The Doctrine Of Change Of Course

All people who have any concern for human rights, justice and integrity should be overjoyed by the captureof Saddam Hussein, and should be awaiting a fair trial for him by an international tribunal.

An indictment of Saddam's atrocities would include not only his slaughter and gassing of Kurds in 1988 butalso, rather crucially, his massacre of the Shiite rebels who might have overthrown him in 1991.

At the time, Washington and its allies held the "strikingly unanimous view (that) whatever the sins ofthe Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country's stability than did thosewho have suffered his repression," reported Alan Cowell in the New York Times.

Last December, Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, released a dossier of Saddam's crimes drawn almostentirely from the period of firm U.S.-British support of Saddam.

With the usual display of moral integrity, Straw's report and Washington's reaction overlooked thatsupport.

Such practices reflect a trap deeply rooted in the intellectual culture generally - a trap sometimes calledthe doctrine of change of course, invoked in the United States every two or three years. The content of thedoctrine is: "Yes, in the past we did some wrong things because of innocence or inadvertence. But nowthat's all over, so let's not waste any more time on this boring, stale stuff."

The doctrine is dishonest and cowardly, but it does have advantages: It protects us from the danger ofunderstanding what is happening before our eyes.

For example, the Bush administration's original reason for going to war in Iraq was to save the world froma tyrant developing weapons of mass destruction and cultivating links to terror. Nobody believes that now, noteven Bush's speech writers.

The new reason is that we invaded Iraq to establish a democracy there and, in fact, to democratize thewhole Middle East.

Sometimes, the repetition of this democracy-building posture reaches the level of rapturous acclaim.

Last month, for example, David Ignatius, the Washington Post commentator, described the invasion of Iraq as"the most idealistic war in modern times" - fought solely to bring democracy to Iraq and the region.

Ignatius was particularly impressed with Paul Wolfowitz, "the Bush administration's idealist inchief," whom he described as a genuine intellectual who "bleeds for (the Arab world's) oppressionand dreams of liberating it."

Maybe that helps explain Wolfowitz's career - like his strong support for Suharto in Indonesia, one of thelast century's worst mass murderers and aggressors, when Wolfowitz was ambassador to that country under RonaldReagan.

As the State Department official responsible for Asian affairs under Reagan, Wolfowitz oversaw support forthe murderous dictators Chun of South Korea and Marcos of the Philippines.

All this is irrelevant because of the convenient doctrine of change of course.

So, yes, Wolfowitz's heart bleeds for the victims of oppression - and if the record shows the opposite,it's just that boring old stuff that we want to forget about.

One might recall another recent illustration of Wolfowitz's love of democracy. The Turkish parliament,heeding its population's near-unanimous opposition to war in Iraq, refused to let U.S. forces deploy fullyfrom Turkey. This caused absolute fury in Washington.

Wolfowitz denounced the Turkish military for failing to intervene to overturn the decision. Turkey waslistening to its people, not taking orders from Crawford, Texas, or Washington, D.C.

The most recent chapter is Wolfowitz's "Determination and Findings" on bidding for lavishreconstruction contracts in Iraq. Excluded are countries where the government dared to take the same positionas the vast majority of the population.

Wolfowitz's alleged grounds are "security interests," which are non-existent, though the visceralhatred of democracy is hard to miss - along with the fact that Halliburton and Bechtel corporations will befree to "compete" with the vibrant democracy of Uzbekistan and the Solomon Islands, but not withleading industrial societies.

What's revealing and important to the future is that Washington's display of contempt for democracy wentside by side with a chorus of adulation about its yearning for democracy.

To be able to carry that off is an impressive achievement, hard to mimic even in a totalitarian state.

Iraqis have some insight into this process of conquerors and conquered.

The British created Iraq for their own interests. When they ran that part of the world, they discussed howto set up what they called Arab facades - weak, pliable governments, parliamentary if possible, so long as theBritish effectively ruled.

Who would expect that the United States would ever permit an independent Iraqi government to exist?Especially now that Washington has reserved the right to set up permanent military bases there, in the heartof the world's greatest oil-producing region, and has imposed an economic regime that no sovereign countrywould accept, putting the country's fate in the hands of Western corporations.

Throughout history, even the harshest and most shameful measures are regularly accompanied by professionsof noble intent - and rhetoric about bestowing freedom and independence.

An honest look would only generalize Thomas Jefferson's observation on the world situation of his day:"We believe no more in Bonaparte's fighting merely for the liberties of the seas than in Great Britain'sfighting for the liberties of mankind. The object is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth andthe resources of other nations."