Playing the "Liberation" card
Reader comment on item: After Saddam? Remaking the Mideast

Submitted by Dr. Ron Polland (United States), Feb 17, 2003 at 09:53

Before we discuss how to split up the pot that everyone expects us to win, we have remember that the game is still in play.

Bush is a great leader, but a lousy poker player. He's shown his hand way too early.

I'm afraid that the Bush Administration is down to its last card. They've played the "disarmament card" which the French and Germans trumped. They've played the "Al-Qaeda card" which many countries believe is a bluff. Seems to me they only have one card left: the "liberation card."

Bush has to make the case to the world -- as Tony Blair has done -- that millions of Iraqis have suffered the worst human rights abuses under the Saddam regime and the UN has done nothing to stop him. The world turned a deaf ear --especially the Muslim world -- to the cries of Iraqi Muslims who have been brutally tortured, Muslim men and children summarily killed, Muslim women raped by the thousands, thousands more Muslims imprisoned for no reason, and forced relocations of whole Muslim populations. If Saddam is not removed now, millions more will suffer as he seeks to eliminate all opposition groups around him, as well as seeking to "pay back" countries that voted for his ouster.

Obviously, except for the nations who are with us, the rest of the world don't really care what happens to Iraqi Muslims at the hands of a monster. All they care about is blaming Israel and the United States for their own shortcomings.

I think it's time for our government to shame the world for turning their backs on human suffering. It's time to shame the world for using this crisis to advance their own selfish agendas. It's time to tell the world that this is not about oil, but about blood -- the blood of millions of Muslims that Saddam has on his hands.

What we will find when we go into Iraq will parallel what Allied troops found when they liberated the Nazi concentration camps. We have a great opportunity to show the world just how duplicitous are the Arab states who stood with Saddam and against the "Coalition of the willing."

How can the Arabs, on one hand, presume to care so much about the so-called "suffering" of their "Palestinian brothers" and care so little about the genuinely horrific treatment of millions of Muslims by a secular, sadistic Saddam (who also supported Milosovic's ethnic cleansing of Muslims)?

The answer is simple: all they really care about is themselves and ridding the Middle East of Jews. Their concern for Palestinians -- who fully supported Saddam in Gulf War I and helped him to kill and loot Kuwaitis -- is as phony as a $3 bill.

Bringing democracy to the Middle East is not the hard part -- our toughest job will be to undo the irrational and institutional hatred of Jews throughout the Arab world.

Yet, how does one put an end to the lies, distortions, and blood libels that Arabs have cultivated against Jews for the past 1,300 years?

I wish I knew.

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