The Arab world's appeasement of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait is drawing clear parallels to futile Anglo-French attempts to stop Hitler from seizing Europe in World War II.
Western diplomats who watched Iraqi troops and tanks roll over the Kuwaiti border Thursday were disappointed with Arab foot-dragging on the issue and the weak statements condemning Hussein's aggression that eventually trickled from only 14 of the 20 Arab capitals.The Saudis - who maintained the closest ties to the ousted Kuwaiti emir and form the military backbone of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council of which Kuwait is a member - never even mentioned news of the invasion on Riyadh Radio and waited more than 48 hours before hinting the Iraqi invasion was wrong.
"There appears to be an absence of backbone in Saudi Arabia and Egypt when it comes to Iraq," said a government official from one of the smaller Persian Gulf states. "If it comes to the crunch, the West can only help Arabs help themselves.
"It remains to be seen if the deserts of Saudi Arabia will become Saddam's Stalingrad," the official said, referring to the city where Hitler's thrust into the Soviet Union stalled and eventually began to be repelled.
One diplomat said a joint Saudi-Egyptian plan revealed Sunday to offer Hussein a compromise to defuse the crisis that could prompt outside intervention, "smacks of 1938."
They drew parallels to Hitler's step-by-step occupation of the Rhineland, Czechoslovakia and Austria under the guise of national aspirations and economic necessity, and Hitler's correct calculation that Britain and France would do nothing.