Cruise Missiles as Political Therapy

Once again, in the June bombing of Iraq, the U.S. president and military have engaged in state terrorism for political therapy, bombing the capital city of another nation and leaving wreckage, eight dead, and still undetermined numbers of injured, demolishing both official buildings and homes of civilians.

Among the dead is Layla al-Attar, a celebrated artist and director of Baghdad's Center for the Arts, her husband, and a housekeeper. The mainstream media obediently praised the bombing, assuring the American public that it "packed a message." What message was being sent and to whom?

The deed that justified this carnage was an alleged plot to kill President Bush--which the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations insists is a fabrication by the Kuwaitis to cause the United States to retaliate against Iraq. But regardless of whether or not the plot was real, this unilateral strike without consultation of the United Nations is a reversion to a Cold War mentality.

Such action undercuts the effort to honor an international rule of law. In doing that, the United States--acting as judge, jury, and executioner--pre-empts a trial in a case where the accused have not yet been judged guilty. If there is to be any meaning to the "new world order," a starting point must be a concert of nations working together under agreed-upon principles--not unilateral vigilantism.

And imagine our outrage if other countries acted in like manner. If, say, the Royal Air Force bombed Buenos Aires for an alleged plot against Maggie Thatcher, the world would rightly condemn the strike as illegitimate and even criminal behavior.

The reports of the Baghdad bombing in the Chicago Tribune conceded that "the surprise military strike is unlikely to persuade Saddam Hussein to end his provocations," and that "televised images of Iraqi bodies being recovered from the rubble of apartment buildings could further incite Islamic groups bent on terrorizing Americans." Ten thousand Iraqis marched in the funeral for six of the dead, calling for vengeance. If the "message" will do nothing to deter either Saddam Hussein or non-governmental Islamic groups, and may even incite them, what is the message?

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN of The New York Times told us that the message was not only for Iraq, but for Iran and Sudan. We were killing and maiming Iraqis so the Iranians and Sudanese will think twice before bombing buildings in New York. Friedman also contends that the bombing will not deter Middle Eastern governments or extragovernmental groups hostile to Americans, and in fact will probably add fuel to their anger.

Not a single Middle Eastern government supported the attack--except Kuwait--and it was generally condemned as an example of U.S. double standards. The United States is seen as retaliating endlessly against Iraq, but apparently feels little need to intervene to save Bosnian Muslims or Palestinians from unjust violence.

Some have suggested that the message was not really for any of the above, but was directed toward "foreign leaders" among our allies who, it is said, have a "misperception" of President Clinton "growing out of his timid responses to the war in Bosnia." If such foreign leaders are disturbed because we won't risk our troops and Air Force to defend Bosnian Muslims against genocide, bombing the Iraqis will reassure them? Will it not make all the more evident our moral double standards, our preference for the easy kill that costs no American lives?

Finally it appears that the message was primarily aimed at internal American consumption, at Congress and the public, to give President Clinton an image of a decisive military leader quick on the trigger against "bad Arabs."

"If he hadn't done this [ordered the strike], he would have looked like a jellyfish," Rep. Pat Schroeder of Colorado was quoted as saying. The second day after the bombing, the main story in the press was Clinton's improved popularity ratings.

Dare we suggest that it is the military itself that Clinton is especially appeasing? We may be saddled for the next four years with a president with an even worse need to prove his "masculinity" by actions desired by the military to compensate for a brief fling at peace in his misspent youth. This is a military that now admits it continually lied about and exaggerated Cold War dangers to extort huge funds for fancy weapons in the 1980s.

That military is still in power, and it intends to command Bill Clinton, not be commanded by him. It knows just how to keep him in line. It is the same technique used on every recruit in boot camp: continually taunt him as a sissy and thereby extinguish any hesitation about killing whoever is identified as an enemy.

Insecure 8-year-old-boy egos still govern American politics, determining decisions of our foreign policy and raining violence down on the kinds of people whose lives don't count. Today Arabs are number one on the list of those brown and black and Asian people whose lives don't count.

Rosemary Radford Ruether, a Sojourners contributing editor, was Georgia Harkness professor of applied theology at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary in Evanston, Illinois when this article appeared.