Original Thinking: Smiling their way to weapons of mass destruction

When a government uses weapons of mass destruction on its own people, and also threatens other states, there should be no dilemma between security and morality.

By BARRY SHAW
Syria Chemical materials and gas masks 370 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Syria Chemical materials and gas masks 370
(photo credit: REUTERS)
When a government uses weapons of mass destruction on its own people, and also threatens other states, there should be no dilemma between security and morality.
We saw that with Hitler. We saw it with Saddam Hussein. They used massively lethal weapons on civilians and the international community went to war against them.
We know of the huge public backlash when WMDs were not found in Iraq, but we also know they were used by the Iraqi dictator against the Kurds. Perhaps they were smuggled across the border into the unsafe keeping of Saddam’s ally, Hafez Assad, and have now been used by his son, Bashar Assad? Some intelligence figures suspect – or know – that this is where the missing Iraqi WMDs ended up.
George Mason University published “Did the US supply Saddam with Biological Weapons in the 1980s?” The report included this damning sentence: “Rumsfeld should have trouble sleeping at night given his role in abetting Saddam’s crimes.” Donald Rumsfeld was US defense secretary when Saddam was America’s bad guy against the Iranians back in the 80s.
Did the US supply the Iraqi dictator with weapons of mass destruction? The Internationalist in May 2003 thought so.
In its article, “The Great Chemical Weapons Hoax,” both Monsanto and Dow Chemicals were implicated regarding Saddam’s receipt of the materials needed to produce the deadly weapons he used against the Kurds.
Many suspect the desperate hunt for WMD in Iraq was based on the certain knowledge that both America and Britain had covertly provided the rampant dictator of Baghdad with the technology and the materials to wage illegal acts of war against civilians.
Is this the reason that Jonathan Pollard continues to rot in isolation? Could he have provided Israel with the information that now keeps him from obtaining a freedom long overdue to prisoners who have shared intelligence with an American ally? Is this the secret that dare not speak its name? In all cases, the free world failed to recognize and name the perpetrators as their enemy until much too late. In all cases, the free world chose to appease and delay action until conditions became infinitely worse.
As Hitler’s troops were massacring Jews and marching into Poland, America said, “It’s not our fight.”
In 1940, after Nazi Germany was already occupying Poland and Czechoslovakia, presidential candidate Roosevelt said, “I will not allow our boys to fight in a foreign war,” and got himself elected with this slogan.
It was only in 1941, after Japan attacked US ships in Pearl Harbor, which Roosevelt described as “an act of infamy,” that American woke up to the moral cause of World War II. By that time Germany had reached Moscow and the French coast.
THE USE of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds in Halabja did nothing to encourage America and its allies to step in on the basis of morality and the serious breach of international law that the use of chemical weapons on civilians represented. Saddam had to march into Kuwait and threaten American interests in Saudi Arabia before president Bush Sr. rushed his forces in to stop him. Morality and humanitarian causes be damned, it seems, when others are being slaughtered with weapons of mass destruction.
One can thus assume the West will only act against Syria, or even Iran, after America itself has been targeted for death and destruction, and not before. Deterrence, it seems, is no longer a factor or a strategic option for the West.
This clearly applies to Iran. We see it with Iran as it races to the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. We are beginning to see the West being hypnotized by the upcoming charm offensive from the new Iranian leadership. Iran now hints at closing its Fordow nuclear plant, and the West thinks Iranian President Hassan Rohani is a person they can do business with. Meanwhile, progress continues to be made in the numerous hidden facilities spread across the huge country that is Iran.
With a strategic policy of appeasement and wishful thinking, the West will fall in love with nice words and empty promises, rather than hold Iran’s feet to the fire.
Viewers of Fox News TV recently saw an Iranian “expert” claim the new Iranian regime wants to be allied with America.
Give us a break; this is but a prelude to the hoax to come.
The leadership in Tehran has an agenda.
It is tinged by the involvement of the West both for, and later against, their one-time enemy Saddam Hussein. They have long memories. They need revenge for the West’s treacherous acts against them. They have an account to settle.
They are also boosted by the perceived impotence of the West against their ally and proxy in Damascus. They have a burning religious yearning to spread their message, but need to dominate the region in which they operate before launching their crusade globally.
Israel is the sacrificial lamb. Israel is to be the target for elimination. A display of omnipotent power that destroys the Jewish state will bring the weaker Sunni states to heel and advance the arrival of the Mahdi.
For them, the stage is almost ready for the great event to come.
Time is of the essence, but the West is about to be seduced. Meanwhile, Iran’s centrifuges keep spinning as Rohani smiles his way to the bomb.The writer is the special consultant on delegitimization issues to the Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College. He is the author of Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.