It has been nine years since a coalition of nations, led by the United States and Britain, laid low an Iraqi army that had invaded Kuwait. It has been at least eight years since sanctions were placed on Iraq because of Saddam Hussein’s intransigence concerning the fulfillment of the terms of an armistice. Hussein has repeatedly prevented authorities from doing their jobs. Yet, there is no rush to resume the war or at least tighten Hussein’s leash. No, we can’t do that — he’s got oil. And France, Russia and other coalition members see profit in lifting the sanctions and gaining oil concessions from the Hussein regime.
The last few months have seen increasing pressure to lift the sanctions from nations that stand to benefit from trade with Iraq. In fact, France and Russia feel so strongly about lifting the embargo that they have been flying supplies to Iraq without United Nations approval. Even in the United States, think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute are encouraging us to appease Hussein a little, so that he’ll give a little back.
We would be foolish to lift the sanctions. To do so may invite war. World leaders of Hussein’s temperament don’t play games of compromise. Do you really think that by letting him back into the world community and giving him what he wants, he’ll behave? Well then, let’s do the time warp again.
In September of 1938, leaders of arguably the four most powerful nations in Europe met in Munich, Germany, to discuss tensions regarding the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia. Neville Chamberlain, then the British Prime Minister, and his French opposite number, Edouard Daladier, both of whom were anxious to avoid a general European war, decided to give Hitler the region. They fervently hoped that the Sudetenland would be Hitler’s last territorial demand. Chamberlain crowed that the world had achieved “peace in our time.”
Only six months later, German troops marched into Prague, totally dismembering Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain’s peace would last less than one year. On September 1, 1939, German armies invaded Poland. Had Britain and France acted to quash Germany’s ambitions in 1935 when Hitler broke the Versailles Treaty, or in 1937 with the annexation of Austria, or even as late as 1938, history would have been quite different.
Ah, what could have been. But by giving Hitler a little in hopes of avoiding battle, what we got was a worse conflict. And appeasement forever entered the lexicon as a code word for kowtowing to a dictator’s demands for fear of war or for hope of profits.
And, again, we’re back to appeasement. Hussein is a new Hitler, writ somewhat smaller. After the Gulf War, Iraq signed an armistice which forced it to give up its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capabilities. Hussein refused access to United Nations inspectors sent to check on Iraq’s weaponry and shuffled the stockpiles around the country. This was a blatant violation of the armistice agreement, and the U.N. reacted by imposing economic sanctions on the country.
I know there are those of you who would argue, and rightfully so, that Hussein is being harmed very little by the embargo, and that it is the citizenry who must take the brunt of the hardship. However, there is little else that we can do other than form another coalition and invade Iraq to force Hussein to destroy his weapons.
The thing that we cannot do, as cruel as it is to say, is lift the sanctions. We can bring in medical supplies for the people, but we can’t allow another dinar to enter Hussein’s coffers until he decides to follow the agreement he signed. Lifting the sanctions, removing the U.N. inspectors and hoping Hussein will behave is the same kind of bury-your-head-in-the-sand thinking Chamberlain displayed.
When dealing with tyrants, “peace in our time” isn’t. The world should have learned that after Hitler.