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CounterPunch
March 21,
2003
After the War on Saddam
A War on Iraqi
Dissidents?
By ZOLTAN GROSSMAN
The carrot-and--stick strategy at first seemed
ingenious, or at least crafty. In the days leading up to the
U.S.-led war on Iraq, the "stick" of looming invasion
would pressure Iraqi military or political officials into arresting
or killing Saddam Hussein. The "carrot," or their incentive
to oust Saddam and his sons, would have been to prevent foreigners
from overrunning their country. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer
put it most directly when he told Iraqis that "a single
bullet" would be less costly than a war
Yet in the vaunted 48-hour warning period
that led up to the war, the Bush Administration pulled the rug
out from under any potential Iraqi coup. Ari Fleischer (or at
least it appeared to be Fleischer and not a body double) stated
unequivocally that even if Saddam was ousted, or left the country
voluntarily, the U.S.-British forces would still invade Iraq
in a "peaceful entry" to search for "weapons of
mass destruction."
The signal was unmistakable: it did not
matter what Iraqis did to topple their own tyrant, the Americans
were going to rule their country anyways. If any Republican Guard
officer was ready to confront Saddam to save his country, the
pistol would have gone back in his holster. Why bother? The "carrot"
had been yanked away. The potential self-liberation of Iraqis
had turned into a foreign war of conquest. The tragedy is that
this final squashing of Iraqi self-determination is fully consistent
with U.S. historic policy toward the Iraqi people.
The Iraqi people historically had a reputation
of determining their own destiny. In 1920, the Ottoman Turks
left Iraq in defeat. In 1932, Iraqis overturned the British colonial
mandate. In 1958, they threw out the Hashemite monarchy and declared
a republic. These were a people who could overthrow dictators
against overwhelming odds. Why did they not similarly topple
Saddam? Because at every step along the way, the U.S. has stepped
in either to prop up Saddam, or to make sure that it would be
the only alternative to his rule.
Betraying
Iraqi Rebels
Since Saddam's Ba'ath Party took power
in 1968, the U.S. has exhibited a schizophrenic policy toward
the Arab nationalist government. President Nixon backed a Kurdish
revolt against Iraq, but sold out the Kurds in 1975 after Baghdad
signed a peace treaty with his friend the Shah of Iran. Iraqi
Kurds still remember this betrayal with bitterness and mistrust.
Five years later, after Iranians overthrew
the Shah, the new Ba'ath supreme leader Saddam Hussein invaded
Iran's oil fields with U.S. blessing. President Reagan supplied
Baghdad with intelligence and U.S. naval protection for Iraq's
oil shipments, and his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warmly
shook Saddam's hand in Baghdad. When both Iraq and Iran launched
chemical attacks in the Kurdish region along their border, U.S.
officials pointed fingers at Iran alone, and minimized or blocked
UN condemnations of Saddam until the war's end in 1988.
After Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990,
the first Bush Administration assembled a Coalition to defend
the self-determination of the oil-rich monarchy, but grassroots
Iraqi opponents of Saddam were nowhere to be seen in the successful
military strategy. Washington instead encouraged the formation
of an Iraqi exile opposition (led by former Iraqi generals and
the banker Ahmed Chalabi) which became not only internally divided
but unpopular within Iraq.
Bush had encouraged Iraqis to rise up
against Saddam, yet when southern Iraqi Shi'ites liberated their
own cities in March 1991, the U.S. troops within view of their
positions were ordered not to help. The Allies temporarily lifted
the wartime No-Fly Zone, allowing just enough time for Saddam's
helicopters to strafe Shi'ite rebels before restoring the flight
restrictions. Saddam drained the region's marshes to finish his
slaughter.
The reasons for the U.S. betrayal of
the Shi'ites was threefold, and instructive for the present crisis
in 2003. First, Washington assumed that Iraqi Shi'ites would
seek to emulate Iran's Shi'ite regime, even though they had fought
as troops against Iran in the 1980s. (Saddam's Mukhabarat secret
police promoted this linkage by postering Shi'ite rebel cities
with poster of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.)
Second, U.S. allies in Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait feared the dangerous example of a secular democratic republic
across their borders, at a time when domestic opposition was
rising to their monarchies. The Sunni princes and sheikhs had
supported U.S. military bases and oil interests, and were more
important than Iraqis' self-determination.
Third, a truly democratic revolution
led by the Iraqi people would insist on taking full control of
their oil fields, and keeping the profits from oil development.
When Iran's popular Mossadegh government in Iran nationalized
U.S. and British oil interests in 1953, the CIA overthrew that
government. Washington viewed Saddam as a preferable and predictable
factor for Sunni rule and regional "stability," and
his reign of terror continued.
Weakening
the Internal Opposition
The final blow to the self-determination
of the Iraqi people came from the Clinton Administration in the
1990s, as U.S.-led economic sanctions sapped any potential strength
left in the populace to oppose Saddam. The sanctions were supposed
to pressure Iraqis to overthrow Saddam. Instead, Saddam successfully
diverted blame for economic hardships to the U.S., and not without
evidence. Educated Iraqis and working people spent all their
waking hours scrambling to get enough basic goods for their families
to survive. They grew too weak, distracted and frightened to
organize against the regime, and grew to resent the U.S. for
targeting them instead of Saddam.
The stage was set for the second Gulf
War of 2003. Without a viable civilian or military opposition
to Saddam, President George W. Bush could portray a U.S.-British
invasion as "Operation Iraqi Freedom." In just the
key 48-hour period when a few military officers or Ba'ath officials
had the option to head off an invasion by taking out Saddam,
Ari Fleischer took away the option.
Either Americans would oust Saddam, or
nobody would. The goal became not to eliminate a dictator or
his alleged bio-chemical weapons (so far unused) but conquering
and ruling Iraq. Liberating Iraq becomes a prime opportunity
not only to secure control over Iraqi oil fields, but more importantly
to extend new U.S. "sphere of influence."
Every U.S. intervention since 1990 (in
the Gulf, Balkans, and Central Asia) has left behind clusters
of new, permanent military bases in the strategic "middle
ground" between emerging economic competitors in the EU
and East Asia. It is little wonder that Germany, France, Russia
and China were the main opponents of this war. Iraq and Iran
have been the only obstacles blocking U.S. domination of the
region between Hungary and Pakistan, as the lynchpin of a new
military-economic "empire."
The inhabitants of this U.S. "sphere
of influence" are simply not allowed to overthrow their
own dictators. The antiwar movement has understandably focused
on the prospect of mass casualties in Gulf War II, and the humanitarian
crisis that has already begun. But the real crime has been Washington's
denial of self-determination to the Iraqi people over the past
three decades, up to and including Gulf War II, even if relatively
few Iraqis die.
Welcoming
the Troops?
It would not be unusual for some weary
and scared Iraqi troops or civilians to initially welcome the
invading troops (whatever the U.S. motives for the invasion),
as a human reaction to the toppling of Saddam's nightmarish rule.
But so what? Some Saudis welcomed U.S. troops in 1990, until
they overstayed their welcome in the Islamic holy land after
the Gulf War I victory. Somalis similarly welcomed U.S. forces
when they landed in Mogadishu in 1992, until the U.S. started
taking sides in the clan-based civil war and paid the consequences
in the infamous "Black Hawk Down" battle.
By conquering Iraq, the U.S. military
is stepping into a country that is far more far more ethnically
and religiously divided than Somalia, and rivaling Bosnia and
Afghanistan. In the intricantly complex country, the U.S. will
soon start its pattern of defining "good guys" and
"bad guys," and taking sides in internal conflicts.
Iraqis could be throwing flowers at American troops in 2003,
but grenades in 2004.
With their proud history of self-determination,
Iraqis will not be content to be ruled by an American military
commander or appointee. They will not simply acquiesce to a Karzai-style
Iraqi puppet such as Chalabi, who has set up headquarters in
northern Iraq. Nor will Kurds accept Turkish troops in northern
Iraq, even as a quid pro quo for U.S. overflights over Turkey
to attack Saddam.
Shi'ites in the south may greet Americans
who free them from the Sunni dictator Saddam, but will certainly
resent American rulers who prevent them from taking their rightful
place as the majority Iraqi population, and improving their second-class
economic status. Urban, educated Iraqis, and anti-Saddam leftist
parties, will similarly not be content to "meet the new
boss, same as the old boss."
Winning is the easy part. President Bush
may easily win Gulf War II, but lose the peace. The hard nut
to crack will not be resistance from Saddam's followers, but
resistance from his opponents. Like in the Philippines a century
ago, the U.S. has arrived to "liberate" a people from
tyrannical rule, but may ultimately find itself as an imperial
power fighting the democratic rebels it had come to support.
Zoltan Grossman
is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-
Eau Claire, and a longtime peace, environmental, and anti-racist
organizer. His peace writings can be seen at www.uwec.edu/grossmzc/peace.html
and he can be reached at zoltan@igc.org
Yesterday's
Features
Jo Wilding
From
Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad
Stephen Banko
I Was
a Soldier Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did
We Become an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
Myths
and Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come
On Democrats, Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch
from Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
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