1. News & Review
Political Science
.
CaTIfornia
Spring 1991
State
In this issue:
A professor's week 2
Persian ~G!lJtsurvey 3
Rodney King 4
CSU budget cuts 4
Flag burning 5
Military base closings 7
School & housing reform ...7
Student Association
University, Fullerton
Volume I, Number 1
People in Middle East
angered and humiliated in
aftermath of Gulf War
by Aziz A. Khasawneh
A s we in the United States celebrate the victorious
~roops returning from Arabia through victory
parades being held all over the nation, the people of the
Middle East, especially the Iraqis, are witnessing their
worst ni~htmares unfolding before their eyes.
DUring the biggest bombardment and aerial
onslau ht in..histo a ainst a third world countryJ!:1.e
.S. an its allies dropped over 90,000 tons of explosives
over Iraq. An estimated hundreds of thousands of dead
Iraqi people are unaccounted for, unburied in the desert,
and talked about very little. The people of Iraq were told
by President Bush that this war was not targeting them at
all, rather it is against Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi
people should revolt and take Saddam out. When the
war ended, Saddam survived and the Iraqi people were
left to mourn their dead and continue a life shattered by
war and internal strife.
In the aftermath of war, two major components of the
Iraqi people revolted against Saddam's rule. The Shiites
in the South and the Kurds in the North were both brutally
putdown by Saddam's forces. The rest of the Middle
Eastern people presently are watching in amazement as
the sole superpower and its allies map out their future.
The feelings of the Middle Eastern people are numb,
their frustration and rage are simmering, their
shattered lives a mixture of anger, sadness and
humiliation. These people were never asked about their
opinion when Saddam took over Kuwait. No one
consulted them when King Fahed and President
Mubarak called on America to teach Saddam a lesson.
The lack of political participation in most of these
regimes, and lack of strong, popular leadership has
turned the people into mere spectators. As they are
desperately searching for a glimpse of any meaning to
any order from the outcome of this war, they confront the
problems of economic disasters, arms proliferation, and
the perennial Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The outcome of the war is unbearable in the present
circumstances. According to the Los Angeles Times, the
cost of building Iraq's and Kuwait's infrastructure will
Please see Aftermath, page 6