c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the senior interreligious adviser of the American Jewish Committee.)

(UNDATED) Ten years ago Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait and triggered the Persian Gulf War. Because the West desperately needs Kuwaiti oil, the United States guaranteed a steady flow of petroleum by assembling a huge military coalition that expelled Iraqi forces and reinstalled Kuwait’s ruling family to power.

But critics charge the war merely restored the previous status quo to the region. They further argue that little else was settled, and at first blush the critics appear correct.

Despite American-led economic sanctions against Iraq and U.S. and British air attacks on Iraqi military positions, Saddam remains firmly in power while his chief adversary, President George Bush, was easily defeated in the 1992 election.

The U.N. arms inspectors who were placed in Iraq following the war are long gone, and the intelligence community warns that the Baghdad government is developing weapons of mass destruction and the missiles that can deliver chemical and nuclear warheads not only to Saudi Arabia and Israel, but to Europe as well. Kurdish independence, or even a limited form of autonomy, continues to be brutally suppressed by Saddam. The Iraq of 2000 merits the same description it richly deserved in 1990: “rogue state.”

But the critics are wrong because the Persian Gulf War did permanently change our lives in several important ways.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf War occurred about the same time, and these two events accelerated the Middle East peace process. As a result of Iraq’s defeat, Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization lost a valuable ally. Because Arafat openly and unwisely backed Saddam, the Saudis and other Arab coalition members withdrew much of their political and economic support from the PLO.

A weakened PLO was backed into a corner, and when the 1991 Madrid conference was convened following the conflict, Palestinian and Syrian leaders publicly sat at the same negotiating table with their archenemy, Israel, for the first time in history.

Because the Madrid meeting ended Israeli diplomatic isolation, India, China and Russia finally established relations with the Jewish state. Once that happened, the Holy See followed suit, and in late 1993 Vatican-Israel diplomatic relations were formally announced in Rome and Jerusalem.

The 1990-1991 war also changed Israel in a number of significant ways. Since its founding in 1948, Israel had always reacted with strong military force whenever its security was threatened.

But during the Persian Gulf War, the American-led coalition forced Israel to absorb many Iraqi SCUD rocket attacks on civilian targets, including Tel Aviv, without responding. The United States did rush anti-missile Patriots to Israel, and for a while Israelis and the rest of the world happily believed the SCUD menace was checked. However, after the war we learned just how ineffective the Patriots really were.

As the SCUDS fell on Israel, President Bush warned Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir that any Israeli attack on Iraq, even in national self-defense, would shatter the fragile coalition that included Arab partners and would ultimately hurt Israel more than rocket attacks. Because of strong American pressure, Israel, with its hands tied, absorbed military assaults without striking back. That lesson in forced passivity was not lost on Israel’s enemies.

The Persian Gulf War had a far different meaning for Americans who were treated to numerous TV pictures of so-called “smart bombs” zeroing in on alleged Iraqi military targets. Our nation became addicted to the promise of deadly surgical strikes without any U.S. casualties.

After the bitterness of Vietnam, Americans yearned for a decisive military victory on the cheap _ with no body bags, no Yanks missing in action or prisoners of war, and no interruption of civilian life. We wanted to achieve victory without an unfair draft or lengthy casualty lists. It was our first conflict fought almost solely by a professional, all-volunteer military.

That lesson in laser bomb reliance has not been lost on our allies and possible adversaries. The message is clear: Americans want a high-tech, computer-driven military that will suffer no battle casualties. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s maxim that “war is hell” has been replaced by “war is a TV computer image.”

And finally, the battle against Iraq stirred debates in the United States about “just wars.” Religious leaders grappled with Jewish, Christian and Islamic teachings on the subject, and TV talk shows featured fierce debates between people like myself who considered Saddam “radically evil” and those who condemned American “oil aggression.”

A decade later, those vigorous debates continue with no end in sight.

DEA END RUDIN