European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - March 18, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Monday March 18, 1991 the stars and stripes a Page 13 commentary William f. Buckley or. May be the Only get this the question is asked of iranian authorities whether it is the governments intention to sequester the 100 iraqi air planes As a contribution to the damages Iran claims As the result of the eight year War initiated by Iraq. Their haughty answer certainly not. The air planes Are of trivial value. What the iraqis owe us is $900 billion and we re not going to Settle for a Penny less a a v�.�/�. A so add that to the Ledger of the iraqis exposure. For a while a non licensed accountant could keep rough track. The Cost of the . Military Effort something on the order of $70 billion. To this we add what the going estimate is for reparations to Kuwait which comes to $200 billion. But that is on the Assumption that the fires raging from the Oil Wells Are put under control in something less than the 500 Days now estimated a they Are consuming $120 million per Day. To that sum we Are permitted to add the difference Between the Price of Oil paid during August and March and the Price that would have been paid under Normal circumstances. The loss is directly attributable to the embargo which was the retaliatory response to the act of aggression. Add the numbers together and reeling goes the mind As the Early Henry Luce would have put it. The mind travels Back to an occasion or two in history that give us examples of How damage has been dealt with. Car Thage was deemed not Only to have damaged roman interests but also to have threatened Rome so that the decision there was simply to eliminate Carthage from the face of the Earth and the romans proceeded to do a Job on Carthage that made our treatment of Hiroshima appear tender by comparison. But of course to treat Iraq As the romans treated Carthage would give us not Only the satisfaction of knowing that it would never again threaten anybody but simultaneously it would give us the dissatisfaction that properly attaches to anyone guilty of genocide. If we did to Iraq what the romans did to Carthage somebody should do to us what we did to the nazis at  there is the German French precedent of 1870, after which War Bis Andrew j. Glass Marck asked for a sum of Money so vast that it impoverished the marginal Frenchman during the years it took to pay off the debt. But those were Days in which sums of Money were measured in Teaspoons compared to modern times when Small countries can earn $100 billion of Revenue from the Sale of assets that lie under the ground and require Only a few ergs of Energy to be brought up. No doubt if it were All an actuarially dominated exercise we might figure out that by taking the proceeds of 100 percent of the Oil produced by the iraqis for the next 20 years we would have satisfied the claims of All currently plausible creditors. But then we know we Arentt going to do that done to we and this leads us to Subtle inquiry into the simple question of guilt and innocence. We Are All correctly satisfied that if Ever there was an Enterprise for which a single Man was overwhelmingly responsible it was the current Enterprise. Saddam Hussein is the embodiment of what happened even As Adolf Hitler was the embodiment of nazi Germany. But it Wasny to Saddam i Hussein who personally tortured raped and killed the. Thousands a the tens of thousands a of kuwaitis who suffered and died during the last nine months. For the dictator to pass along the word a feel free to rape torture and kill a does not singular ize the blame upon him. A those who proceed to act heinous by need to share one part of the blame. It is one. Thing for a Soldier or an officer to plead that he was Only doing what he was ordered to do by a Superior offi cer the Niernberg precedent. That plea is unconvincing at a certain level. If it is a matter of a Pilot operating a b-17 and dropping fire bombs Over Dresden there is a certain platonic detachment Between executioner and victim that does not mitigate the torturer with his branding Irons or electrical prods searing the flesh of a civilian. There Are Many americans who would not question orders to drop nuclear weapons where they Are told to do so. Hut one likes to think one would have to recruit carefully americans willing to torture human beings so to speak hand to hand. And one has therefore to pause before proceeding to hold eve 17 iraqi responsible for the crimes of Saddam Hussein and those front line sadists who disgraced the irreducible maxims of human decency. To consign them All to perpetual poverty is carthaginian in moral architecture and we must desist from doing this. A but before this becomes possible expiation is necessary. And this must begin with the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein and his bloodied cadre. C Universal press Syndicate can . Avoid saudi the persian Gulf crisis began and ended with scenes of foreigners crossing Borders to flee violence a similar flow occurs daily into the United states but these refugees Are called immigrants because they mainly seek to escape poverty. Last month an iraqi scud missile demolished a Riyadh office building that housed the records of some 6 million foreign workers who live in the kingdom incinerating most of the files. Officially the saudi arabian government admits to the existence of Only 4 million such workers. The official census also lists the number of native saudis at More than 13 million but knowledgeable people place the actual number of saudi natives at closer to 6 million. That Means about half the saudi population lacks saudi citizenship. It is hardly a singular phenomenon. Be forthe War Many key posts in Kuwait were held by palestinians some of whom were born there. In prewar Iraq tens of thousands of contract workers from Egypt Poland and Vietnam played a crucial role there. \ the scud strike a proved illustrative. It hit in the dead of night and killed Only one person the egyptian watchman. Subsequently Riyadh newspapers ran a list of people injured in the attack that read like a third world caucus. In addition to a handful of saudis the list included egyptians sudanese jordanians syrians yemenis pakistanis indians bangladeshis sri lankan thais koreans and filipinos. One might gather that Riyadh is quite a cosmopolitan place. It does indeed Lack ethnic neighbourhoods foreigners live Side by Side with saudis. But that does not mean they live together. Save for the workplace people do not mix across ethnic lines. Even on the Job each ethnic group tends to be assigned a caste like task. Jordanians for instance served As doctors and nurses until King Hussein a Chu miness with iraqis Saddam Hussein caused the saudis to freeze them out. By contrast its hardly Likely that Washington bureaucrats would eject say legally landed mexicans because their leaders said Nasty things about . Policy immigrants tend to get a better Deal in the United states than just about any other place on Earth. A in the 1980s, America took in More than 9 million immigrants. That generous record places the United states among the ranks of Only a handful of advanced societies a along with Canada Australia and Israel a that Welcome newcomers. Last year Congress enacted legislation that promises to raise the influx. . Trends Point to continued Low Fertility and a High flow of immigrants from latin America and Asia a probably four of five new arrivals in a few decades scholars say these patterns could yield a country without a Clear ethnic majority. A a that May prove Good or bad for the american experience. But it will certainly be quite different than to Days society. Saudis have few psychological hang  Over the foreigners in their midst. They View them As inferiors. They make their lowly status apparent in big ways and Small. No matter where a foreign workers child is born he or she will forever he a foreigner. Americans favor the a a melting pot concept. With due Diligence perhaps the first generation and for sure the second generation Are expected to share fully in the fruits of the land. At least that a been the idea. The question is whether it will remain the idea. With More than a million immigrants arriving each year legally and illegally How Long before cultural separatism sets it could a democratic America Ever spawn a saudi style reaction c Cox news service the opinions expressed in the columns and cartoons on this Page represent those of the authors and Are in no Way to be considered As representing the views of the stars and stripes or the United states government