Baghdad Miscalculates Again

If Iraq knows what is good for it, it will immediately release the two Americans sentenced to eight years in prison for illegally entering the country when they strayed across the Iraq-Kuwait border two weeks ago.

That sentence, imposed by an Iraqi judge in a secretive proceeding with all the jurisprudential credibility of a kangaroo court, is absolutely ludicrous. And the two American citizens--employed by U.S. defense companies doing military maintenance work for Kuwait--should be immediately released and allowed to return home to their families in the United States.

That’s if Iraq knows what is good for it. The problem is, Saddam Hussein has no idea what is good for Iraq, only what’s good for the perpetuation of his corrupt and out-of-touch regime. In addition to sublime indifference to the value of human life, he has consistently exhibited an astonishing ignorance of Western thinking. It was while operating out of that vast pool of ignorance that Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, believing that the West was too soft to do anything about it.

How wrong that judgment was--and how ill-advised and misguided he is today to think that by holding these two Americans, who were apprehended by Iraqi authorities while trying to visit friends in the Kuwait-Iraq demilitarized zone, he has picked up two poker chips in the high-stakes game of persuading the U.N. Security Council to ease the economic sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War. He won’t get very far brandishing those chips: That’s not going to convince anyone that Iraq has learned its lesson and is prepared to behave in the community of nations.

Quite the opposite, in fact. What Baghdad ought now to do to get itself out of this current mess is get the two Americans back to the West. Then Iraq must work with members of the Security Council to develop a plan to allow whatever U.N. inspections are still needed--for biological weapons or anything else.

Indeed, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher recently suggested American flexibility on the issue of easing the sanctions, at least in part, to ameliorate the obvious and widespread suffering of the Iraqi people. But, of course, Hussein isn’t interested in helping his people, only perpetuating his power. That’s why the sentencing of the two Americans isn’t puzzling, it’s all too typical.