Garth George: Time to stop arguing and just knock Saddam off

Saddam Hussein is the sort of man you rather wish had never survived being born, the sort of man - like Hitler and Stalin - whom this world could well have done without, an utterly evil psychopath who has been allowed to enslave a nation.

Another is that mentally retarded little nasty who rules in comfort and plenty over North Korea while millions of his people starve to death.

And Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and for that matter any number of other tinpot African dictators, simply reveal that the "civilising" influence of colonisation was superficial to say the least.

But there's no need to worry about dear old Fidel Castro in Cuba, who has been a thorn in the United States' side for long enough and who has helped to keep the Americans honest by being a perceived threat right in their own backyard.

Putting him in the so-called "axis of evil" was a bit petty of the Yanks, I thought. He is a problem that will solve itself sooner or later. Although he gives the impression he wants to, he can't live forever and when he goes his doctrine will go with him quicker than the Berlin Wall came down. Meanwhile, alongside those others he's a gentleman and a scholar.

It makes you think, though, when you look at the world in the 21st century and see how so much of it is still stuck in the 16th and how little ultimate effect the colonisation of Africa and the Middle East by British, French, Dutch, Belgians, Portuguese and others really had.

And it's going to get worse. The vituperation spewing from the pulpits of Islam throughout the Middle East and much of Africa is designed to stir up even more hatred in Muslims for Jews and Christians.

Almost daily on television stations throughout those regions mullahs or imams or ayatollahs scream prayers calling on Allah to kill every Jew and every Christian until there are none left on the Earth.

All we can hope is that most Muslims treat those Islamic fundamentalists with the same sort of contempt with which most Christians treat their fundamentalist and mercenary television preachers.

It's all a bit sad, really. The first years of my life were lived while the forces of freedom put down Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo and co; then for most of the rest of it I lived in the chill of the Cold War with communism; now the world is riven by the heating up war between Islam and the rest.

I'm not surprised, though. The Bible tells me that the heart of man is evil continually and is desperately sick. Heaven knows I've seen plenty of evidence of that in my lifetime and am still seeing it in full force and effect today.

So much, then, for those new agers and politically correct crackpots who try to tell us that man is inherently good. It seems as if they are blind to what's going on in their neighbourhoods, their communities, their nations, let alone the world.

But to get back to Saddam. There is no doubt that he should be done away with and I find it puzzling that with all the sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment and weaponry available today to, for instance, the United States, Britain and Israel, the Iraqi dictator hasn't been topped already.

What with satellites that can read a car number plate from way out in space and smart bombs and missiles accurate to within centimetres, you would think this demonic thug would have been blasted into little pieces long ago.

But what we are confronted with is a United States trying to talk the world into letting it invade Iraq to overthrow him and his power elite and, I suspect, make an effort to turn Iraq into a democracy, which makes as much sense as trying to turn the US into a dictatorship.

I wonder about those who insist - as this newspaper has done - that more "evidence" is needed before action is taken of Saddam's nuclear programme or ability to deliver the just as horrific and terrifying biological weapons. Or that "diplomacy" might solve the problem.

That's nonsense. You can't negotiate with a psychopath. Saddam and his henchmen see the world through eyes distorted by a supreme egotism that insists that only they are right; they don't know what compromise means.

We can take it as read that Saddam will go to any lengths to manufacture and mount weapons of mass destruction because that's the sort of creature he is. I have little doubt that he does see himself as a modern-day Saladin and he will sacrifice everything (and everybody) that stands in his path to achieve his insane ambitions.

What makes me just a little uneasy, however, is that George Bush is not the sort of man I would elect as sheriff of a village, let alone the world, particularly since he brings with him redneck deputies like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

But since the United Nations (never have so many spent so much for so long to achieve so little) is not even an alternative, I guess we'll have to let George Dubya front up to the gunfight at Baghdad Corral. And the sooner the better.

* garth_george@nzherald.co.nz

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Feature: War with Iraq

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