenhower deposed Arbenz in Guatemala, only to give it a succession of dictators. We overthrew Mossaddegh in Iran, brought back the Shah and got Khomeini and Islmac fundamentalism. By deposing Allende in Chile, we left that nation to the brutalities of Pinochet. Of the disasters following our "covert" operations in Nicaragua and El Salvador, it is scarcely necessary to speak, or of what came of a similar daydream at the Bay of Pigs.
It is time to relieve the CIA of the business of dirty tricks. But don't count on it in an election year, especially if George Bush's bid for re-election seems even more threatened than it already does. As he has already informed us, he will do "anything" to hold onto his presidency.
Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.