Iraq Moves on Kuwait Border

* So Saddam Hussein has reared his ugly head again! Just as George Bush demonized this comic book villain four years ago, Bill Clinton is now taking his turn--just in time for the November election.

The United States had no business getting into the Iraq/Kuwait conflict in 1990. I was part of the 10% who opposed the Gulf War. I am proud that my wife and I spent every weekend at the Federal Building in Westwood protesting this unjust, unnecessary war. The U.S. succeeded in killing 100,000 Iraqis, unfortunate people who didn’t choose Saddam as their leader and had no way to get rid of him. This was clearly wrong.

Since the Gulf War, the supposed “alternative”--as if the situation is the U.S.’ to fix--has been economic sanctions. This policy hurts the people of Iraq. Our government can take responsibility for Iraqi children who face malnutrition, inadequate medical care, and shortages because goods can’t get into the country. The embargo should end immediately.

I urge President Clinton to drop the embargo against the Iraqi people and to withdraw all U.S. troops from the Middle East. The U.S. is not the world’s policeman.

TED BROWN

Pasadena

* Flashback: George Bush commits troops to Desert Storm; assures American people that oil is not the issue but rather the restoration of the legitimate government of Kuwait in the name of justice.

Present: Bill Clinton commits troops to the restoration of the legitimate government of Haiti; is pilloried for jeopardizing American troops in the absence of a threat to national security interests.

Flash forward: Demands are made on the Clinton Administration to commit troops to Kuwait to protect the oil reserves in the name of our national security interests.

ROBERT B. SILVER

Los Angeles

* Regarding your editorial, “Clinton Said ‘No,’ and Saddam Blinked,” Oct. 11:

I think not. Clinton is still dealing with a military deck that Ronald Reagan provided, you know, in those greedy ‘80s, when he and his wife were trying to become millionaires in one-party Arkansas.

The military was made strong again, first rate, in spite of the protests of the liberal Democrats in Congress.

Don’t you think it strange that the liberals who were so against the Gulf War, when George Bush was President, are now strangely silent, as Clinton tries to increase his poll numbers. Haiti. A great foreign policy victory? No. Just danger for American kids.

RICHARD L. SWIFT

Covina

* Tell me, why were the Republicans not screaming for a “consent of Congress” before Clinton sent 36,000 troops to oil-rich Kuwait, where the danger to the men and women of our military is far more real than it ever was in Haiti? Can anyone doubt that the trillionaire Emir of Kuwait thinks of Uncle Sam as “Uncle Sucker”?

BILL LIVINGSTONE

Santa Barbara

* Ross Perot’s paranoid warning that President Clinton’s strong response to Iraq’s troop buildup along the Kuwait border is nothing but a ploy to gain strength in the upcoming election (Oct. 10) proves what many have suspected all along--that Perot is not only inane, he is insane. I hate to think what would have happened to the world if Perot had been President in 1940.

JACK ALLEN

Pacific Palisades

* Was Saddam Hussein really “naive” to think that he could shake off sanctions by dispatching his troops to the border? The last six months have been witness to a parade of renegade leaders who, strangled by global sanctions, have touched off international incidents to gain a bargaining chip. And whether it was Kim Il Sung, Fidel Castro or Raoul Cedras, the U.S. has gladly gone to the negotiating table with them.

Perhaps Saddam was logically expecting Jimmy Carter to ride to his rescue.

BYRWEC ELLISON

Lakewood

* The second coming of Saddam Hussein is the lesson that we seem unwilling to learn. Nearly all wars are caused by the ambitious self-love of one man. Saddam’s single voice now summons us again to war as he luxuriates in fame.

No longer can we hope that diplomacy, negotiations and compromise with another nation will substitute for individual redress. Instead, a world court must charge this man with crimes against humanity; arrest, convict and banish, not kill, but keep as living evidence of our determination to end war, the vice of the emperors.

Orderly progress is man’s destiny. It will come when we establish a process that anticipates and suppresses these individual scourges of our future.

SID O’NEIL

Alamo, Calif.