Word: saddamism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Saddam's primary audience was elsewhere. His chest-pounding provocations were a classic barbarians-at-the-gate strategy, designed to deflect attention from the dismal economic situation at home, heightened by U.N. sanctions, that has left Iraqis hunting daily for food. His police apparatus has reasserted its grip since the war, so citizens harbor few doubts that Saddam is still in charge. But he may have cause to worry about his 400,000-man armed forces. Kurds and other opponents have spread stories of anti-Saddam moles within the armed forces, particularly those stationed far from Baghdad. "I think...
...coalition, weaken resolve at the U.N. and transform the U.S. into the bully. "He may sense that the unity of the sanctions regime is starting to fray," says a State Department official. "The Russians have lots of things at home on their minds, and the Europeans have the Balkans." Saddam wants to ease the constraints imposed on his sovereignty and remove the conflict from the U.N. context: within those corridors, Iraq is putting itself forward as accommodating. "In our culture, once somebody comes to you with military threats, you don't respond. If someone comes to us in a nice...
...Saddam is particularly interested in exploiting Arab perceptions that the West applies an anti-Muslim double standard. He massages Arab resentment that the same allied forces that retaliate so quickly against Iraq remain indifferent to the Serbian slaughter of Bosnia's Muslims and turn a blind eye to Israel's expulsion of more than 400 Palestinians. Said the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet: "How could the U.S. start this operation against the background of public opinion horrified by events in Bosnia? With 10,000 women raped and people jammed into internment camps in Bosnia, this bombing is inexplicable...
...Iraq's close neighbors, particularly the Kuwaitis, there are more specific worries. Saddam failed to meet a U.N. deadline to remove six police posts that remain on Kuwaiti soil. The diplomatic community is not very hopeful that Bush's air strike will have much influence on the situation. "I don't think it will cause Saddam much pain," noted a Western envoy in Kuwait. "And I doubt it will deter him. He has a long history of miscalculations." Adds a Kuwaiti businessman: "We are behind the U.S. action, but we believe that Saddam will continue to defy...
From the Western vantage point, the raid was inevitable, as it became the only way to make Saddam abide by U.N. strictures. Saddam's movement of missiles into both the southern and northern no-fly zones late last year was provocation enough. But he virtually invited retaliation when he banned flights by U.N. inspectors and staged cross-border salvage raids into Kuwait last week on four successive days...