Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Middle Eastern memories

Thursday, Nov. 8, 2001 | 8:27 a.m.

This attitude is mystifying to the people of the United States who saved Kuwait from the continued occupation of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Republican Guard. It was a brutal several months that ended in February 1991. When forced from Kuwait, the Iraqis set fire to oil fields, destroyed places and homes of great treasure, spread 2 million land mines over the landscape, destroyed desalinization facilities and took hundreds of prisoners back to Iraq. Yes, there are 605 people still missing, and according to Warren Hoge of the New York Times, more than 120 are students, 50 are teenagers and three are nurses whose crime was treating wounded Kuwaitis.

The power of the Islamists in both Kuwait and neighboring Saudi Arabia is hard for Americans to grasp. Although the majority of Kuwaitis easily recall the saviors from America and are pro-American, the Islamists have enough power to split any government efforts to clamp down on the "charities" because they also profit from them.

Over in Saudi Arabia, the Islamists have an even stronger voice where, like Kuwait, we have been told not to use a base in that country to attack Afghanistan where terrorist Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, is operating. This wavering by the Saudis has me recalling a letter Saudi Arabia's King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz wrote to Saddam Hussein in early 1991. After admitting his country had given Hussein $25,734,469,885.80, the king asked:

* "Why did you break your pledge, when you assured me personally and my brother (Egyptian) President Hosni Mubarak that you would not attack Kuwait or inflict any harm upon it?

* "Why did you deploy your armies and weaponry toward the Saudi borders, when Saudi Arabia was the nation that stood beside you during your eight-year war (with Iran), the fruits of which you squandered in eight minutes? You squandered, as well, the blood of one million people in Iraq and Iran. After all this, you question the presence of brotherly and friendly forces on Saudi soil, while ignoring all the crimes and evil you have inflicted.

* "Who authorized you to involve the Iraqi army and people in a bloody and losing war with Iran?

* "Who authorized you to put an end to the lives of a million Iraqi and Iranian Muslim citizens?

* "Finally, the most important question: who authorized you to occupy Kuwait, kill its citizens, rape its women, transgress its honor, pillage its fortunes and destroy its civilization?"

I find it necessary to believe that the Islamists view the United States as a necessary evil that can be called upon to save them from other Muslim nations and is a place to sell their oil for profits, which are used to spread their extremist religious philosophy. In the meantime, they rejoice as their terror-spreading brothers punish the Americans and the evil lifestyle they feel is poisoning the minds of the young. In addition, they have unfairly embarrassed millions of Muslims in the West who practice their religion of peace.

Like an atheist in a foxhole, the leaders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia made all kinds of concessions and promises to the U.S. when Hussein was ripping them. The sounds of war were still echoing when these same countries refused U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg a visa to enter their countries because his passport had been stamped in Israel during an earlier visit. They didn't check the passports of U.S. soldiers who helped save their governments.

Nothing can compare to a convenient memory when fear replaces decency.