Another Moment of Celebration

Ah, perhaps I skipped this aspect of the moment of celebration earlier. According to this BBC report, a lot of information might come out at a Saddam trial. Information implicating US and European companies which sold weapons materials to the Iraqi dictator.

"On February 9, 1994, [Senate Banking Committee] Chairman Donald W. Riegle, Jr. disclosed on the U.S. Senate floor that the U.S. government actually licensed the export of deadly microorganisms to Iraq. It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program."

The American public does not, and apparently prefers not to, pay attention to the activities that our democratically elected government engages in. An individual such as Saddam Hussein does not arise from a vaccuum. Many, many hands have stirred this pot.
Here's Donald Rumsfeld stirring away in 1983.

Michael Moore explains this in his typical satire soaked way in this piece, "We Finally Got Our Frankenstein."

He lays it out clearly: We supported Saddam because he stood up to Iran at a time when Iran had taken a hard turn towards anti-American religious fundamentalism.

Should the United States allow chemical, nuclear, and biological agents, or their precursors, to be sold to dictators who we know will use them against our enemies, and possibly others, too? Is this positive because it advances America's momentary foreign policy goals, or negative because IT'S EVIL?

I vote evil. George W. Bush certainly seems to share my view, feigning horror at the fact that this dictator gassed his own people. But then I come across this:

Project SHAD, Shipboard Hazard and Defense. During the Vietnam conflict, the Navy dropped poison gas on our ships in readiness tests. They did not get consent from the sailors as they lobbed small amounts of Sarin and VX nerve gas, among others. Not surprisingly, the vets are a little concerned about the long term health effects of such exposure and lobbied to get the government to cough up some information.

We gassed our own people. Three different administrations goverened the United States while we were gassing our own people.

We don't pay attention. We ought to pay attention. We need to pay attention. We make these dictators, we engage in much of the same behavior that they engage in, and then we have to deal with these dictators. If there is one lesson from Saddam (or Noriega, or Pinochet, or the Shah, or Charles Taylor, or Batista) it is that we shouldn't be propping up these dictators. This can only happen when the public pays attention and speaks up. Foreign aid must be deployed intelligently, but that will only happen when the American people are paying attention. We have to watch. We have to listen. We have to change things, or Afghanistan and Iraq will not be the last, but just another in a sequence.

What price stability? Often, it's too high.