How’s This for a Little Gratitude?

Does a regime that murders thousands of its own citizens and routinely tortures even children as an instrument of political control, that bullies its immediate neighbors and threatens to rain chemical weapons on more distant ones, that misses no occasion to bad-mouth the United States or flaunt its contempt for international obligations--does such a regime have any claim to American help?

The description refers to Saddam Hussein’s despotism in Iraq. The Bush Administration’s answer to the question remains a reluctant yes, based mostly on a hope that Washington can moderate Hussein’s nastiness by continuing to provide the kind of help it usually reserves for its friends. Congress, though, is fed up with Iraq’s undeviatingly odious and outlaw behavior, and now indicates it won’t take any more. The Senate and the House have both overwhelmingly voted to impose sanctions on the bloody-handed Iraqi regime. It’s the right thing to do, and not a moment too soon.

So far this year the United States has given Iraq $500 million in Commodity Credit Corp. loan guarantees to buy American rice, sugar and wheat, and $200 million in Export-Import Bank aid. Iraq has shown its appreciation by demanding the withdrawal of all U.S. naval forces from the international waters of the Persian Gulf, by accusing Washington of plotting with Kuwait to ruin the Iraqi economy, by threatening to obliterate half of Israel and by leading the fight in OPEC for higher oil prices. All this in only in the first seven months of 1990! No doubt there’s more to come.

It’s quite possible, for example, that the return to Baghdad of some of the most radical Palestinian groups signals Hussein’s renewed interest in supporting international terrorism. Iraq spent a lot of years on the State Department’s list of terrorism-sponsoring countries, a designation that denied it any U.S. aid. During its war with Iran in the 1980s, when Iraq desperately needed Western help, it professed to have reformed, and was removed from the list. Now, along with trying to bluster his way to a position of acknowledged leadership in the Arab world, Hussein may be planning to start doing business again at the same old terrorist stand.

Commodity credits and Ex-Im Bank loans aren’t going to transform Hussein from an aggressive local despot into a model world citizen. Neither will the proposed cuts in that help reform him. But war-battered Iraq is eager for material aid. Given that, a strong U.S. reaction that is echoed by other major industrial nations could be effective in forcing Hussein to curb his more aggressive instincts. By any standard, the man is an international menace, a threat to the stability of a region that is the vital source of most of the world’s oil reserves. Better to try to rein him in now than later.