Iraq Analysis

Source : DavidMcR@aol.com via abolition-caucus@igc.apc.org

I'm on the staff of War Resisters League, past Chair of War Resisters International, and was in Badghad for a week in early 1991 just after the invasion of Kuwait and just before Desert Storm, as part of a peace team sent by the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Let's begin with the two questions citizens need always to ask in a crisis. First, when the President says there is a crisis involving Iraq, why should we believe him? This is the same government which told us there was no Gulf War Syndrome, then admitted it had lost papers, shredded documents and lied. The same government (though not the same Administration) which led us into ten years of bloody terror in Indochina, lying all the way. The same government which gave us "Iran/Contra", a vastly more disturbing conspiracy than the Whitewater investigation.

Second, why do we ever believe any government knows what it is doing, or that it is necessarily doing what it does for rational reasons? There were never sound, rational reasons for going into Vietnam (I heard lots of excuses - but not rational or sound reasons). The Soviet Union went into Afghanistan without knowing anything about the country. And after the end of the Soviets, Yeltsin sent the Russian Army into Chechneya, in his own backyard, with equally disastrous results. Looking at the Middle East, Israel did this kind of thing with its invasion of Lebanon, and Iraq did it with its invasion of Iran. So, as we listen to Clinton and the Secretary of Sate lecturing us on the urgency of the Iraq crisis, we need to ask if they know what they are talking about. I don't think they do. Bluntly put - I don't think they have a clue.

What happened to create this crisis? Saddam Hussein decided, months ago, that the U.S. was never going to get off his back unless he retired (and Iraq is not a place where retired dictators can count on a pension and medical program). So he decided to hell with it - he would end his cooperation with the inspections. There was nothing, in his view, that the U.S. could do which it wasn't doing - the sanctions have cost of lives of tens upon tens of thousands of Iraqis. (Many of them children, none of them high government officials). One can blame Saddam for not cooperating - but both Clinton and Saddam share the responsibility for the fact there is no medicine in the hospitals, and children die.

Is Iraq developing weapns of mass destruction? Yes, I take it for granted. Why should Saddam do something as terrible as developing weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological, etc. Probably because Israel has the nuclear bomb - something that is left out of almost every analysis and yet is central to the situation in the Middle East.

Of all the stupid decisions the Israeli government has made, their determination to develop nuclear weapons instead of struggling for a "nuclear free zone" in the Middle East is at the head of the list, right up there with the incredible stupidity (there isn't a gentler word) of the British decision to join the nuclear club decades ago. Large countries - Russia, China, the United States - could absorb several nuclear hits and survive. So they can afford to play such a risky, immoral game. But Great Britain? Israel? Either country could be essentially destroyed by a single bomb. Israel, in developing nuclear weapons, guaranteed the Arab states would do the same. Iraq had a developing nuclear industry, almost certainly aiming toward its own bomb,
when Israel "pre-emptively" bombed the plant in 1981 and wiped it out (killing some European technicians in the process).

Many thought the Israeli raid was just what was needed - but it meant the Arab states then moved toward developing "the poor man's nuclear bomb" - chemical and biological weapons. (There is nothing unique about these weapons - the U.S. had a large supply of Anthrax during WW II, shipping some to Great Britain for possible use against the Germans). One assumes that Syria, Israel, Iran, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the U.S. all possess such weapons or are engaged in research. What Iraq is accused of doing is almost
inevitable in this sitatution.

What can be done? Some, even in the peace movement, insist that "something MUST BE DONE!" about Iraq's possible development of such weapons. Why? Or more precisely, why Iraq and not Israel? Or why Iraq and not Syria? Or why Iraq and not Iran? Yes, I think Iraq either has or wants to have terrible weapons, and this is a reflection of the tensions in the Middle East which thus far the U.S. has made a good deal worse. (If we need any reminder that we are not immune to the effect of U.S. errors there we need only look at the World
Trade Center bombing - some of those involved were believed to have been funded originally by the CIA for their work in opposing the Soviets in Afghanistan!).

Would Iraq use those weapons? Probably, if threatened. The U.S. used two nuclear weapons when it had already won WW II and the Japanese were trying to surrender. Why should Saddam be different if he feels in danger? Would the Israelis use their nuclear weapons? They have said they would - if Saddam attacks them. So we have one Middle Eastern country which wants to get terrible weapons and might use them if it felt threatened, and another Middle Eastern country which already has terrible weapons and has said on the record that it will use them if it is attacked (or, maybe, remembering the "pre-emptive" air strike on Iraq in 1981, even if it hadn't yet been attacked but felt it might be).

What can the U.S. do? First, it should take a hard look at the lack of support anywhere except in Israel, Kuwait, and Great Britain for U.S. policy.The Arab states have refused to endorse military action. If those states, which have the most to fear from Iraq (Iran suffered a terrible war from Iraq's invasion in the 1980's, in which hundreds of thousands of young men died) are not worried, why is Bill Clinton?

Our Secretary of State has backed us into a corner. If Saddam doesn't blink, the U.S. "will have to attack or look foolish". But what good will an attack do? We went through all of this in 1991. The U.S., the moment the Gulf War started, launched a monumental air attack, hitting not only military targets, but key civilian targets, communications centers, factories, bridges, roads, etc. And Saddam was still there. Not only was Saddam still there, but when, with the encouragement of George Bush and the CIA, some dissident groups used the chaos immediately following the war to stage an insurrection, Saddam crushed them - so the immediate result of U.S. actions in 1991 was not only the initial loss of life but also terrible blows against elements in Iraqi society which might, in the course of time, have posed an alternative to Saddam.

Perhaps "we can kill Saddam" as urged by George Stephanopoulos, former White House advisor. One would think George, who has been to college and served in government, would have some memory of what assassinations mean. Kennedy authorized the assassination of the head of South Vietnamese government (Diem), and conspired at repeated unsuccessful efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Then in 1963 Kennedy himself was assassinated. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Robert Kennedy Jr. was assassinated. If this the kind of society we want? Do we really want to conduct our foreign policy in this way?

Assassinations run in both directions. And if foreign agents can't hit our President, they will hit our civilian aircraft. If we rule out assassinations (or find it can't be done - it is common knowledge the CIA authorized a "hit" on Saddam after the Gulf War and just hasn't had any luck yet) what do we have left?

We can try to kill ALL THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT LEADERS by truly massive air raids which use those new "earth penetrating bombs" some in the Pentagon are eager to test (these bombs "drill down" before exploding, creating a min-earthquake). Such air raids will cause enormous civilian casualties - perhaps even more than the U.S. has already caused with the sanctions. Is the U.S. justified in doing this? At what point will our religious and political leaders realize that to stop Saddam from MAYBE doing something terrible in the future WE ARE DOING SOMETHING JUST AS TERRIBLE IN THE IMMEDIATE PRESENT?

Suppose the bombing doesn't work and Saddam again survives, as he did in 1991? Then, some political (and a VERY FEW military) leaders have said "Go all the way". Send in the troops. Overthrow Saddam. Set up a new government. Leading the charge is Newt Gingrich, that courageous Vietnam War draft dodger from Georgia. One is tempted to approve an invasion if only we knew Gingrich would actually lead it.

Would the American public approve an invasion? What would the Middle East think about this? (Even Netanyahu might realize that if the U.S. could invade Iraq to get what it wants it could as easily depose him). WOULD ANY COUNTRY IN THE MIDDLE EAST FEEL MORE SECURE AFTER THE UNITED STATES HAD SHOWN ITS ABILITY TO INVADE IRAQ, OUST SADDAM, INSTALL A GOVERNMENT IT LIKED, AND DO SO WITHOUT UN APPROVAL? To ask the question is to answer it. An invasion would be Vietnam all over again. Not as bloody, and fought in the desert, not the jungles, but just as confused. What happens when we find out, as we did in Vietnam, that the governments we installed wouldn't do what we wanted? Murdering Diem
didn't solve the Vietnam problem.

The harder one looks at the actual options open to the U.S. the clearer it becomes that while Clinton may launch heavy air strikes to "save face", military power doesn't give him the ability to change the situation. What can be done? First, the U.S. needs to get itself out of the terrible diplomatic box Madeline Albright has put us in. The Adminstration needs to be encouraged both positively and negatively. Negatively it would be helpful if lawyers close to the peace movement could raise the question of war crimes - which is what an air strike against Iraq would be. When one reads about Gingrich and Albright and others casually discussing things as dreadful as air attacks in which men, women and babies will be blasted to bloody bits, it is useful to remind those leaders that if there is a hell and Saddam goes there he won't be alone. Meanwhile, since we are not on theological ground, we should be clear that a war of aggression is a war crime, whether Saddam invades Kuwait or we launch an air strike at Iraq.

On the positive side, the Administration needs to welcome the diplomatic help of France and Russia in referring these issues to the United Nations and in recognizing that Iraq, while it lost the Gulf War, is a soverign state, and that it is not possible, over a period of time, to impose conditions which are unique - ie., "no fly zones", inspections, sanctions, etc. At this point what the U.S. is really asking is a kind of unilateral disarmament by Iraq. Pacifists would welcome this - but only if the United States would lead by example. You can't "impose unilateral disarmament" - that is called an Occupation.

The sanctions must be lifted. Iraq must be allowed to sell its oil. The Gulf War is over. The hope of change rests within Iraq itself, in its large working class, in its substantial pool of educated Iraqis, in the class of "small merchants", and in the currently quiet but still powerful religious forces, and in all the trends that affect every nation and from which Iraq is not unique - including the mortality of its political leaders.

But the West - the U.S. and Great Britain in particular - needs to show some humility and sense of history. Iraq is the center of the beginning of history for the Western world. This is the nation where Babylon was built. A nation with a sense of its own history and identity. As we learned with Iran, too late, to treat people who are as proud as ourselves as if they could be ruled by puppet leaders installed by our State Department (which is what the late Shah of Iran was) is to invite the furies of revolutionary change.

The policies of Washington are diplomatically hollow, militarily brutal, politically foolish. We should know from past experience that Saddam may again defy the advice of his own best friends and "force" the United States to attack him to save face. But surely in the long reach of American history, our claim to greatness will not rest on our ability to save face by brutally bombing a people led by a dictator for whose policies they themselves are not responsible. If policies are to be changed, isn't it here, in a democracy, where we are free to examine policy - and free even to demand accountability before the law - that policies and leadership can be changed.

Addendum

Some days ago I sent out about 2500 words on the Iraq crisis. I stand by that original post. But watching the situation since then, and reading the flood of mail, requires me to add to the original position.

Some of the posts I've seen have tended to blame Israel for the crisis, and in my own post I said that Israel had to take responsibility for starting the nuclear arms race in the Middle East, and that I thought it had been a stupid move. (Though I am more understanding of the Israeli move than of the British move to acquire such weapons - British political leadership was slow to deal with the loss of its old Colonial power - the nuclear weapons were an effort to hold onto that past. The Israeli decision was a mistake, but rooted in quite real and immediate present problems).

The State of Israel has much to answer for. I am very sympathetic to the Palestinians, who have been betrayed by the Arab States no less than by the Israelis. And on this question I want to note that those of us who pose very sharp questions to the Israeli government (not just to Netanyahu but to past Labor governments) must express our appreciation for the work of the many Israelis and the many in the Jewish progressive movement in this country and in Europe, who have maintained the best of the humanist tradition of Judaism by their support for the right of self-determination for the Palestinian peoples.

But in my view if Israel vanished tomorrow the U.S. would still be threatening to bomb Iraq. In this context I call attention to the recent article by Edward Said, first published in Arabic in Al-Hayat, London, and in English in Al Ahram Weekly, Cairo. If you haven't seen this, you may be able to get a good copy by sending a request to: Eric Fawcett at: fawcett@PHYSICS.UTORONTO.CA and if that doesn't work, check back with me [follow this link]. Said's piece was of particular value because it had no apologies about Saddam Hussein, (nor should we).

The basic issue is the U.S. determination to control the oil resources in the Gulf. This is both so obvious, but also so painfully brutal as a national policy, that some history is worth a look. In 1956 British power had largely waned as a result of WW II, which left Great Britain bankrupt. When Britain, in alliance with France and Israel, invaded Egypt in response to Nasser's nationalizing the Suez Canal (I do note that when apologists for Israel write only of the aggressions against her, they have a singularly selective memory, and ignore clear and substantial Israeli aggressions), the U.S. gave no support, the Soviets threatened to drop bombs on London and Paris, and within days Israel, France, and England withdrew.

That began the end of British/French domination of the Gulf area - the U.S. happily moved in to fill the void. In 1951 Dr. Mossadegh was elected to power in Iran, and nationalized the British oil industry. Mossadegh was overthrown in 1956 in a CIA engineered coup, and the Shah of Iran installed by the Americans. He remained in power until 1979 when the Iranian Revolution occured, drove out the Shah, and ended the U.S. control of Iran. (The Shah had acted as a kind of U.S. funded "cop of the Middle East", with massive U.S. military funding - the irony was that the Americans never dreamed an internal opposition would emerge and had not equipped the Iranian government with tear gas and riot control gear - so that the Islamic students, when they demonstrated, had to be machine gunned, which proved so bloody that the Iranian troops defected to the Revolution).

With the Iranian Revolution we saw the rise of fundamental Islam to power in the very center of the Middle East, exerting great influence on surrounding Arab states. Those states were terrified that the "pure and fundamental" Islamic movement might spread to the Gulf oil states (such as Kuwait) and to Saudi Arabia. Thus when Iraq launched its attack on Iran on September 22, 1980, it had the support of the U.S., Britian - and even the Soviet Union. (Look at a map of the old Soviet Union and you can see that Iran and the Soviets had a common border - the Soviets had no interest in a radical Islamic state on their border, particularly in an area of the USSR where the Muslim population was substantial).

Over a million young men - Iranians and Iraqis - were killed in this war. In a war about which the UN did nothing, the U.S. did nothing, but which had the great value (from Washington's point of view) of weakening Iran.

We live in a hard world where those of us who are idealists, pacifists, socialists, etc., need to realize that our own values are used against us. Our horror at weapons of mass destruction is used by Clinton and Albright to make us look ONLY at Iraq, not at similar weapons (nuclear) held by Israel, or at our own nuclear weapons. Our horror at human rights abuses - which abound in Iraq - is used by people such as Albright to paint Saddam Hussein as Satan incarnate, conveniently forgetting that in Indonesia today the United States gives full support to a ruthless and corrupt government engaged in massive human rights abuses (of which East Timor is only one example). They assume that we won't do our homework, that posts such as this will not reach far, that we will not remember that Amnesty International, during the reign of the Shah of Iran, issued a blistering report that Iran had "the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civlian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief". That was a government the U.S. put in place, armed, and supported.

For those who are just entering the movement of "protest and struggle" it is important both to see that Saddam Hussein is undemocratic and ruthless - and also that he is a man who had the active support of the U.S. government when he engaged in a war in which a million lost their lives. Did the State Department call him a "mad man" then? Did they worry that chemical weapons might get into his hands? On the contrary, they gave him support, they shipped him the material.

The conflict with Iraq would exist is rooted in U.S. economic and power interests, not in any interest in human rights or any U.S. fear of germ warfare. (This is not to say that individuals within the Administration do not, in some cases, believe what they are saying - though certainly Albright knows much better. There are good people in all governments at all levels. But they are not the ones in charge)

Saddam is also a bit player in this drama. It helps Bill Clinton that Saddam Hussein can so easily be painted as evil - but it wouldn't matter if Saddam Hussein was a devout believer in democractic rights. Look at what the U.S. did to poor Dr. Mossadegh, at the active role it played the U.S. played in achieving the murder of Allende, at its role in Central America, etc., etc.

Not long ago I attended a meeting on NATO where a nice British military man, who made an excellent presentation of the case against NATO expansion, commented that our real hope was that more countries would come to share our democratic values "since democracies don't attack other countries". It sounded so wise that I believed it for half the day, until I remembered the U.S. invaded Indochina with a half million troops, and killed over two million Vietnamese over a ten year period - and we are, in theory, a democratic country. Or when I remembered that our "democratic government" did the things it did in Central America, in Chile, in the invasion of Panama (where for the first time in a major military action the press was not allowed near the action).

I do not mean to paint the United States as uniquely evil - it isn't. Its effort to control raw materials and oil is something any great power would do if it had the military force. It is in the nature of "power politics" as we understand them. In the long run - a very long run - we need to build a socialist movement which can reorganize and democratize how decisions are made and who makes them and for what ends. As we need a pacifist and peace movement which will move to disarm this country. (Which makes the October 19th War Resisters League's "Day Without the Pentagon" all the more timely).

What I am trying to do is to put the Iraq crisis in the right context. A thousand plausible excuses will be advanced by Clinton - or "almost plausible" excuses. For the murderous sanctions (more than a half million children dead in Iraq because of them), the pointless inspections, for meddling in Iraqi society until finally Saddam Hussein is removed and the U.S. can put in someone who can be relied on to do business with the U.S.

The Russian opposition to the U.S. actions is based on a very clear understanding of the power politics involved. The Russians can see clearly that if the United States can unilaterally (with the nominal help of Britain, Canada, Australia, and the blessing of Kuwait and Israel) change the government of Iraq to one that better suits its purpose, then it can do the same thing anywhere in the world.

The U.S., by acting outside the framework of the United Nations (while claiming to be carrying out old agreements which, themselves, were coerced) is seen as a threat to the national independence of ALL nations. And on this the Russians are right. As are the French and the Chinese. When they oppose Clinton they are doing so not because they support Saddam but because they fear the unlimited power of the "sole super power in the world".

Whether we can mobilize enough forces to block Clinton I do not know. I doubt it - I think he has backed himself into a corner. But even here the peace movement makes a mistake when it thinks that Bill Clinton is making the decisions. It has always been true in our country that the President was only a kind of politically acceptable head of State expressing the general will of the major economic forces - usually corporate. The real decisions aren't being made by a conspiracy, and conspiracy theories are a substitute for serious thought and effective action. They paralyze us - since if everything has been plotted out we have no role to play. Paranoia is the enemy of real politics. But the real decisions are made by the foreign policy experts around the Council on Foreign Relations, the "think tanks" which coordinate U.S. political and economic policy. Bill Clinton came to office to reflect precisely this grouping within the Democratic Party, a grouping with close ties to Wall Street. Decisions are NOT made by Congress, nor by public debate. The media has very closely limited the opposition views (when did you see Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn on one of the talk shows? Kissinger, yes, but Edward Said? Not on your life).

So any hope that a "moral appeal" to Clinton will work is wasted. What will work is organization, pressure, people in the streets, people meeting with their members of Congress. Clinton, to a great extent, is no more relevant to the current crisis than Saddam. There is not the slightest evidence on the record that Clinton - a smart, well informed man - has the courage to buck the powers that put him in office.

To the degree the peace movement gets dragged off into discussing which sanctions to keep and which to lift, it has been outmanuvered. Lift them all. Did Saddam cheat? Of course. Did the Israelis cheat on the Oslo Accords? Of course. (So, for that matter, did Arafat). What we have at the moment is "selective enforcement" and "selective morality". The best answer the peace movement can give is that until there are inspections of ALL sites for nuclear and biological weapons we refuse absolutely to permit the U.S. to dictate the conditions of any such inspections. That we do not trust the U.S. government. That the entire record of U.S. actions is the basis of our profound distrust. And that we reach this conclusion not because the U.S. is evil, but because the economic forces that hold power in this country are using the framework of the government for their own private objectives. People - good men and women - are trapped in this machinery of death. A mass movement against the war helps to liberate people inside the structure to argue quiety for our points (as happened in the Vietnam Peace movement).

And that the attack on Saddam Hussein is for only one reason - he is a powerful figure who threatens U.S. domination of oil in that region. It is not because of his weapons program or his human rights record. (It is in this sense that I say Saddam is a bit player - whoever took his place would face the same pressures).

The reason we need movements such as the War Resisters International, the International Peace Bureau, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, etc., is that such movements can, with hard work, and luck, create citizen's movements across borders. During our own Civil War in the last century it was the British working class which, even though the Union Blockade of the Confederacy had cut off the supplies of cotton and resulted in high unemployment in the mill towns, made clear they would not support British efforts to come to the aid of the Confederacy, break the Union Blockade and thus save slavery. There is such a thing as international solidarity. It may seem a weak weapon against the enormous power commanded by Clinton and Albright, but weak as it seems, it is uniquely powerful because it is honest.

Last, and again referring to Said's article, there is a shocking dehumanization of the Arab world, a contempt for the peoples who gave the West the very mathematical symbols (Arabic numerals) we use today. We hear talk of "nuking Saddam" or "going in and getting it over with" or "Bomb the bastards" - but we are talking about quite ordinary human beings, with quite ordinary lives, not so different from our own, worrying about their husbands or wives, about how their children did in school, about whether their husband is having an affair, about what to have for dinner, about planning for the next holiday, and then, in the midst of these ordinary concerns of daily life, comes an American smart bomb.

Do not let Albright and Clinton do this to our heads. Examine their arguements. Remember the children. The late A. J. Muste, of the American pacifist movement, said that he wanted an American foreign policy which was based on the needs of children. That needs to be our goal also today. Along with building a movement which can last beyond this immediate crisis and help change who makes decisions in this country and how they get made. Nothing less will work. Nothing less is worth your time and effort.