Word: arabized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Saddam Hussein may have figured it right if he was calculating that he could win on the Arab street even while losing in the skies and the sands of the gulf. Each day that the allies throw their best punches at him and leave him standing, Saddam's prestige among ordinary Arabs grows. And so does hatred of the U.S. and its coalition partners -- at least in certain quarters...
...neutrality in the gulf confrontation, though by allied lights he has tilted toward Saddam. In an uncharacteristically sharp-tongued television address last week, the King appeared to abandon his balancing act and instead focused on blasting Baghdad's challengers. The war in the gulf, said Hussein, is "against all Arabs and Muslims, not only against Iraq." Its "real purpose," he went on, is to "destroy Iraq and rearrange" the Arab nation so as to put "its aspirations and resources under direct foreign hegemony." Such a speech, playing up the themes of Muslim unity and foreign designs on the region, sounded...
...later? How many Iraqi civilians might die in the meantime from U.S. bombing? What number of casualties, and over how long a period, can the U.S. stand without a disastrous loss in public support for the war? Conversely, how many more Iraqi civilian deaths, real or alleged, can the Arab world witness without an almost equally devastating accelerated swing to support for Saddam? And can the allied coalition hold together, especially if Soviet support softens -- as Mikhail Gorbachev's weekend statement suggests...
...more by putting military installations among them -- placing antiaircraft guns on top of apartment houses, for example. Thus a dismal equation: more bombing equals more civilian deaths equals an ever greater chance for Saddam to portray the war as an assault by Western colonialists and Zionists against the entire Arab world...
Optimists insist that Arab governments that are members of the alliance -- predominantly Saudi Arabia and Syria -- can maintain control, despite the surge of pro-Saddam feeling. Congressman Aspin concedes the growing strength of that sentiment. But he asserts that "those who might fall out of the coalition, either because of the impact on their public of the damage being inflicted on Iraq by the air campaign or because they want to pursue a diplomatic solution that falls short of our war aims, are not vital to the military campaign." Maybe, but some of the staunchest U.S. allies do not want...