T A B L E+T A L K Latrell Sprewell -- dipshit or maniac? Your opinions on the firing of the $25 million NBA guard are wanted in Sports. D A I L Y+Q U O T E Boogie nights with Foxy Brown R E C E N T L Y The ayatollah who came in from the cold By Christopher Hitchens John le Carré's outrageous attack on Salman Rushdie keeps the flames of censorship burning (12/04/97) The great Arlington National Cemetery smear By Jonathan Broder When it comes to screwing Bill Clinton, nothing is sacred, not even the dead (12/03/97) A tale of two families By Earl Ofari Hutchinson Why is a white "miracle birth" a major news story and a black "miracle birth" a non-event? (12/02/97) America's Asian "Berlin Wall" has crumbled By Jonathan Broder Thanks to American Cold War politics, Asia has been fed a steady diet of undemocratic regimes and corrupt leaders (12/01/97) All in la familia By Barbara Renoud-Gonzales Drugs -- dealing, using, addiction -- are rampant in America's Latino families (11/26/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		purveyor of Catastrophe page 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - How is the U.S. responsible for the Turkish oppression of the Kurds? U.S. weapons sales encourage the Turkish leadership to see a solution only in military terms. In southeast Turkey, entire villages are being destroyed and huge numbers of people are being displaced. Refugees have flooded the larger cities, where they can't find work. As a consequence, they've been marginalized. And who helps them? Nobody helps them except for Rafah, the Islamic Party. They help them in the same way that the old Democratic Party machine helped immigrants in the United States during the 19th century, building their loyalty for generations. In Turkey, it's exactly the same. Rafah's well-organized social welfare policy has been able to win the loyalty of the Kurds, who are now a major element in Turkey's Islamic revival. Even as we patrol "no-fly zones" to protect the Kurds in Iraq against Saddam Hussein. The relationship between Ankara and Washington is first and foremost a military one. The U.S. saw Turkey as part of the bulwark against the Soviet Union and now sees it as a foothold in the Middle East. Everything the Turkish military has done against the Kurds has been endorsed, either explicitly or implicitly, by the U.S. government. As one defense official put it to me, "We need the bases in Turkey more than we need the Kurds." Basically that sums up the situation there. In the same way that we needed the Shah more than the Iranian people. Right. The weapons that we sold to the Shah weren't used against the Soviet Union; they were used for other purposes, including against his own people. It's the same general pattern that's unraveling in Turkey. And the costs for Turkey have been enormous. We're talking about 28,000 dead, some 200,000 wounded and 2 million homeless in the southeast; millions of dollars wasted; an economy in ruins; a staggering national debt and falling foreign investment. I'd call that a catastrophe. And it could get worse. The Islamicists could rise again, and there could be an ugly confrontation with the military and no way of knowing what the outcome would be. How about Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia follows the same policy pattern: Find the moderate Islamic regime to do our bidding, supply it with weapons and hold our breath and hope for the best. We are now in the process of holding our breath. In Saudi Arabia, there are human rights abuses, Islamic terrorism, a lot of concern about the stability of the regime and who would come in if it falls. It's a real house of cards. You think the regime is that shaky? It's very fragile. They're deeply in debt. They've overspent on weapons. I don't see how the House of Saud can maintain itself like this indefinitely. If and when it goes down, it will go down in a way that Washington will consider catastrophic. Either someone will come to power that we don't like, or there will be enormous disruption to our oil supplies. Almost certainly, something bad will happen. The only thing we don't know is when. Couldn't the U.S. use its arms sales to bring about more enlightened policies in these countries? This is one of the great fallacies -- that we have to keep selling them weapons to maintain our influence. Turkey, which was supposed to be one of the pillars of "dual containment" of Iran and Iraq, has basically thumbed its nose at the policy. They're trading with Iran, and they want very much to resume trade with Iraq. Turkey is one of the most outspoken proponents of lifting the oil embargo on Iraq. It supported Saddam when he made his military incursion into northern Iraq last year. In the current crisis with Iraq over the U.N. weapons inspections, Turkey publicly stated that it does not support U.S. military action. They want Saddam in power, and they want Saddam to have control over the north. So what good has all our weapons largess done for us so far? The answer is not very much. The same fallacy applies to Saudi Arabia and our other allies in the Gulf. Remarkably, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait wanted no part of U.S. military action against Iraq. When you think about it, when you think that Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia, that's astounding. How would you change U.S. policy? You start with establishing a moral international standard, a code of conduct, for countries to whom you are going to sell weapons. There's a proposed standard now in the United States and Europe which is a pretty good place to start. It says you don't sell weapons to non-democratic regimes or to regimes that have exhibited a gross pattern of human rights abuses. Through diplomacy and economic power, the U.S. would get other major weapons-selling countries, especially Europe, to sign on to the standard. That sounds wonderfully utopian. Is it realistic? People always say it sounds utopian until you come up with counter-examples, like the treaty to ban land mines. Only five years ago, such a treaty wasn't even on the map. Now we have a treaty, which has been signed by most of the countries of the world, including Europe. How did that happen? Well, it happened because there was a moral outcry. And even though the United States is not signing the treaty, we don't sell mines anymore, and we only use them in one arena -- Korea. That's a long way from where the United States was 10 years ago. There's no reason you can't do this with other weapons. If, for example, you implement a policy that says we won't sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, the Saudis will have to find other solutions for their security. Maybe they will sign a defense pact with the United States. Or maybe they will build a regional security arrangement with other neighboring countries. Or maybe they will open up and become more democratic. Our policy until now has been catastrophic. We have to change the fundamentals. And one of those fundamentals is the arms trade. If you can change one piece of this relationship, then all the other pieces -- the question of oil supplies, the Arab-Israeli conflict -- all look a little easier to resolve. It's time to start somewhere. SALON | Dec. 5, 1997 Jonathan Broder is Salon's regular Washington correspondent.