Word: saddamism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fuzzier category of credibility, the U.S. may have lost more than it gained. Those eager to remove Saddam dismissed the U.S. strikes as mere pinpricks. Most countries considered them an unwarranted example of U.S. globo-copping, self-serving unilateral military action dictated by election-year politics. The suffering of ordinary Iraqis after five years of embargo has recast the U.S. as the bully and Iraq as the victim...
...policy of dual containment, intended to isolate both Iraq and the other rogue state of Iran. It requires a costly and highly visible concentration of U.S. military might ($40 billion a year by one estimate) that is no longer so welcome in conservative and often xenophobic Gulf states. Meanwhile, Saddam remains uncowed and free to mount new disruptions, to defy the U.S. wherever he can. While Washington has curbed his appetite for external adventures, it has failed to control his misbehavior at home. He has buffed up his tough-guy image and maintains an unabated fever for revenge. His hold...
...limitations on U.S. policy are the direct legacy of the Gulf War, when the Bush Administration allowed Saddam to survive with his military machine intact, hoping some other force would providentially get rid of the meddlesome beast. None did. Yet if containment doesn't work very well, no one has come up with a better idea. Europeans advise a "critical dialogue" that would somehow persuade the renegade to mend his ways. Republicans laid out a five-point plan that was meant more to raise the bar on the President for decisive action than it was to offer substantial policy prescriptions...
Logic says Saddam will strike out again and again, requiring further and further retaliation from the U.S. "We know he's going to knock on that door from time to time to see if there's anybody out there who still cares," says a senior White House official. "He's got to recognize that we're still here and we ain't going away." For the moment, the U.S. still holds the balance of power in the Gulf and has proved it will use that power alone if necessary. That is making a virtue of necessity; anything closer to stability...
...people's confidence in the economy hit an eight-year high, and for the first time, a majority of voters credited Clinton for his handling of it. The air attacks on Iraq shoved Dole off the front pages and might have reminded voters that he had met with Saddam before the Gulf War and concluded that "there might be a chance to bring this guy around." If Dole's candidacy is to be anything more than a formality, he needs to bring himself around, and quickly...