IF I WERE AN IRAQI, I'D FEAR A SADDAMITE COMEBACK | 2003-04-12
Iraqis are terrified that Saddam's minions will come back some day.
President Bush Senior urged them to rebel and then abandoned them. Iraqis remember how horrible it was for them then. If Bush Senior hadn't done that, Iraq may have fallen like a house of cards in 1991. If Bush Senior hadn't done that, Iraq might have fallen even quicker this time. Remember how easy it looked at the start?
When he backed out on the Shiites and the Kurds, Bush Senior was just being a good moderate. But many Americans and Europeans were against the war, so he compromised.
Bush Senior fought the war and then pulled out at the halfway point moderates always go for. That's what moderates do. If a few hundred thousand Iraqis ended up in torture chambers that is just the routine the price of moderation.
I am sure that George Bush Senior is still wondering what all the fuss was about.
After all, he ran the Central Intelligence Agency that way.
Nobody but Whitaker will denounce moderates like Bush Senior for what they really are. Nobody but Whitaker will remember how vicious moderates like Bush Senior are.
So moderates and liberals will keep running the government.
Right now everybody is out to get Saddam. But in a few years he or his successors will probably be back and we won't quite want to do anything about it.
When Saddam's minions take over again, they will REMEMBER whom to punish.
As I have pointed out many, many times, Americans don't have a memory. Many a person who has depended on our memory has lived to regret it.
And died for it.