Did anyone actually declare war? I heard “serious consequences” mentioned a few times and of course “regime change,” but war? Or are we not at war, “merely in a state of armed conflict” as one politician once put it?
The assumption of war sidled into the public consciousness rather subliminally. Internet pages suddenly sprouted links to “War on Iraq,” and the talking heads of innumerable satellite TV stations roll the phrase around with obvious relish.
With the introduction of the word “war” comes the word “enemy.”
In World War II, perfectly nice Frenchmen and women killed equally pleasant young German boys horribly with explosives and knives. The French were “resistance heroes” and the German youths “the enemy.”
It’s therefore perhaps understandable, half a century later, that these two highly civilized nations led the campaign for diplomacy, rather than war.
The word “war” changes friends into suspects, perfectly civilized people into mass killers and every expatriate in the Kingdom into a potential target. Ask any pilot who releases a MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Burst) weapon. This is the most powerful non-nuclear explosion in the US arsenal – and it doesn’t discriminate. The pilot however is insulated from bloody reality by vocabulary and several thousand meters of altitude – he “splashes a bandit” rather than rip apart and burn a mother or father.
The statement by Prince Naif that he would protect expatriates in the Kingdom was certainly reassuring. It demonstrated a generous attitude and expressed the general feeling of the government.
With the best will in the world, it will be difficult to put into effect at street level.
Security measures, if they are in place at all, are low key. One military installation is now opening the trunk of every car as it enters the premises.
A sensible precaution in one sense, but with the “enemy” two thousand kilometers away, the exercise seems little more than window dressing. It does however make for the mother of all traffic jams in the morning.
Occasional road checkpoints have increased, staffed by the usual complement of nice young men who ask for papers. That’s reassuring certainly. I am not sure however they know what they are looking for; no iqama has written on it “Occupation: Infiltrator, Sponsor: — “ well, that’s a question.
The real threat that might emerge in the Kingdom is from the shadows. Someone may believe there really is a war and as such, be ready to identify their own “target of opportunity.”
Unfortunately, these people also seem not to discriminate, as the Canadian Muslim shot in Kuwait recently proves. He looked different, was definitely not Arab and therefore had suddenly become the enemy. Robert Dent shot in Riyadh earlier this month continued the pattern.
Are we at war? Does it even matter? As an anonymous diplomat put it with a disingenuous shrug, “It’s stay or go time.” It has come to that.
Arab News Features 22 March 2003