Make Saddam Hussein the Last Dictator We Pamper

As America rejoices in the stunning success of President Bush’s diplomatic and military leadership in the Persian Gulf War, we must not forget that there is still a peace to be secured and lessons from the conflict to be applied.

While American military might and skill reversed Saddam Hussein’s aggression against Iraq, it should not be forgotten that U.S. diplomacy before the war was fatally flawed. We coddled Hussein for years, even declaring to him just before he invaded Kuwait that the United States took no position on Iraq’s dispute with its small neighbor. Taken together, American acts of tolerance toward Iraq very likely led the Hitler of the Middle East to conclude that he could get away with naked aggression.

We are rightfully appalled by the Iraqi atrocities uncovered during the liberation of Kuwait. But why were congressional efforts to punish Hussein for his genocidal gassing of thousands of Kurds in his own country opposed by both the Bush and Reagan administrations?

Just as British and French appeasement of Hitler led to an inevitable war against Nazi Germany, so also did our appeasement of Saddam Hussein lead to a conflict that might have been prevented. The lesson of this war, I would submit, is not that we avoided the military mistakes of gradualism in Vietnam but rather that we forgot the older political lesson that pampering dictators encourages aggression. We must never make that mistake again.