THE SELF-RIGHTEOUS, smug Globe & Mail of Toronto blossomed isto print one day in 1982 with a headline blasting the word ‘genocide’ in reference to the slaughter of 600 Palestinian refugees in two Beirut camps — genocide, a word Oxford defines as, “Extermination of a race.”’ Hitler attempted genocide. Lib- erally applied, the word may have been appropriate to the systematic and brutal elimination of one mil- tion Cambodians at the hands of the Pol Pot regime. But Kam- puchea — as the Buddhist Cam- bodia became — was of little in- terest to the West. Why then did 600 deaths at Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila camps reduce the dignified Globe to in- fantile hyperbole? One word: Israel. it was instantly learned that this unspeakable tragedy was perpetrated by Lebanese Christian militiamen. This was quickly forgotten. Instead, all blame was cast on the occupying Israeli gen- eral, Arik Sharon, who had let the villains cross his lines. Through Western eyes there was one acceptable war during the 1980s. The relatively unknown, Moscow-backed Saddam Hussein at-Tikriti attacked the well-known and intensely disliked Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Through American eyes, just as Cambodia was *‘gooks killing gooks,”’ the eight-year Iran-Iraq War was ‘‘A-Rabs killing A- Rabs.’’ This was quite satisfac- tory. One million people perished in each theatre. Only when Israeli fighters made a lightning attack on an Iraqi nu- clear development at Daura, near Baghdad, on June 7, 1982, was the West upset. The United States, France and many other countries condemned the Israelis who pro- tested that Saddam Hussein was Gary Bannerman . OPEN LINES would mutter something about the King of Jordan, but you would find little information. Saddam has been a major player in Arab politics since the late 1960s. When he first gained power, he brutally annihilated all opposition. In the latter stages of the war with Iran, he blew up ail fields and he injected mustard gas onto the battlefield. As many as 50,000 independently-minded lraqi Kurds were killed as a convenient byproduct of war. Western observers have known him to be the craftiest of all Arab leaders, with the possible excep- tion being Hafez al-Assad of Syria. No knowledgeable authority describes him as a ‘‘nut.’’ Hitler analogies reside with the ama- teurs. Saddam’s battlefield ruthlessness and lightning unor- thadox tactics, are matched by a calculated diplomatic shrewdness. eve I stood on a hilltop on the Golan Heights in the middle of a 1973 war. In the distance, toward Damascus, Syrian and Israeli tanks scrambled across a vast plain, jousting with one another. Periodically, a metal machine One thing’s certain... Mr. Hussein is no nut Yet later, driving by a number of burned out and abandoned Syrian tanks, the overwhelming” smell of decaying flesh betrayed the iragic reality. Later, in a Druze village on the southern slope of Mount Hermon, we scrambled as rocket blasts and a jet dogfight occurred just overhead. Again, it was machines not people. The scene across the Gaza Stn and at the Svez Canal was even more bizarre. There remains in my mind only the vision of a sea of sand and shadowy figuis moving around in it. Truck and tank marks would be blown from the sand within moments of being made. This is my vision of what exists today in Kuwait. We tend to be immune from the horror that periodically afflicts much of mankind. It’s impossible to imagine tanks and machine guns at our favorite shopping centre, or cars exploding from terrorists’ bombs. We view the nearby wuods and mountains as friendly escapes. In many places, they represent danger zones: a base for violence and destruction. The protected womb in which we live clouds our judgment about international affairs. If tyrants such as Saddam Hussein are con- fronted only by civilized negotia- tion after invading and violating sovereign nations, acute danger will soon en ‘elop the world. eee A few thoughts from the library: Sun Tzu Wu (500 BC): ‘*...t0 fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme ex- cellence. Supreme excellence con- sists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”’ William F. Halsey Jr.: “Hit hard, hit fast, hit often.’’ Sulius Nyerere: “Smail nations are like in- decently dressed women. They tempt the evil-minded.”’ building a bomb. would go up in smoke. It was im- Aesop: Until last August, if you men- possible to visualize human activi- ““Any excuse will serve a tioned the name Hussein anywhere __ ty within this mechanized abstrac- tyraat.”’ in North America, a few people WF tion. SEP, Fe BS cial 229 Lonsdale North Vancouver 687-7223 Sunday. 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