Evil Empire

Bush's legacy of betrayal in Iraq

All along, George W. Bush, DC '68, has tried to paint himself as a man of compassion and humility. Ask him about foreign policy, and he'd likely tell you that under him, America will be a "humbler nation."

What exactly is he talking about? Is this a response to the perceived arrogance of Clintonian foreign policy (i.e. if they give you a problem, bomb 'em to hell), and at the same time a justification of the Papa Bush's unwillingness to topple a dictator whom he soundly defeated in war?

I am, of course, talking about Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

I feel pretty bad for the people of Iraq, devastated by the dual stranglehold of a brutal dictator and restrictive U.S. sanctions. First, Saddam forced them into a prolonged and bloody war with Iran in the '80s in order to satiate his own megalomaniacal scheming, which led to eight long years of bloody trench warfare at the cost of 600,000 Iraqi lives. Then, in 1990, they were ordered to invade oil-rich Kuwait over a historical border dispute, awakening a slumbering Uncle Sam who, under the direction of President Bush, formed a United Nations coalition to drive back the invasion. About one year and 27,000 dead Iraqis later, Bush reaped the benefits of high domestic approval ratings and the salvation of oil interests abroad, while the Kurdish and Iraqi rebels who were emboldened by the American intervention were abandoned by Western forces to be hunted down, arrested, and executed.

If the younger Bush is going to stay away from "nation building," as he put it, does that mean that he will follow the policy of his daddy: destroy a nation's people with the overpowering might of the American military, and then leave them to suffer and die?

Will he, in his effort to be "humble," turn away from the thousands of Iraqi children born every year with fatal birth defects caused by radiation emitted from the depleted uranium casings of spent American artillery shells? Does his avoidance of "nation building" involve supporting the senseless sanctions instituted under his father, which do nothing to hurt the rich and powerful, but instead starve and kill poor Iraqi civilians?

I fear that Dubya may combine the arrogance of Clintonian foreign policy with his father's short-sightedness; he talks of "reaching across the aisles," yet I fear this will lead him into some awful conglomeration of militarism and irresponsible diplomacy—a foreign policy monster of the worst sort. He wants to increase military spending at home, but decrease military commitments abroad. He wants to "fight and win wars," but stay away from "nation building."

When Bush says that he is a "compassionate conservative," all I can think of is the mentally retarded man, Johnny Paul Perry, in Texas for whom he refused to grant a pardon from the death penalty. Similarly, when he talks of a "humbler nation," all I can think of is the dead and dying in Iraq and the dawn of another administration that would have the war without the peace, government defense contracts and violent conflicts without humane and responsible diplomatic agendas.

There are still rebels in Iraq waiting to rise up against Saddam and his murderous regime. Perhaps they hold hope for this administration and the legacy of its namesake. Perhaps they think that America's new president will do what Clinton and Bush before him did not: give aid instead of bombing, support instead of abandonment.

Perhaps. Yet it seems more likely that he will continue to ignore the plight of the Iraqi people, and to deny America's responsibility for the present state of their country. I cannot help but think that while Bush talks of a new beginning he is just going to give Iraq and other suffering nations more of the same—and that when he speaks of "humility," he really means "betrayal."

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