IRAQ-U.S.: Saddam Becomes Clinton Campaign’s Best Friend

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Sep 3 1996 (IPS) - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has once again proven to be the best friend of a U.S. president facing elections.

The U.S. raid early Tuesday morning on Iraq was just the latest opportunity for a U.S. leader, in this case President Bill Clinton, to don the mantle of statesman in opposition to Hussein’s ill-timed, attacks.

Taking a break from his re-election campaign, Clinton explained from the White House the importance of the attack, in which U.S. forces fired 27 Cruise missiles at Iraq’s southern air defence.

“Our missiles sent the following message to Saddam Hussein: When you … abuse your own people, you pay a price,” Clinton said.

But the missiles also sent a further message: the incumbent president can look tough by striking out at Hussein, from now until possibly the November elections.

Until the Cruise attack, Clinton’s Republican opponent former Senator Bob Dole had lambasted Clinton for failing to prevent Hussein’s raid this weekend on the northern Iraqi city of Erbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

Dole said on the campaign trail in Utah that the White House had encouraged Hussein to send Iraqi troops into Erbil through its “weak signals and vacillation.”

“We probably should not have to be doing what we’re doing,” Dole said Monday.

But the Cruise attack, and Clinton’s implied threat of further strikes if Iraq does not withdraw fully from the Kurdish zones, helps Clinton appear much tougher. Indeed, Clinton felt no need to respond to his opponent’s jibes, walking out of a White House press conference Tuesday when a reporter asked him to comment on Dole’s charge that he is a weak leader.

Actions, in any case, speak louder than words. By hurting Iraq’s southern air defence — and thereby forestalling any threats against Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, both more politically and economically important to Washington than the Kurdish zone — the White House backed up Clinton’s point that “we have historically taken the lead in matters like this.”

There is one added bonus from the strikes: The Cruise missiles were fired from several U.S. warships, including the USS Laboon — the first U.S. ship used in combat that includes female crew. At a time when Clinton is wooing women voters, the Laboon’s role could be a big public relations gain.

Clinton would not be the first president to enjoy a popularity boost from attacking Iraq. Former President George Bush enjoyed approval by more than 90 percent of U.S. voters in polls immediately following the 1991 Gulf War that repelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait — although he lost to Clinton in 1992, anyway.

Clinton himself enjoyed a surge in the polls at a low point in his administration, in 1994, when the White House used information about an unconfirmed plot to kill Bush as a pretext to shell Iraq. That surge, too, failed to prevent Clinton’s Democratic Party from suffering defeat in 1994 Congressional elections.

The lesson from those precedents is that attacking Saddam Hussein can provide a short-term political boost, but not a decisive one to sway U.S. voters who are more concerned about domestic matters.

But Clinton does not need a boost. He is already 20 points ahead of Dole in recent campaign polls.

Instead, the raids help him in two ways: by distracting U.S. voters from recent White House embarrassments, and by preventing a potentially controversial U.N. oil deal with Iraq.

The U.N. deal, approved last month by the Security Council — including the United States — paved the way to allow Baghdad to sell one billion dollars of oil every 90 days, and to spend the proceeds on humanitarian goods.

Washington grudgingly allowed the deal to pass, but insisted that Hussein could not be trusted to win any permanent lifting of the six-year-old U.N. embargo on Iraq. Hussein’s actions have only underscored that point, with Iraqi troops reportedly killing hundreds of members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and anti-Hussein Iraqis in the past three days.

But the attack has also delayed the implementation of the oil- for-food deal, which had paved the way for the renewal of Iraqi oil sales later this month.

On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali announced he was holding up the deal, citing security concerns about U.N. workers in and around Erbil.

U.N. spokeswoman Sylvana Foa has since confirmed that Iraqi troops have withdrawn from the city, although Hussein’s new allies in the tribalist Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) reportedly hold Erbil with some Iraqi support.

“There are no Iraqi tanks or troops left in Erbil,” Foa said. “Where they went, we don’t know.”

Clinton contended that the Iraqi troops remained a threat, and could be deploying to other cities. U.S. spokesman Mike McCurry indicated that another Kurdish city held by the PUK, Sulaimaniya, may be a potential target.

In any case, Clinton said, the oil-for-food deal will not go forward until Iraq no longer threatens the Kurdish zones. That, in turn, spares him the embarrassing sight of Iraqis celebrating the partial lifting of U.N. sanctions — probably until after the elections, although some U.S. allies, notably Turkey, oppose any delay.

And another embarrassment has also been averted: a sex scandal involving Clinton’s former top campaign aide, Dick Morris, has been neatly pushed off U.S. newspapers. Attention similarly will be drawn away from Whitewater and other White House scandals as long as Hussein dominates the news.

As far as campaign managers go, Saddam Hussein may already have proven more effective in helping Clinton’s re-election than the ousted Morris.