8-17-02, Voice in the Crowd
Voice in the Crowd
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
Let’s Invade Grenada—Again
Return with us now to those thrilling days of
yesteryear, to the thundering combat boot beats of Clinton Eastwood wading onto
the shore of Grenada. Danger lurks
behind every tree, every school corridor. The
mission is just: save the American students from the danger of spicy Hispanic
food.
War in the movies with Clint Eastwood is one thing.
They shoot blanks and it’s make believe.
Real war is different. The
bullets are real. They hurt, maim
and kill.
The invasion of Grenada hardly ranks high in military
annals. Certainly they don’t
approach the magnitude of World War II, Korea or Vietnam. At least, it was relatively calm. They wasn’t a warehouse full of body bags.
It even had more dignity than the fumbled Somalia invasion with cameras
waiting on the beach with floodlights to greet the American troops.
Somehow American presidents seem to bask in the spotlight of a war. Maybe the image of Teddy Roosevelt riding up San Juan Hill and into the White House is forever ingrained in the political system.
The elder President Bush ended the Gulf War with a
defeat of the Iraq military but without destroying the Saddam Hussein
dictatorship. Critics forget that
destruction of the country’s government would have put America in the position
of occupying the country, supporting it with tax dollars and, most importantly,
of defending Iraq against its enemy Iran.
Look at Germany and Japan. They lost the war but won the peace. With American aide, they became dominant players in the world
market, sometime surpassing America. Look
at Afghanistan. We went in and
clobbered a military that still uses horses for battle.
Now we have to occupy and support the country for years.
And bin Laden is still on the loose.
It seems all governments understand is smart bombs and
technology to make war. If people
put as much brainpower into building peace as they do in plotting war, there
would be less bloodshed.
Israel and Palestine are a perfect example.
Each side feels it is just and their fighters are heroes, often martyrs.
A Palestinian suicide bomber blows up a bus in Tel Aviv.
Civilians die. An Israeli gunship blasts a car carrying a suspected
terrorist. His civilian family is
in the car. They die too.
With each attack and counter attack, the flames of hatred burn brighter.
No amount of military technology can extinguish it.
And the entire Arab world links America with Israel.
When there was a chance for a dialogue, this country stayed aloof.
Now the only course everyone is following is more death and destruction.
While we are bogged down in Afghanistan and walking the
fence between Israel and Palestine, it doesn’t make too much sense to open up
another front with Iraq on the assumption they have weapons of mass destruction.
Of course, China has them too, but no one is suggesting an invasion of
China.
None of the Arabian nations who joined America in the
Gulf War are with us now. Saddam’s
invasion of Kuwait was clear provocation. That’s
missing now. An attack on Iraq
could disrupt the entire balance in the Middle East.
All Arabians would view us as the aggressor.
Friendly governments would have to turn against us or risk revolution
from their own people. The entire
Arabian and Islamic world would be against this country.
If Iraq does have weapons of mass destruction and Saddam
sees the end is near, he would loose everything in his arsenal in a death
rattle. Just as Hitler had nothing
left but death, the Iraqi leader would see that and use everything.
It would be just what Saddam and bin Laden wanted.
They don’t care anything about death, someone else’s or even their
own. They want a holy war against
the Infidels—anyone who doesn’t believe as they do.
If we won, we would lose. There
aren’t enough smart bombs in the world to stop one smart fanatic with a
homemade explosive device.
A recent arrest in New Mexico brought in a suspect with
2,300 missiles. Smart bombs
didn’t find them. Smart people
did. The world is smaller now.
Escalation of violence will just bring out more kooks.
No one wants to take the initiative from the military
and put it in the hands of diplomats. It’s
more exciting to talk war than peace.
But until someone has the common sense to talk to the
enemy, let’s go back to Grenada again. The
weather is nicer, and it’s a whole lot safer.
Maybe there is a student there with a tummy ache needing to be rescued.
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