Saddam Must Leave: Out of Free Will or Under Pressure :: Charter'97 :: News

The French newspaper “Le Monde” published in its March 4 issue an article under heading “Saddam Must Leave: Out of Free Will or Under Pressure”.

The article mentions this, in particular: In 1991 we called on the democratic countries to stop by all means possible, including the military force, the massive annihilation and ethnical cleansings, conducted by Slobodan Milosevic in Croatia. At that time the headquarters, experts and governments of different countries, as well as the majority of political leaders, were categorically opposed to war.

8 years later, after 200thsd human casualties, NATO’s intervention helped return home over a million of Kosovo civilians. At that period pacifists used to warn us that the US-led campaign against Serbia could shed innocent blood and engulf the whole world in the flames of war. Today, though, Milosevic is held responsible for his crimes against humanity before the Hague tribunal.

Saddam Hussein is way more brutal than Milosevic and more dangerous because of that. Participants of the demonstration in support of peace, held on February 15 in Paris, showed George Bush as a devil, calling him a “New Satan”, “Brand-new Hitler” and “New Ben Laden”. However, they somehow kept in oblivion the host of Baghdad, that great devotee of Stalin, who has been tormenting his own nation for then past three decades.

He’s playing with fire in the most explosive places of all – Middle East. He challenges the international community and stubbornly refuses to disarm voluntarily. But it is high time he descended the stage. The UN Security Council must force him to do so by peaceful means, if possible, and, should he disobey the order, by the application of armed force.

The more time it takes the UN to pass the final decision, the higher price will the Iraqi populace pay for that with the UN authorities getting undermined in the eyes of people. How can one forget about the genocide of Tutsi tribe in Rwanda in 1994, committed before the very eyes of the passive international community. Or remember the victims of the Chechen war, though the French-German “moral” alliance displays Russia as a peace-keeper.

Saddam Hussein is in no wise the only dictator, but we can at least weaken him by upholding the US-British alliance, which concentrates their forces at the Iraqi borders. It would be ridiculous to bring down the whole issue to mere French-American conflict.