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CounterPunch
November
18, 2002
Why Bush
Wants to Destroy Saddam:
Two Fake Reasons; Three Real Ones
by BILL CHRISTISON
FORMER CIA
POLITICAL ANALYST
Why does the Bush administration want to go to
war against Iraq? There are at least five reasons that people
in the United States, and other countries too, should be debating.
(In addition to these five, three other
reasons are worth mentioning whose importance is impossible to
measure. The first is the machismo of U.S. leaders when faced
with tyrants of little real power--Qaddafi and Castro come to
mind as well the Iraqi president--who persist in self-destructively
retaliating, as best they can, against U.S. policies they dislike.
The second is a desire, in the case of George W. Bush, to get
rid of a hateful tinhorn who may have tried to assassinate Bush's
father, and who has successfully beaten the odds by outlasting
Bush's father in office. The third is the distraction that war
and the threat of war with Iraq offered from the corporate scandals
that might otherwise spread more easily right into the White
House. These factors almost certainly contribute some weight
to Bush's and Vice-President Cheney's desire for war against
Iraq, but it is simply not possible for anyone outside the White
House to know how much.)
Let's consider in more detail the five
reasons on which speculation might be more productive. The five
are:
1. The expressed desire to "disarm"
Iraq, specifically to eliminate Iraq's possible weapons of mass
destruction (WMD), as well as any potential for their future
production.
2. The expressed desire to "introduce
democracy" into Iraq after a U.S.-enforced regime change
has taken effect.
3. The desire for greater U.S. control
of Iraqi (and thus indirectly other Middle Eastern) oil resources.
4. The desire to extend the U.S. drive
for global domination by eliminating the hindrance to this drive
that the present government of Iraq constitutes.
5. The desire that a conquest of Iraq
become the first phase of a "strategic transformation"
of the entire Middle East.
Only the first two above--the disarmament
or WMD issue and the administration's stated desire to introduce
democracy into Iraq--are reasons that the administration chooses
to advertise loudly and publicly. And these two are probably
the least important reasons in the administration's own view
for going to war. The Bush administration in all probability
is advertising these two reasons so heavily at least in part
to cover up the other three reasons, which it is less
willing to talk about.
Specifically on the WMD issue, the U.S.
now threatens to launch preemptive wars against nations trying
to develop such weapons. This is a policy change of extreme importance.
In the 57 years since the age of nuclear weapons began, the U.S.
has deliberately decided, time after time, not to launch
preemptive wars against nations developing the most important
type of WMD, nuclear weapons. We have since the late 1940s rejected
preemptive war against the Soviet Union, China, England, France,
Israel, India, and Pakistan. If the U.S. is really concerned
about the further spread of nuclear weapons, we should understand
that other nations--not just Iraq--will over the long run never
go along with U.S. desires until the U.S., Israel, and other
nuclear powers themselves show a real willingness to negotiate
seriously on creating an entire nuclear-weapons-free world.
This is precisely what the U.S. should do.
In this connection, the recent actions
of North Korea are quite instructive. Caught pretty much red-handed
by U.S. intelligence in lying about their nuclear weapons program,
the North Koreans brazenly told the U.S. something like this:
"Sure, we have a weapons program. You Americans already
have thousands of these weapons, so why shouldn't we have some,
too?" It's not clear yet how this specific case with North
Korea will work out, but to repeat: over the long run many other
nations will never go along with U.S. desires on nuclear
weapons unless the U.S. and other nuclear powers agree to give
up their own.
The problem with preemptive war goes
even deeper. Wars inevitably kill innocent people, often in large
numbers. That's an obvious cliché, but it is true. Even
if Congress gave the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence
community unlimited resources and reorganized the complete intelligence
apparatus of the country so that it became infinitely more efficient
that it's ever been, one thing is crystal clear: IT IS BEYOND
BELIEF THAT THE U.S. WOULD EVER HAVE INTELLIGENCE GOOD ENOUGH
TO MAKE LAUNCHING A PREEMPTIVE WAR MORALLY ACCEPTABLE. There
is always an element of guesswork with respect to a potential
enemy's intentions, and those intentions can change instantly--and
at the last moment.
This question of intentions is vital.
It is not enough, despite the Bush administration's arguments
to the contrary, to know that some possible enemy possesses and
has the capability to use weapons of mass destruction.
You need to know--and know for sure--the intentions of
that possible enemy as well. Even if you have a 90 percent degree
of confidence in your judgment of what another country, or a
sub-national group, truly intends to do, initiating a preemptive
war and killing innocent people is still a prohibitively immoral
action. You should also understand that even your 90 percent
degree of confidence is nothing but a guess. Any way you slice
it, you are killing people on the basis of a guess. And to believe
that any nation's intelligence services can ever provide a 100
percent degree of confidence is just one more form of arrogance.
The third, fourth, and fifth reasons
listed above--those that the administration does not want
to advertise very much--are the ones that will most likely lead
the U.S. into a war against Iraq regardless of the degree to
which Baghdad cooperates in implementing the new U.N. resolution
on disarmament. With respect to the third reason, oil, Iraq has,
after Saudi Arabia, the next-largest known oil reserves in the
Middle East, and U.S. oil and other corporations that are friends
and supporters of Bush and Cheney would be delighted to see a
regime change in Iraq that resulted in a government more subservient
to the United States. It seems fairly evident that Bush and Cheney
would also be delighted to please them.
The fourth reason listed is perhaps even
more important than oil. Iraq is almost certainly regarded in
the administration as the first of several major hindrances to
the U.S. drive for global hegemony and domination. The other
two nations in President Bush's "axis of evil" (and
others to be added) will, in good time, presumably also have
to be subjugated or otherwise neutralized.
The fifth and last reason why the U.S.
government wants to go to war, and one that the Bush administration
really doesn't want to publicize, is the desire on the
part of some senior U.S. officials, and no doubt most senior
officials in the present government of Israel as well, to completely
overturn, by military action if necessary, the status quo
that has existed in the Arab nations of the Middle East for the
past several decades. In the U.S., these senior officials are
led by Vice-President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
and the number-two and number-three men in the Defense Department,
Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith.
On September 22, 2002, the New York
Times Magazine carried a detailed study of Wolfowitz. According
to this profile, Wolfowitz "has an almost missionary sense
of America's role. In the current case, [the Middle East,] that
means a vision of an Iraq not merely purged of cataclysmic weaponry,
not merely a threat disarmed, but an Iraq that becomes a democratic
cornerstone of an altogether new Middle East. Wolfowitz's moralistic
streak may explain the affinity between the born-again and resolutely
unintellectual president and this man he calls 'Wolfie.' A senior
official who has watched the two men interact says that Wolfowitz
and the president have reinforced each other in their faith in
'a strategic transformation of the whole region.' "
This kind of thinking by Wolfowitz and
the president is disturbing, to say the least. The concept of
encouraging greater democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere
should be acceptable only if it is done by peaceful means. Whatever
kind and quality of democracy develops in any country should
be brought about largely by the people in that country. It is
criminal to go around the world introducing by military force,
and killing people to do it, something that we in our American
wisdom define as "democracy." Our own version of democracy
is quite incomplete and quite imperfect, and we should be humble
enough to realize that, and also humble enough to let other people
around the world do it their own way. Above all, it should not
be necessary that one prerequisite of any other country's "democracy"
be that it remain perpetually subservient to the United States--which
would seem to be one aspect of the kind of "democracy"
that Wolfowitz and perhaps Rumsfeld and Bush himself would like
to see throughout the Arab world.
The precise extent of support in the
Israeli government for this concept that regime change in Iraq
should be the first stage of a "strategic transformation"
of the entire Middle East is unclear. But the evidence strongly
suggests there is at least some support. It is clearly not in
Sharon's interest to play an overt and active role in pushing
the U.S. in this direction, so there is not a lot of information
easily available on this subject. On the other hand, Uri Avnery,
a leading Israeli peace activist who opposes the occupation and
founded Gush Shalom in the early 1990s, makes a fairly
good case that Sharon himself does favor the transformation by
force of the Muslim Middle East. Before becoming a peace activist,
Avnery wrote two extensive biographical studies of Sharon, with
Sharon's cooperation. Commenting on the various schemes of Wolfowitz
and others in Washington, Avnery wrote in early September of
2002:
A grandiose, world-embracing and logical
design. What does it remind me of? Indeed the style sounds vaguely
familiar. In the early '80s, I heard about several plans like
this from Ariel Sharon (which I published at the time.) His head
was full of grand designs for restructuring the Middle East,
the overthrow of regimes and installing others in their stead,
moving a whole people (the Palestinians) and so forth. I can't
help it, but the winds blowing now in Washington remind me of
Sharon. I have absolutely no proof that the Bushies got their
ideas from him, even if all of them seem to have been mesmerized
by him. But the style is the same.
On the question of urging the U.S. into
a war against Iraq, an even more recent article by Avnery says
that the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. is pushing the Bush administration
to start a war. Also on the question of starting the war, the
Christian Science Monitor of August 30, 2002 carried an
article under the headline, "Israel Sees Opportunity in
Possible U.S. Strike on Iraq." In this article, the Israeli
deputy defense minister stated that, "If the Americans do
not do this now [that is, start the war], it will be harder to
do it in the future. And as deputy defense minister, I can tell
you that the United States will receive any assistance it needs
from Israel."
On October 1, 2002, Akiva Eldar, a leading
commentator in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, who opposes
the 35-year-old occupation of Palestinian territories, wrote
an article detailing the activities in Israel in 1996 of two
Americans who now hold very senior positions in the Bush administration,
Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. These two "joined a small
group of researchers who were asked to help Benjamin Netanyahu
in his first steps as prime minister" after his election
in 1996. The document they prepared for Netanyahu, according
to Eldar, "presents an ambitious plan for a U.S.-Israeli
partnership --not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes."
It even included "plans for Israel to help restore the Hashemite
throne in Iraq"--that is, to help bring about regime change
in Iraq and restore a monarchy there. (That's a truly superior
way to introduce democracy!) The article goes on to show that
in September 2002 Perle, one of the American experts and now
a key Pentagon adviser, organized a briefing for top U.S. defense
leaders on how to transform the Middle East that included a graphic
labeling, among other things, Palestine as Israel, Jordan as
Palestine, and a new Iraq as "the Hashemite Kingdom."
This may not yet represent official U.S. policy, but it indicates
that Perle and, no doubt, his Defense Department colleague Douglas
Feith are pressing in Washington for the same thing now that
they were urging on Netanyahu six years ago in Israel. If or
when a U.S.-Israeli partnership with such goals does become official
U.S. policy, it will mean a new era of colonialism for the entire
Middle East--a colonialism dominated by the U.S. and Israel.
It is difficult to imagine a better recipe
for perpetual war.
Bill Christison
joined the CIA in 1950, and served on the analysis side of the
Agency for 28 years. From the early 1970s he served as National
Intelligence Officer (principal adviser to the Director of Central
Intelligence on certain areas) for, at various times, Southeast
Asia, South Asia and Africa. Before he retired in 1979 he was
Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis,
a 250-person unit. His wife Kathy also worked in the CIA, retiring
in 1979. Since then she has been mainly preoccupied by the issue
of Palestine.
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