The news from the Middle East this week has, with the exception
of the wounding of two members of the media, moved away from Iraq.
Attention is now focused on the two growing threats to peace in the
region; the electoral victory of Hamas in Palestine and the nuclear
rantings of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad has said that Israel needs to be wiped off the map
and the boys at Hamas totally concur. Some, including Jimmy Carter
who, if possible, is more annoying in his dotage than he was in the
White House, think their gaining power might be a good thing.
Although the former president
conceded that Hamas are “so-called terrorists,” so far “there
have been no complaints of corruption against [their] elected
officials.” So the man who once lamented committing lust in his
heart now sees a moral equivalence between corruption and the
premeditated, cold-blooded murder of innocent women and
children.
So while Israel and other peaceful Middle East nations are under
the dual threats from Iran and a Hamas-led Palestine, the question
that needs to be asked is, how much more dire would the situation
be had Saddam Hussein remained in power?
While it’s true that Saddam once waged war on Iran — after the
Shah had been deserted by then-President Carter, basically letting
the jihad genie out of the bottle — there existed afterwards a
tenuous peace between the two Arab countries. When the U.S. took
action against Saddam in 2003, Iran condemned the invasion as
“unjustifiable and illegitimate.”
Though its WMD capacity would have been greatly diminished if
Saddam stayed in power, Iraq was still one of the largest military
powers in the Middle East before we invaded. Does anyone believe
that an Iraq still in the hands of Saddam would have stayed neutral
in the nuclear game of chicken currently playing out between
Ahmadinejad and the West?
And although the U.S. has in the past been allied with both Iran
and Iraq, does anyone doubt that Saddam would have now, at least
temporarily sided with Iran against us? Or that Saddam and
Ahmadinejad might have agreed to bury the scimitar, squarely in our
back? After all, “the enemy of the Great Satan is my friend.”
And what of Hamas and Saddam? Iraq has long been a supporter of terrorists while maintaining its
own terror training grounds at Salman Pak, just fifteen miles south
of Baghdad. Let us not forget that he paid $25,000 to the families of those who
dedicate themselves to killing Israelis:
Under the new Iraqi payscale, decided on March 12
[2002] during an Arab conference in Baghdad, the families of gunmen
and others who die fighting the Israelis will still receive
$10,000, while the relatives of suicide bombers will get $25,000.
[T]he Arab Liberation Front visits families in the northern West
Bank and makes the payments. “We go to every family and give them a
check,” he said. “We tell them that this is a gift from President
Saddam and Iraq.”
Some think the ascension of Hamas and the presidency of
Ahmadinejad bode badly for the future of the Middle East, making
U.S. predictions of stability there after Saddam’s fall seem a
misguided daydream or just plain wrong. But this view is
short-sighted at best.
Given the fact that Iran’s election process is skewed to produce
extremists, the rise of a man like Ahmadinejad was inevitable. Says
Human Rights Watch, “Iran’s elections for all
practical purposes are pre-cooked. The Guardian Council appoints a
few candidates, and then Iranians get to choose from this very
restricted list… These elections are neither free nor fair.”
As for Hamas, their victory must be seen largely as a result of
Ariel Sharon’s land for peace policy. Just as the appeasement of
dictators is like red meat to a lion, so too is any show of
perceived weakness to avowed terrorists and their supporters. The
pre-9/11 treatment of terror attacks against the U.S. — by both
Democratic and Republican administrations — as a law enforcement
issue merely emboldened the shadowy murderers.
The truth is, liberty and democracy, albeit limited in some
ways, have come to the Middle East. Victories in Afghanistan and
Iraq, the withdrawal of the Syrians from Lebanon, elections in
Egypt and even those in Palestine represent true change. It is now
up to these nations to either sow the seeds of legitimacy or pay
the consequences; political, economic or otherwise.
Whether or not they do so is at present unknowable. But one
thing is certain: the former head of a huge military power; the man
who saw himself as the new Saladin; the leader who tortured and
gassed thousands of his own citizens; that man will be unavailable
to aid the likes of Ahmadinejad and Hamas. And for that, we should
be grateful.
