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CounterPunch
December
28, 2002
That Was Then,
This is Now
Saddam Delendus
Est!
by BRUCE JACKSON
In October 1990, when the George H.W. Bush administration
was cranking up public support for the Gulf War, the House Human
Rights Caucus took much-publicized testimony from a 15-year-old
girl who told of having been a volunteer worker in the al-Addan
hospital in Kuwait City. She said she had seen 15 premature babies
dumped out of respirators by Iraqi soldiers. The babies, she
said, were left "on the cold floor to die" and the
incubators were then shipped to Baghdad.
Only the girl's first name was given:
Nayirah. She had family in Kuwait, it was said, and she feared
for their lives and her own if her identity were made public.
She was taking a mighty risk in bringing this dastardly truth
to the American people.
Nayirah's testimony was a major factor
in shifting American public opinion in support of Bush's proposed
Gulf war. It was one thing for George H.W.
Bush to say that Iraq was the evil enemy
but quite something else to have the specificity of a young eyewitness
who saw helpless babies left to die by vile men stealing hospital
hardware. George H.W. Bush quoted and summarized her testimony
in at least five speeches. Seven pro-war senators quoted it on
the Senate floor. Amnesty International cited it in their list
of governmental atrocities.
As it turned out, she did have a last
name. And she had seen nothing.
The young woman's name was Nayirah al-Sabah.
She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United
States. Her story had been manufactured for her by the public
relations firm of Hill & Knowlton, a fact known by the Bush
administration and by the congressmen who took her testimony.
They also knew her identity.
Amnesty International later apologized
for having helped circulate her story. The two congressmen who
sponsored her testimony_Tom Lantos (D., California) and John
Porter (R., Illinois)_did not. Lantos is still in Congress; Porter
decided not to run for reelection in 2002. Hill & Knowlton
is said to have received more than ten million dollars for its
efforts on Kuwait's behalf during that brief period when America
was deciding what sort of action it would take in the Persian
Gulf. The war resolution passed the Senate by a margin of five
votes.
George H.W. Bush is no longer president
of the United States but his son is. Bush II hasn't offered us
his Nayirah al-Sabah.
This Bush never feels the need to offer
evidence. Like his sanctified Attorney General, he smiles and
asserts, confident that his firm belief will suffice for all
of us. For him, belief is evidence. It's government by tent meeting
He simply says Saddam is evil and must be destroyed, and with
minor variations he repeats it like a modern Cato the Elder demanding
in every speech the total destruction of Carthage: Carthago delenda
est! would become Saddam delenda est! if Bush II knew Latin or
knew or cared who Cato the Elder was, which he probably doesn't,
given the way he brags about never reading anything longer than
a single page.
Perhaps he has far less interest in even
the appearance of operating on the basis of evidence, anecdotal
or otherwise, than his father. Saddam delenda est! Perhaps he
really believes that revisiting father's Persian Gulf adventure
will dissolve the hydra-headed threat of international terrorism
which every other world leader of substance insists remains outside
the reach of conventional weapons of war and can only be solved
by dealing with root causes: politics, not bombs and guns. Saddam
delendus est!
More likely, he really does believe that
9/11 is the testimony that justifies all action against all perceived
enemies, foreign or domestic, the fact that trumps all argument
and discussion, the event that supercedes all written documents,
guarantees, rights. Saddam delenda est!
Even George W. Bush, who does not read
books, probably knows that in the spring of 146 BCE the consul
P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus led the Roman force that destroyed
Carthage. That's one of the things you learn in prep schools
and at Yale, or used to.
The Carthaginian survivors were sold
into slavery, the city pillaged and then set on fire and kept
ablaze for ten days. The Romans did not, as legend has it, cover
the land with salt so nothing would grow, but they might as well
have: Carthage was gone forever. So ended the Third Punic War.
Cato had died in 149, the war's first year, so we can only speculate
at his reaction to Scipio's triumph. Scipio's behavior was documented
by his former tutor, the Roman historian Polybius:
At the sight of the city utterly perishing
amidst the flames Scipio burst into tears, and stood long reflecting
on the inevitable change which awaits cities, nations, and dynasties,
one and all, as it does every one of us men. This, he thought,
had befallen Ilium, once a powerful city, and the once mighty
empires of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, and that of Macedonia
lately so splendid. And unintentionally or purposely he quoted--the
words perhaps escaping him unconsciously--"The day shall
be when holy Troy shall fall And Priam, lord of spears, and Priam's
folk."
And on my asking him boldly (for I had
been his tutor) what he meant by these words, he did not name
Rome distinctly, but was evidently fearing for her, from this
sight of the mutability of human affairs. . . . Another still
more remarkable saying of his I may record. . . [When he had
given the order for firing the town] he immediately turned round
and grasped me by the hand and said: "O Polybius, it is
a grand thing, but, I know not how, I feel a terror and dread,
lest some one should one day give the same order about my own
native city." . . . Any observation more practical or sensible
it is not easy to make. For in the midst of supreme success for
one's self and of disaster for the enemy, to take thought of
one's own position and of the possible reverse which may come,
and in a word to keep well in mind in the midst of prosperity
the mutability of Fortune, is the characteristic of a great man,
a man free from weaknesses and worthy to be remembered.
That was the consul Scipio, who knew
his Homer. That was then, and this is now.
Bruce Jackson
is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P.
Capen Professor of American Culture at University of Buffalo.
He edits Buffalo Report.
His email address is bjackson@buffalo.edu.
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