My Point of View on Iraq

A variety of folks have asked for clarification in regards to this comment I made a few days ago on Iraq: "Since we have no credible reason for attacking Iraq which takes into account our own sordid history with Hussein, or the catastrophic effects a war against Iraq will likely have this time around, a quickly manufactured and uncontroversial pretext would be a gift for the war-hungry Bush cabal."

To elaborate on my perception of the situation in Iraq, here's something I wrote to a colleague a few months ago (with footnotes, too!)...

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For some time now, the Bush administration has harped on the fact that Iraq maintains “weapons of mass destruction” and serves as a threat to the security of the United States. That no official can link any substantial act of aggression by Iraq against the United States in recent years does not seem to be an important point for some reason.[1] Provocative rhetoric on Iraqi "lawlessness" abounds, but hard evidence against the nation is lacking. Nevertheless, CIA director George Tenet recently warned that we should not “dismiss the possibility of state sponsorship” of terrorism from Iraq. The U.S. government, Tenet tells us, is going to wait and “see where the evidence takes us,” but one gets the impression that this search for evidence against Iraq is being conducted to serve a certain end: to find, as quickly as possible, a credible pretext that can be used to justify a full-fledged assault by the American military.[2] To fill the evidentiary vacuum, countless analysts continue to invoke the specter of an Iraqi regime hell-bent on unleashing their weapons against us.

While Hussein maintains a small arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, there is little agreement on his potential for deployment.[3] Since UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998, the lack of intelligence has precluded any meaningful consensus on Iraq's capabilities, as well as its willingness to use them. The inspection teams have been denied reentry into Iraq since then, partly because the U.S. was using the inspection teams for spying, and Iraq continues to waffle over when and how they will be allowed back in.[4]

Even though Washington has little evidence to back up claims of an imminent threat of Iraqi weapons deployment, they are right on one thing: Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and has always been a tyrant. From his conduct in the Iran-Iraq war, to his multiple suppressions and outright slaughters of several Kurdish and Shiite rebellions within Iraq’s borders, to the invasion of Kuwait, up until now, the common denominator of his reign has been ruthlessness. However, political expediency seems to govern the U.S. relationship towards Hussein more than any concern about the Iraqi people or a vague stance on human rights.

During much of the 1980s, the U.S. actively supported Hussein's reign, often by helping him acquire the armaments and materials to perpetrate his worst crimes. Of most significance, the U.S. government feigned ignorance while he was gassing his population and kick-starting his biological weapons program, the latter done with the aid of the Department of Commerce and companies like American Type Culture Collection.[5]

Thus, Hussein’s atrocities are rolled out for public display only when it is convenient and when it fits in with the larger goals of Washington’s military and political establishment. The contention that we are going after Iraq because it is a future or potential terrorist threat is a smokescreen to mask our wider goals in the Middle East. This broader campaign is based on “perpetuating Western hegemony and protecting economic interests from real or imagined threats,” according to Said K. Aburish, a Palestinian-born journalist and author of A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite. In plainer language: our policy is propelled by the desirability of securing further control over the Persian Gulf's oil resources. Understanding this point is crucial in order to adequately grasp the aims of American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Along similar lines, the global and military intelligence organization STRATFOR reported in August 2001, well before the attacks on 9/11, that “a future blow to the Iraqi military-industrial complex is a prerequisite to achieving Washington's ultimate objective in the Middle East.” It contended that the U.S. wanted “a more flexible foreign policy no longer preoccupied almost solely with Saddam,” which meant a transition to a “regional approach to stability, enlisting the aid of its Gulf allies while scaling back its overseas military commitments and increasing oil production.”[6] Clearly, our preoccupation with Iraq predates the rabid concern with terrorism that dominates (at least in rhetoric) current policy.

Isolated from any further considerations, this analysis still might leave the proponents of “attack Iraq” unconvinced that a campaign to remove Hussein is not the best course of action. Nevertheless, that is precisely because there is little acknowledgment, much less discussion, within the media about the disastrous effects that a “Gulf War, Part III” could have on the Iraqi population, the situation within the Middle East, or the general state of the world.

A war against Iraq would be an arduous affair that would likely inflict thousands of American casualties, perhaps in Vietnam-like proportions. Varying military scenarios – from provoking a military coup, to outsourcing the war by arming opposition forces, or initiating a full-scale invasion requiring some 200,000 ground troops – have been proposed to overthrow Hussein.[7] Of course, no matter what route the United States military decides to take, the civilian population of Iraq will be on the worst end of this violence, much like in the American-lead Persian Gulf War.

Here it might be useful to recall that war.

Due largely to the media's obsession with the performance, not destructive power, of "smart weapons," the viewing public were given the impression that buildings, military installations, and other justifiable targets were being destroyed during the Iraqi war, not human lives. The preoccupation with military hardware sanitized the bombing into a public spectacle that depicted a conflict with few casualties and consequences. Leslie H. Gelb, writing in the New York Times during the air attack, labeled it, “Iraq, the Movie,” with “glamorous stars, non-stop virtual action and thus far not a single dead body on the screen.”[8]

Ironically, despite the American military’s insistence that extraordinary efforts were made to protect civilian life, the Iraqi civil infrastructure was crippled precisely because the bombing was so effective. The notion that the smart bombing had allowed for a sort of humanitarian assault was quickly discredited once credible analysts embarked on their post war visits through the country. A Harvard University medical team, for instance, toured Iraq after the war and found that “the worst civilian damage occurred not as a result of smart bombs going astray or hitting the wrong target but, conversely, when they hit precisely what they were aimed at in the coalition’s attempts to destroy Iraq’s generators and electrical grid.”[9] A similar bit of analysis came from William M. Arkin, then with Greenpeace International, who remarked following his visit that, “You can’t separate neat and clean bombing from postwar deaths. People just died in a different way because of the efficiency of the attacks.”[10]

Following the war, the imposition of a UN sanctions program was intended to reel-in Hussein’s Ba’ath regime, and hopefully undermine its power, but it wound up further devastating the country’s health, education, and food capabilities. Hundreds of thousands of “excess deaths” are attributed, at least partially, to the effects of the sanctions since their initiation.[11] In 1998, Denis Halliday, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq and director of the Oil for Food sanction program, resigned his post in protest and called the continued imposition of the sanctions a “genocidal destruction of a nation.”[12] His successor, Hans von Sponeck, resigned two years later with a similar sense of disgust. “How long,” von Sponeck bitterly asked following his departure, “should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?”[13]

The noxious mix of sanctions, war, and Hussein’s rule has decimated a nation that once boasted one of the best public health and welfare systems in the Middle East.[14] A future attack on Iraq could only make the situation worse and is precisely why several prominent opposition groups within Iraq oppose a military attack by the United States and its allies.

“That the regime is terrorist and has destructive weapons is something no one disputes,” says Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a spokesman for the Daawa Party, a Shiite opposition group within Iraq, “but history has shown that bombing, destruction and sanctions do not lead to its collapse, but further compound the suffering of the Iraqi people.” Similarly, a spokesman from another opposition group, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), argues that “democratic change…cannot be brought about by means of foreign conspiracies, indiscriminate bombing, or the plotting of military coups” because it would “inflict enormous harm on the Iraqi people and lead to a repeat of the tragedies we have suffered for so long.”[15]

Besides massive destruction to Iraqi civilian life, other, perhaps more sinister results of an attack against Iraq might be in store. Being that Hussein does have access to some weapons of mass destruction, it is likely that he will not refrain from using them if his regime is in danger of collapse.[16] Should this happen, one must recognize the potential – perhaps, probability – that a missile with biological or chemical agents would be fired at American troops or allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. The response to such an attack would likely be nuclear, especially in light of Israel’s capabilities and proclivities, as well as the Bush administration’s recent admission that nuclear weapons are a viable option, as revealed in the leaked Nuclear Posture Review.[17] A development of this sort in the Middle East could have devastating consequences and would preclude any hope of asserting “stability” within the region, even if Hussein was removed from power.

In the end, the current administration needs to be mindful that war cannot be wielded like a scalpel to excise “evil” wherever it may lie. Unless there are overwhelming arguments for resorting to war, it should be avoided in favor of diplomatic solutions that have not been adequately pursued, and at times purposefully avoided, with Iraq.[18]

The burden has not been met by those who urge an assault against Iraq, by any reasonably evaluative criteria that takes into account our history with “Sad-dam” or our larger role in the Middle East. Moreover, the lack of an overriding, immediate motive for attacking Iraq cannot be reconciled with the catastrophic effects such a war will likely have.

Notes:

1. "Iraq: The Phantom Threat," Christian Science Monitor, January 23, 2002; "No Link Between Hijacker, Iraq Found, U.S. Says," Washington Post, May 1, 2002.

2. "CIA Chief: Iran, Iraq May Be Linked to Sept. 11 Attacks," FoxNews.com, March 20, 2002.

3. "Iraq: the myth and the reality," Guardian, March 15, 2002; "U.S. Government White Paper: Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs," U.S. State Department, February 13, 1998.

4. On the U.S. using inspections team for spying, see: "Unscom 'infiltrated by spies', BBC News, March 23, 1999; "U.S. Aides Say U.N. Team Helped to Install Spy Device in Iraq," NY Times, January 8, 1999. On Iraq's recent flirtation with allowing weapons inspectors back into the country, see: "Iraq Ready to Let Inspectors Back In," Guardian, April 30, 2002.

5. "Iraq Purchased Anthrax From US Company: Baghdad Admitted 'Weaponizing' The Biological Agent, A UN Inspector Says," Vancouver Sun, October 22, 2001; "US Companies Sold Iraq Billions Of NBC Weapons Materials," The Progressive, April 1998.

6. "US Prepares for War with Iraq," Stratfor.com, August 8, 2001.

7. "US Targets Saddam," Guardian, February 14, 2002; "Bush administration confirms plans for war against Iraq," WSWS.org, February 16, 2002.

8. "Iraq, The Movie," New York Times, February 3, 1991.

9. Taylor, Philip M. War and Media: Propaganda and Persuasion in the Gulf War (New York, 1998): 219.

10. "Tactical Bombing of Iraqi Forces Outstripped Value of Strategic Hits, Analyst Contends," Aviation Week & Space Technology, January 27, 1992: 63.

11. It should be emphasized that children have been the party most hurt by the imposition of sanctions, in some estimates accounting for nearly half of the overall deaths attributed to the embargo. One study, “Morbidity and Mortality Among Iraqi Children from 1990 Through 1998: Assessing the Impact of the Gulf War and Economic Sanctions,” by Richard Garfield of Columbia University, found that “106,106 excess deaths from 1990 through the first quarter of 1998 is [a] conservative estimate of excess mortality among under five-year-olds.” For a general overview of many of studies and reports on the effects of the sanctions, see: "Effects of Sanctions on Iraq," Online Journalism Review, December 28, 2001.

12. "Where Is Our Shame? Iraqis Are Dying And We Continue Our Sanctions," Chicago Tribune, May 29, 2000.

13. "UN Sanctions Rebel Resigns," BBC News, February 14, 2000.

14. "Iraqi Health System ‘Decrepit’ Says SLU Researcher After Visit," St. Louis University Publications, August 2, 1999; "Iraqi Health System Close to Collapse Says WHO Director-General," World Health Organization, February 27,1997; "Ten years of sanctions take toll on Iraqi people," IFRC, August 18, 2000.

15. "Targeting Baghdad: What the Iraqi opposition thinks," Lebanon Daily Star, November 30, 2001. For related comments, see also: "Kurds oppose US attack on Saddam," Dawn, March 20, 2002.

16. "The Coming War with Iraq," OpenDemocracy.net, February 20, 2002. For a different twist on the nuclear threat, see also: "Attacking Iraq Brings Nuke Holocaust Closer," Counterpunch, March 19, 2002.

17. On the threat of nuclear weapon use by Israel, see: "Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Threat to Peace," Centre for Research on Globalisation, March 3, 2002; on the Nuclear Posture Review, see: "Secret Plan Outlines the Unthinkable," LA Times, March 10, 2002.

18. "Iraq: There Are Alternatives to a Military Option," Counterpunch, January 10, 2002.