'We are a good and decent country. But we have significant challenges we have to face. In order to do it right, we have to have some atmosphere of decency and civility, some presumption of good faith, some sense of proportionality and balance in bringing judgment who against those who are in different parties... ' -- Bill Clinton
SOMETIME on Tuesday last week, UNSCOM inspector Richard Butler ordered his team to pack their bags. On Wednesday, they caught the first available flight out of Baghdad.
Saddam Hussein was not at the airport to see them off. He made no attempt to persuade them to stay for awhile. He knew the rains were coming.
For four evenings thereafter, the skies opened up over Baghdad with a killer storm that devastated the city.
The storm has now ended, and both sides now count the cost. More than 400 cruise missiles were dropped upon Iraq at roughly a million dollars apiece. Iraq's payment was in lives, among them civilians.
But the Iraqis have been paying for a long time. In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, some 800 000 people have lost their lives as a direct result of starvation and disease brought on by economic sanctions. About a half-million of these have been children.
And what was once a handful of voices calling for an end to those sanctions quickly built up to become an increasingly powerful lobby led by former US attorney general Ramsey Clarke.
UNSCOM's mission — to seek out and destroy Iraq's ability to produce "weapons of mass destruction" — was becoming increasingly incongruous with the reality of the fact that no weapons were to be found. The absurdity of attempting to prove such facilities existed within the confines of Saddam Hussein's private palaces has not been lost upon the rest of the world, who have been anxious to get on with the business of business.
It would have been a good point for Bill Clinton and Tony Blair to be magnanimous by offering the Iraqi leader a path to the lifting of sanctions that did not involve regular inspections of his ablution facilities. Especially when those inspections would be conducted by Butler, who has unfortunately managed to reinforce stereotypes of abominable antipodeans.
But neither Clinton nor Blair appear to have been of sound mind through this process. Saddam has refused to co-operate. So Saddam's military capability must be "degraded". In order to do this, the US and UK will bomb the facilities used to produce weapons of mass destruction in order that he not be able to pose a threat to his neighbours. And sanctions must be kept in place until he complies.
Three problems here. One, that none of Hussein's neighbours want him to be neutralised and do not view him as a threat. Two, the reason why Butler was steamed in the first place was because he could not find those facilities that the US and the UK have now bombed. Three, that she of the cojones, Madeline Albright, has admitted that sanctions have not harmed Saddam Hussein at all.
Twits.
A peace of a sort has descended upon Baghdad now. To a country used to starvation, the holy month of Ramadan is hardly a trial. World opinion is now overwhelmingly against the US and the UK. The inspections are now halted. And Saddam Hussein faces his people as a hero unbowed. The Iraqis, it would seem, have found victory in defeat.
Shortly after Bill Clinton's defeat of George Bush, I saw a bumper sticker in the US which read: "Saddam still has a job, George. What about you?"
As Clinton approaches the end of his final term, he might want to pause and reflect on the irony of the situation. American history will now remember him for his philandering. The rest of the world will remember him as the man who rained death upon a defenceless populace while their dictator laughed in derision.
The one was never in his power to change. He could have done something to change the other.