My friend Jeanne said, “Those guys at the Pentagon must have watched ‘The Wizard of Oz’ too many times. They think Saddam Hussein is the Wicked Witch of the West and now that he’s gone everyone will kneel down and say, ‘Hail, Dorothy.’” If you follow the analogy, George W. Bush is Dorothy. I wonder what his sister would think of that.
Iraq is not the Land of Oz, by any stretch of the imagination. For one thing, Oz had a good witch in the south and Iraq has – Basra. A week after coalition forces took control of the city, there’s no water, no electricity, no medicine and very little food. The British forces and some of the locals have put together a skeletal police force and Shi’ite imams are calling for order, but life is miserable for the people of southern Iraq. Only a few miles from the Kuwaiti border, there are not enough troops to maintain order and tend to humanitarian needs. Chalk up another one for Donald Rumsfeld’s estimates of necessary troop deployments.
Saddam let his people suffer abuse and neglect because he was a brutal despot. What’s our excuse? At least the oil wells are safe.
In the north, in Kirkut, on top of Iraq’s other big oil field, Kurds are driving away ethnic Arabs, whole villages of them. For the past three decades, the Iraqi Baath Party had a policy of resettlement, mostly aimed at putting Sunni Muslim Arabs on top of oil fields. Now, in scenes reminiscent of the former Yugoslavia or the West Bank, Kurds are taking back land they claim rightfully belongs to them. Once again, the U.S. hasn’t got enough boots on the ground to do much of anything about it. The question now is not whether the Kurds will get away with their land grab, but will they stop there, or will they want the oil, too? And if they get the oil, what will they want next?
Let’s hope it’s not weapons of mass destruction, because there don’t seem to be any extra lying around. It’s still probably too early to categorically declare that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but now that Mr. Bush has declared that Saddam is no longer in control and that Iraqi military cohesiveness has disappeared, it seems safe to say that Saddam didn’t use them.
Why would Saddam not use weapons of mass destruction if he had them at his disposal? Because, deep down, he’s really a decent guy? I don’t think that’s it. Because he thought he could win without them? Apparently, that’s not true. Because he knew he would lose anyway and he thought the Americans would go easier on him if he refrained from using WMDs? If we catch Saddam – and that if looks iffier each passing day – I don’t think anything could convince the Americans to “go easy on him,” except perhaps a generous contribution to the Bush-Cheney Re-Election Fund.
No, if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he obviously didn’t use them because he wanted to send them to Syria. “You there, member of the Republican Guard. We want you to take this truck full of chemical weapons and instead of shooting them at the Americans who are pounding our guys to dust, we want you to drive them through miles of open desert and get them into the hands of the Syrians because – y’know – Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are gonna need an excuse to go over there and kick the Syrians asses when they’re done here. Got that soldier?”
Or maybe the Syrians are developing their own weapons of mass destruction, we’re not sure. The Bush administration is still at that early saber-rattling stage with Syria. They haven’t got the story straight yet. The other day Ari Fleischer said reports of Syrian WMDs are “well-corroborated.” We’re still looking for tangible corroboration on Iraq.
All this war talk takes me back to – last year. We had only half cleaned up Afghanistan before it was all but forgotten and on to Iraq. Now that Iraq and its oil are in the hands of the White House, it’s off to Syria and to hell with the starving women and children.
Come to think of it, maybe George Bush is like Dorothy – once she got what she wanted, she didn’t stick around Oz to do any nation-building, either.
Hail, Dorothy
My friend Jeanne said, “Those guys at the Pentagon must have watched ‘The Wizard of Oz’ too many times. They think Saddam Hussein is the Wicked Witch of the West and now that he’s gone everyone will kneel down and say, ‘Hail, Dorothy.’” If you follow the analogy, George W. Bush is Dorothy. I wonder what his sister would think of that.
Iraq is not the Land of Oz, by any stretch of the imagination. For one thing, Oz had a good witch in the south and Iraq has – Basra. A week after coalition forces took control of the city, there’s no water, no electricity, no medicine and very little food. The British forces and some of the locals have put together a skeletal police force and Shi’ite imams are calling for order, but life is miserable for the people of southern Iraq. Only a few miles from the Kuwaiti border, there are not enough troops to maintain order and tend to humanitarian needs. Chalk up another one for Donald Rumsfeld’s estimates of necessary troop deployments.
Saddam let his people suffer abuse and neglect because he was a brutal despot. What’s our excuse? At least the oil wells are safe.
In the north, in Kirkut, on top of Iraq’s other big oil field, Kurds are driving away ethnic Arabs, whole villages of them. For the past three decades, the Iraqi Baath Party had a policy of resettlement, mostly aimed at putting Sunni Muslim Arabs on top of oil fields. Now, in scenes reminiscent of the former Yugoslavia or the West Bank, Kurds are taking back land they claim rightfully belongs to them. Once again, the U.S. hasn’t got enough boots on the ground to do much of anything about it. The question now is not whether the Kurds will get away with their land grab, but will they stop there, or will they want the oil, too? And if they get the oil, what will they want next?
Let’s hope it’s not weapons of mass destruction, because there don’t seem to be any extra lying around. It’s still probably too early to categorically declare that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but now that Mr. Bush has declared that Saddam is no longer in control and that Iraqi military cohesiveness has disappeared, it seems safe to say that Saddam didn’t use them.
Why would Saddam not use weapons of mass destruction if he had them at his disposal? Because, deep down, he’s really a decent guy? I don’t think that’s it. Because he thought he could win without them? Apparently, that’s not true. Because he knew he would lose anyway and he thought the Americans would go easier on him if he refrained from using WMDs? If we catch Saddam – and that if looks iffier each passing day – I don’t think anything could convince the Americans to “go easy on him,” except perhaps a generous contribution to the Bush-Cheney Re-Election Fund.
No, if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he obviously didn’t use them because he wanted to send them to Syria. “You there, member of the Republican Guard. We want you to take this truck full of chemical weapons and instead of shooting them at the Americans who are pounding our guys to dust, we want you to drive them through miles of open desert and get them into the hands of the Syrians because – y’know – Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are gonna need an excuse to go over there and kick the Syrians asses when they’re done here. Got that soldier?”
Or maybe the Syrians are developing their own weapons of mass destruction, we’re not sure. The Bush administration is still at that early saber-rattling stage with Syria. They haven’t got the story straight yet. The other day Ari Fleischer said reports of Syrian WMDs are “well-corroborated.” We’re still looking for tangible corroboration on Iraq.
All this war talk takes me back to – last year. We had only half cleaned up Afghanistan before it was all but forgotten and on to Iraq. Now that Iraq and its oil are in the hands of the White House, it’s off to Syria and to hell with the starving women and children.
Come to think of it, maybe George Bush is like Dorothy – once she got what she wanted, she didn’t stick around Oz to do any nation-building, either.