Revisiting History
Was the Iraq War necessary? Given the context of the time, it probably was.
Was the Iraq War executed well? Obviously not, or the U.S. would not still have so many troops there.
Why was the Iraq War necessary?
To answer this question we have to slip back in time and review the complex set of circumstances that led up to the invasion.
First, what was it about the regime of Saddam Hussein that made U.S. leaders think it was time for him to leave the world scene?
Well, Saddam was a so-so educated megalomaniac who pictured himself as the savior of the Arab world.
The Arab world at this point in its history is nearing its nadir. Gone are the fabulous centers of learning of 700 to 1,000 years ago. Gone are the great thinkers of philosophy, mathematics, and natural science. In their place, like a society caught in a time warp, is a cluster of nations that have fallen behind socially and economically, surpassed by the civilization that grew out of the Hellenic traditions and blossomed across Europe. It was the Europeans who underwent a religious Reformation and philosophical period of Enlightenment that leading to a Renaissance that developed into the Industrial Revolution, which literally changed the world and man’s relationship to it.
To the Arab world, to see all this progress and to not be its leader, much less not even to participate in it, not participate in it, much less be its leader, is and was a crushing humiliation. And in the Arab culture, as with most of the non-Occidental societies, humiliation is the worst that can happen to an individual, a village, a tribe, or a nation.
So, here the United States was presented with a megalomaniac, who embodiesd the Arab feeling of humiliation and had , with delusions of grandeur that under his aegis he will be the new Saladin to rule the known world, or at least the Middle East. (Granted that Saladin was a Kurd, but he was the Islamic leader that most modern Middle Eastern Islamic leaders want to emulate – his was the time of the great libraries and the great intellectuals and philosophers). This dictator’s country also had the technical capability to create weapons of mass destructions. He already had developed and actually used various chemical weapons. He had been playing around with various biological weapons, but probably was a tad short of the research needed to weaponize them. And then there were the nuclear weapons. Back in 1990, he got awfully close to making one, but the first Persian Gulf War knocked his plans a kilter.
However, by the end of 2002, he had pretty circumvented most the sanctions for his and his sons’ own personal benefit. And the whole sanctions regime would probably implode and collapse within the next 12 months. Such was the greed of people wanting something that Iraq could give them: money or oil. So, by 2003, we had this idiot just champing at the bit to have the sanctions imposed withdrawn that were to keeping him from developing these weapons on a mass scale. If only the United Nations and its pesky inspectors would go away and drop the Security Council demands that he pledge to be a good boy, and not go building WMDs, and definitely stop using any of his weapons against his neighbors.
The choice then became whether the U.S. would allow the sanctions regime to collapse and the Iraq situation revert to status quo ante the Persian Gulf War. Well, the U.S. still harbored some hopes that the U.N. could become a viable arbiter for the peaceful resolution of the world’s problems. Only, as with all behavior problems, its efforts to change them have to be backed by a credible “or else” option.
For 12 years, a U.S.-led coalition had been giving the “or else” to U.N.’s ultimata to change credibility by flying and responding to attacks and provocations over areas of sky in Iraq that the U.N. had decided were areas that Iraq aircraft were not allowed to fly. These flights were part of an effort to protect not only the inhabitants of those regions from Iraqi military air attacks but also to keep the Iraqi military from threatening its northern and southern neighbors. These flights by American, British, and, for awhile, French warplanes were flying under the U.N. flag to enforce not only the ceasefire resolution at the end of the first Gulf War, but also to protect minorities in Iraqi who were being brutally suppressed by Hussein’s goons.
The atrocities committed by Hussein, his sons, and their henchmen on their own people have been well documented over the last five years and the related deaths numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Tens of thousands of those deaths occurred annually during the Butcher of Baghdad’s nearly 30-year reign.
However, maintaining these forces that essentially are flying potential combat missions on a daily basis was not a cheap proposition and it was the U.S. who bore the lion’s share of the financial burden. It especially was not those people who were its primary benefactors.
This, of course, is where the ugly and evil word “oil” enters the equation.
Unfortunately for the world, the largest deposits of petroleum seem to lie beneath the sands of Arabia and the old Persian and Mesopotamian homelands. Yes, there are substantial deposits in the North Sea, the South China Sea, in Siberia and the nations of the Caspian Sea, in Africa, in North and South America, but the sweetest oil seems to come from the area surrounding the Arabian Gulf. It is the most accessible, because there is not much to disturb but except a few itinerant tribesmen passing through with their camels and their tents. There are no gleaming metropolises here, nor any hubs of great industry churning out products that raise the standard of living not only for the rich but for the common man as well. Not much in the way of people or development, just a lot of sand.
Unfortunately, as the world progresses from the industrial age to the information age and the 21st Century, much of what powers those the world economies is fueled by gasoline, kerosene, and diesel fuel. Some economies are more dependent on oil from this particular region than others. Most of Europe becomes dependent on Middle East crude, as do the Tigers of Asia, to which now can be added China and India. As the world continues to develop, its economies become increasingly intertwined and the supply of oil becomes increasingly inadequate.
Any threat to the smooth and peaceful extraction of oil is going to be deemed a life-threatening event to any nation whose economic umbilical is tied to it.
As in the Cold War, Europe, Japan, and other nations look expectantly to the United States, which came out of the Second World War relatively unscathed from the scars of that horrific conflict and with its seemingly huge economic power that seems to be the engine that drives the world economy intact, to shoulder – with its parallel huge military power – the burdens of being the protector of the peace and the protector of the smooth flow of this commodity to the rest of the world.
Only Hussein tended to make things jump off the track.
First, he invaded Iran and after eight years of a bloody stalemate, decided that wasn’t such a good idea after all. Yes, the U.S. and other Arab nations favored the Iraqis in this dispute, mainly because Iran, ruled by the mullahs and ayatollahs, had become a theocratic nightmare that felt the U.S. was the Great Satan and should be destroyed. Besides, there was the minor humiliation of Iran violating years of diplomatic tradition and seizing the American Embassy and holding its occupants as hostages. (Note: This technically is an act of war, but the U.S. ignored that little part of international law.)
We won’t go through the disastrous and muddled attempt to rescue the hostages that so mesmerized the Americans’ attention for the 444 days of their captivity. The U.S. was looking for a little pay back, and so what if Saddam was an evil person, he was fighting the right enemy. In that respect, sort of, it was similar to the U.S.’s alliance with Stalin’s Soviet Union in World War II. Stalin may have been a totally reprehensible person and despot, but he was fighting the right enemy and it was better let him use his millions to grind down the Nazi war machine than to have young Americans pay that price.
It is the old credo: that the enemy of my enemy is my friend – at least for the moment.
So, not only did Saddam’s megalomania pose a threat his neighbors in the Gulf, all of whom maintained tiny militaries in comparison to the Iraqis (except for Iran, Syria and Turkey) and looked for protection under the American umbrella, but also his religion seemed to compel him to want to wipe out Jews - no matter where they are found. Now after Hitler’s nearly successful attempt to wipe out European Jewry, the Europeans – who have never been partial to the Jews because they were the enablers of European hypocrisy for almost two millennia – agreed to a plan to settle the remainder of the survivors in their ancient homeland in Palestine. Even though the Jews have been in Palestine for at least three millennia, the Arabs – who themselves are relative newcomers to area – were upset with the Europeans pawning off their Jews in what the Arabs perceive as “their” territory. However, the nation of Israel was formed, however, and the Arabs have spent the better part of the last 60 years thinking of ways to destroy Israel and push all of the Jews into the Mediterranean., where presumably they will all drown.
Unfortunately, for the Arabs, the United States – partly because it has the largest number population of Jews in the world living in it and partly because we really believe that the Jews should have some place they can safely call home, without being the local scapegoats for everything and occasionally having murderous riots launched to beat up on them – decided that it would be the big brother protector of this small nation of less than four millions. The Americans are just not going to sit by and watch another Holocaust. ... We did that once and it left us still kicking ourselves for letting it happen the first time. Besides, in many ways the Israelis are like us and, unlike most of their neighbors, at least their government is a functioning (or is that disfunctioning, it is hard to tell some times) democracy, unlike most of its neighbors.
But Hussein, mostly for his own domestic consumption (known as creating an outside devil – something we in the West are not immune to doing) but also for his own aggrandizement thinks thought it would really go a long way to wipe out the humiliation the Arabs have suffered over the years (especially in the four wars where the Israelis basically kicked butt on them) if he could figure out a way to wipe out the Israelis.
Well, the first thing he did, after the Iraqis and other Arab nations had their collective butt handed to them by the Israelis in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, was to go for the asymmetrical option and funds Palestinian groups who are were taking the fight daily to the Israelis in low intensity combat (suicide bombers, random rocket and mortar attacks, kidnappings and assassinations, sniper attacks and drive-by shootings). Lurking in his mind, however, was a plan to use that the ultimate weapon those dastardly Americans invented. Even if he died in the process, he would go down in history as a great Muslim martyr who died in a war to crush the infidel.
Besides, if he got his hands on a nuclear bomb, then he could have held hold it over the heads of the Arab tribal leaders in the neighborhood as a great big club and make them dance to his tune. That would have impact on the flow of oil from the Gulf, which would have impacted the big, bumbling U.S.’s economic partners. Then, the U.S. would be called upon to drag out the old military force option and wave its big stick around.
In 1990, he had tried direct action to gain control of more of the Gulf Oil, but again his military had its collective butt handed to them in Kuwait in 1991 by the overwhelming force of a U.N.-sponsored coalition led by the United States. In a funny way, he was able to portray this humiliating defeat of his troops as a victory, because had the situation been reversed, he surely would be putting the head of GHW Bush on a pike and parading it around the square. Since that didn’t happen to his head, then obviously Allah, peace be upon him, was protecting him.
The Gulf War also got him saddled him with a series of UN resolutions designed to de-fang the Mesopotamian viper. To all of which, he did what he could to defy and skirt his way around them.
In December 1998, he essentially told the UN inspectors to take a hike and leave, which resulted in President Bill Clinton ordering four days of aerial bombing and missiles strikes in an exercise called Operation Desert Fox. All that accomplished was to get the UN inspectors permanently banned from Iraq.
At the same time, at the urging of President Clinton, Congress passed a bicameral and bipartisan resolution for it to be the stated policy of the United States government to seek out and pursue a way to terminate the rule of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Come the fall of 2002, the UN Security Council unanimously passed its 19th resolution advising Saddam to come clean about all his various WMD programs or face the consequences. In December 2002, we saw aee this huge document dump by the Iraqis. After review of those documents, the chief of the UN inspectors, Hans Blix, said they proved nothing and did not begin to meet the requirements laid out in the UN resolution. In short, Blix said the Iraqis were lying again and trying to be evasive.
Why did the Iraqis let the inspectors back and do the document dump? It wasn’t out the goodness of their hearts that is for sure. What had changed from January 1999 and January 2003?
Well, the big change was that in January 2003, there were increasing numbers of U.S. troops sitting in camps in the Kuwait desert. We are not talking a small group; we are talking 170,000 American Soldiers, along with about 30,000 British Tommies and a smattering of forces from some 44 other nations ranging from Italy to Lithuania. Notably absent from the ranks are the French, Germans, Russians, and the Chinese, as well as most of the other Arab nations. The thing about this coalition, whether you want to believe it or not, was that it was hoping to put some spine into the UN and prove that its “or else” threats were not just empty air.
Now, the question came: Do you use this force or not?
While the French, the Russians, and the Chinese had signed off on the previous resolutions that threatened “or else”, this the trio was had cold feet on No. 20 because it might upset their new contracts they had negotiated in violation of previous sanctions resolutions and that would never do. Besides, in a few months all support for the sanctions would collapse and the Russians, Chinese, and French could go back into the very lucrative weapons trade with the Iraqis.
And if the Iraqis did come up with a device to vaporize Tel Aviv, they could always blame the Americans for failing to take any action.
To cover Tony Blair’s butt, GW Bush agrees that is a good idea to try to get a 20th UN Security Council resolution authorizing military force. It was not that the previous 19 resolutions had not either authorized military force or at least threatened it, it was just another ‘i’ to dot and a ‘t’ to cross, to make sure that if anything went wrong, then the blame would not fall on just the Americans and the British. However, since the Chinese, the French, and the Russians all hold vetoes on the Security Council, the resolution stands stood no chance of passing.
With summer approaching, Turkey balking at letting the Americans launch a second front through its territory with the 4th Mechanized Infantry Division and with some 200,000 troops sitting in the Kuwaiti desert, Bush and Rumsfeld grew impatient, or realized that the French, the Russians, and the Chinese had no intention of letting the UN become a truly effective organization that could impose its vision on recalcitrant nations. Bush and Co. looked back at the previous 19 UNSCRs and discovered they held all the authorization for the Coalition to strike. Besides, it would be awfully expensive and degrade the combat readiness if the juggernaut was forced to sit and wait until summer passed.
So, given the fact that Saddam Hussein’s regime was starving his own people, murdering tens of thousands annually, oppressing millions, merely waiting to reopen his weapons labs and rebuild his WMD facilities, funding terrorist operations against the United States through the Palestinians, flirting with the people who had pulled off the 9/11 attack on US interests (see documentation from the Iraq Perspectives Project), had already attempted to assassinate the sitting president’s father, defied the UN by basically giving it the finger, and last but not least, its leader was basically a despicable person, George Bush and Company decided that indeed Hussein posed a clear and present danger to the health and wealth of the world and it was time to depose him.
Deposing Saddam him was the easy part. It was the aftermath that Donald Rumsfeld totally dropped the ball. To him, the Iraq war was just a testing ground for his new lighter, faster, more mobile, interconnected military force that substituted firepower for manpower. Despite the fact that the U.S. State Department actually had a plan for implementation post-bellum; it was ignored, in fact, disdained. In a bureaucratic feudal turf war, Donald Rumsefeld’s DoD told those stuffed shirts at State to take a hike and the DoD’s program of military shock and awe would sort things out. He disregarded the Pottery Shop rule and had illusions about being able to replace a vacuum with a non-existent laissezze-faire anything-goes solution.
In fumbling in the aftermath of the offensive phase of the war, Rumsfeld gave those who, for whatever reason, are predisposed to dislike, nay hate, GW Bush, ample ammunition to attack the former governor of Texas. It is ironic that the first president who has had the courage and resolution to stand up to the relentless attacks against Americans, their businesses, and their overseas representatives and say “Enough. It stops here. Beyond this we will respond with more than the niceties of our legal system. The gloves are coming off and we will strike back and hit hard,” gets such harsh treatment.
It is as if, as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto observed almost 70 years ago, the terrorists had awoken a terrible sleeping dragon and had made it angry. The dragon was awake now and tired of the pinprick attacks. It had stared down the Bear without much thanks and now was going to look out for itself.
In retrospect, the WMDs were there, especially the capability to bring production facilities rapidly on line as well as resume the pursuit of the Golden Fleece of a nuclear device. If you don’t believe that, I beg that you read the Duelfer Report in its entirety and not just the news stories summarizing inaccurately its findings.
In addition, Saddam Hussein was indeed proven to be a very malevolent despot who deserved to hang at the hands of his people.
The threat of his regime is now gone, but the threat from Iran has never gone away and if the U.S. can be run out of Iraq by asymmetrical warfare, financed in good part by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, then it will be the mullahs who have driven the Great Satan from the region and it is their time to rise, as the Xerxes of old and restore the Persian empire to is rightful place as the leader of the world, but especially the Islamic world.
If the bumbling bums of the U.S. cannot pull a rabbit out of their hat, as they seem to be doing today, then who will challenge other despots and threats to the economic stability of the world?
What it really comes down to the end of the day is all the Americans want to do is trade with other countries and sell them stuff – at a profit, of course.
PS: We seem to be winning.
