By PATRICK COCKBURN
A more recent example of a country\\\'s leaders blindly shooting themselves in the foot was the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. I had been spending a lot of time in Iraq and was in Jordan when it happened. I had seen repeated Israeli incursions into Lebanon fail bloodily in the years since 1978. I could not believe the Israeli military were once again going to try their old discredited tactic of mass bombardment and limited ground assault in a bid to intimidate the world\\\'s toughest guerrillas.
Israelis tend to be more cynical about the abilities of their own military commanders than the rest of the world and, looking at the Israeli chief of staff on television, I thought of the old Israeli saying: \\\"He was so stupid that even the other generals noticed.\\\" Even so, I could not rid myself of the idea that the Israelis must have something new up their sleeve. I was quite wrong and the war was a humiliating failure for Israel.
In Saddam\\\'s case it would be wrong to think of him as a stupid, though he had an exaggerated idea of his own abilities and place in history. He was a cunning, ruthless man who knew everything about Iraqi politics and how to manipulate or eliminate his rivals. Outside Iraq he was far less sure-footed, having spent little time abroad, and disastrously overplayed his hand by invading Iran in 1980 and Kuwait 10 years later. He could be advised but only up to a point. A Soviet diplomat who knew him well told me: \\\"The only safe position if you are one of the other Iraqi leaders is to be 10 per cent tougher than the boss.\\\" In his discussion with April Glaspie, he comes across as hyper-sensitive to foreign media criticism and prone to see actions contrary to his interests as part of a giant conspiracy against him.
Given that the famous cable reveals nothing very damaging to the US or April Glaspie, why did the State Department keep her and her messages to Washington under wraps for so long? This inevitably generated a widespread belief that such secrecy must mean that the US government had something to hide. The real explanation was probably that, once Saddam and Iraq were being demonized after the invasion of Kuwait, the State Department thought that the publication of a polite and non-committal conversation between the US ambassador in Baghdad and Saddam would look like weak-kneed encouragement to the aggressor.
(Cpurtesy:Counterpunch)
A more recent example of a country\\\'s leaders blindly shooting themselves in the foot was the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. I had been spending a lot of time in Iraq and was in Jordan when it happened. I had seen repeated Israeli incursions into Lebanon fail bloodily in the years since 1978. I could not believe the Israeli military were once again going to try their old discredited tactic of mass bombardment and limited ground assault in a bid to intimidate the world\\\'s toughest guerrillas.
Israelis tend to be more cynical about the abilities of their own military commanders than the rest of the world and, looking at the Israeli chief of staff on television, I thought of the old Israeli saying: \\\"He was so stupid that even the other generals noticed.\\\" Even so, I could not rid myself of the idea that the Israelis must have something new up their sleeve. I was quite wrong and the war was a humiliating failure for Israel.
In Saddam\\\'s case it would be wrong to think of him as a stupid, though he had an exaggerated idea of his own abilities and place in history. He was a cunning, ruthless man who knew everything about Iraqi politics and how to manipulate or eliminate his rivals. Outside Iraq he was far less sure-footed, having spent little time abroad, and disastrously overplayed his hand by invading Iran in 1980 and Kuwait 10 years later. He could be advised but only up to a point. A Soviet diplomat who knew him well told me: \\\"The only safe position if you are one of the other Iraqi leaders is to be 10 per cent tougher than the boss.\\\" In his discussion with April Glaspie, he comes across as hyper-sensitive to foreign media criticism and prone to see actions contrary to his interests as part of a giant conspiracy against him.
Given that the famous cable reveals nothing very damaging to the US or April Glaspie, why did the State Department keep her and her messages to Washington under wraps for so long? This inevitably generated a widespread belief that such secrecy must mean that the US government had something to hide. The real explanation was probably that, once Saddam and Iraq were being demonized after the invasion of Kuwait, the State Department thought that the publication of a polite and non-committal conversation between the US ambassador in Baghdad and Saddam would look like weak-kneed encouragement to the aggressor.
(Cpurtesy:Counterpunch)
