Pick a target, any target.

President Clinton's decision to launch missile strikes against Iraq in early September was both hypocritical and immoral.

Yes, Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator. Yes, he has persecuted the Kurds.

But the U.S. government cries only crocodile tears over the Kurds. It is a linchpin of U.S. policy in the region that the Kurds should not establish a state of their own. A Kurdish state would threaten one of our major regional allies, Turkey, which itself has a large Kurdish minority that has been seeking independence. Turkey views the Kurds, whether in Iraq or in its own country, as a threat.

Here is the prime hypocrisy of U.S. policy: In March of 1995, Turkey invaded northern Iraq with 35,000 troops to wage war against the Kurds. Turkey used the U.S.-imposed no-fly zone as protection for its own jet fighters, which scorched Kurdish villages. Turkey also used weaponry provided by the Pentagon to conduct this war against the Kurds. (You would have searched in vain for the facts about Turkey's invasion if you were examining the recent history of the Kurds that The New York Times published on September 4. It had only one entry for 1995; Turkey was not mentioned. The Washington Post's chronology, "An Embattled People," which ran on September 1, also conveniently omitted Turkey's assault.)

So what was the U.S. reaction to Turkey's invasion against the Kurds in Iraq last March? The United States approved of it.

Then, on September 5 of this year, within a week of Saddam Hussein's assault, Turkey once again sent jet fighters to strike Kurds in northern Iraq, once more with U.S. approval.

We didn't hear calls to bomb Ankara or assassinate Turkey's leader. If it's not OK for Saddam Hussein to kill Kurds in his own country, then why is it OK for Turkey to invade Iraq to kill Kurds?

The persecution of the Kurdish people is tragic and wrong, no matter who is the aggressor. But it is grossly hypocritical for the United States to pretend it is a friend of the Kurds. The U.S. government wasn't their friend when Turkey killed 20,000 Kurds in the last twelve years. And the U.S. government wasn't their friend back when Saddam Hussein was a trusted ally and was brutalizing Kurds right up to the day he invaded Kuwait.

Today, the Kurds in northern Iraq are split. One group allies with Saddam Hussein, one with Iran, and one with the Kurdistan Workers Party. There appears to be no single Kurdish side for the United States to be on. For U.S. imperial strategists, this presented some vexing problems. The United States views Iran as "rogue" enemy number one, yet here was the United States siding with the Kurdish faction allied with Iran.

But Clinton bombed Iraq anyway. It was one more act of war, undeclared by Congress, unapproved by the U.N. Security Council, unsupported by our allies. And he followed that up by rescinding the decision to allow Iraqi civilians to receive food and medicine. This is an extremely callous act, for the humanitarian embargo is not hurting Saddam Hussein; it is hurting Iraqi civilians. Since the embargo has been in place, some 600,000 Iraqi children have died from malnutrition or inadequate health care, according to a U.N. report.

Clinton is not interested in protecting the Kurdish people, or in saving Iraqi citizens from Saddam Hussein's brutality. Clinton is interested in his own re-election campaign, and in saving face for the U.S. empire.

Prior to the bombing, Bob Dole had already begun to claim that Clinton was weak and vacillating on Saddam Hussein. The domestic pressures on Clinton quickly became irresistible. He didn't need to make a clandestine call to Dick Morris to know that sending missiles to Iraq would make his poll numbers soar.

Clinton also bombed Iraq to flex American muscle for the world to see. Almost the entire Washington establishment was advocating the bombing of Iraq. Cokie Roberts, George Will, and Sam Donaldson appeared ready to suit up and hop in the next F-15. Their rationale: The United States would look weak in the eyes of the world if it did not enforce the no-fly zone.

This "face-saving" argument is used time after time when the United States takes military action. It was one of the reasons the United States went to Vietnam, and one of the reasons it took so long to get out.

The argument is based not on defending the American people, but on defending the U.S. empire. Saddam Hussein does not pose a threat to the United States, or to the American people. He's a regional power, who pales in comparison with other regional powers, such as U.S. allies Turkey and Israel.

But the U.S. government insists on ruling the globe. The Pentagon budget--all $260 billion of it--is based on waging two simultaneous wars in the Third World (one is never enough). Yet no Third World nation can muster even a credible threat against the U.S. military.

The American public wants to believe that our government wears the white hat, that we're the good guys in a world of bad guys. The analysis does not get deeper than that on the network news, or in The New York Times. To dispute this assumption is beyond what Noam Chomsky calls "the bounds of thinkable thought."

Even to call the United States an empire is a ghastly admission not to be uttered in polite company. Counting the millions of deaths that the U.S. empire has caused is just not done.

And so The New York Times cheers Clinton for exercising "the right mix of American power and restraint," and the networks slap the label TARGET: IRAQ on their coverage--a convenient device, since they can simply replace IRAQ with the next target that comes down the imperial pike.

This imperial strategy is bankrupting us, and it is bringing more violence and death not just to Iraqi civilians but also to Third World people from Guatemala to East Timor.

So why does the United States pursue it?

First, because it is in the economic interests of the multinational corporations that exercise so much power over our government: They want access to the raw materials and cheap labor in the Third World; the Pentagon is their advance man.

And second, because the ideology of empire has taken such a grip on the American psyche that any politician who tries to buck it will face charges amounting to treason.

As a result, we as a nation are pursuing one costly misadventure after another, while our own domestic needs go woefully unmet.

Instead of standing astride the globe, the United States should start taking care of its own people. The Washington elite would call this isolationism--a slur that becomes yet another defense of empire.

But if the U.S. government would shed its imperial role--farewell "surgical strikes," adieu CIA--not only would there be less violence around the world, there would finally be a chance here in the United States to "establish justice" and "provide for the general welfare," as the preamble to our Constitution requires.