What has the Iraq War wrought?

nimh writes:

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Well, that was silly then, wasnt it? Considering that A2K did not exist when Saddam attempted to exterminate the Kurds - you havent got a clue what we thought, said and did at the time. But let me refer to the condemnation of the attempted genocide by the Socialist International and recount how "our people's" attempts to draw attention to the topic (Amnesty International appeals and so on) were brushed aside by more conservative parties as just so much left-wing naive idealism ... hadnt we heard of national sovereignty? Realpolitik - the enemy of our enemy was our friend? Bleeding heart liberals, we were, wanting to risk geo-strategical stability and interests to defend some oppressed national minority

Silly except for all the A2K members who repeatedly insisted Saddam didn't have WMD. But you're right re the dates and who was president.
Two things were happening there that I recall from history: 1) Iran and Iraq were at war with Iraq in imminent danger of being overrun by Iran, not a pleasant prospect considering who was in power in Iran at the time. It is true that we were supplying Iraq with the rationale being, for want of a better one, that if those two countries were busy fighting each other, they wouldn't have time or resources to bother anybody else.

I confess that the Kurds were not on the radar screen for me at that time. I have no reason to dispute your account of the circumstances, but are you faulting the U.S. for not taking action? Did your country take action?

Of course two years later, Saddam went nuts and we had to do the first Gulf war thing. In an effort to educate myself I did a quick search for accounts of what happened in 1988 and found this:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/kurdish/htdocs/his/Khaledtext.html

I have no reason to think it is incredible or not credible. It's just one person's version of what happened.

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Foxfyre wrote:

Silly except for all the A2K members who repeatedly insisted Saddam didn't have WMD.

Ehm, no. I haven't seen anyone on this board deny that Saddam had WMD in 1988.

Its the claim that we had proof he still had them last year that's the bone of contention.

Foxfyre wrote:

1) Iran and Iraq were at war with Iraq in imminent danger of being overrun by Iran,

In 1980 or 1981 perhaps, but surely not by 1988, when the war neared its ending? The US might still have considered Iraq a useful enough counterweight against Iran's regional power - useful enough even to tolerate the gassing of some long-maligned minority - but the rationale of avoiding some disaster scenario didnt hold anymore by that time.

In any case, if such pragmatical, geostrategical reasonings were apparently legit enough for you at the time the Kurds were actually being gassed, why are we scandalously unscrupulous if we suggest that liberating the Kurds from the no-fly-zone-protected territorial autonomy they were safely ensconded in by last year was a rather weak argument for risking the geostrategical mayhem that comes with war?

I would put it the other way round: acutely unfolding attempted genocide is reason for military intervention, vulnerable but safe self-rule in de facto autonomy isn't.

Foxfyre wrote:

I have no reason to dispute your account of the circumstances, but are you faulting the U.S. for not taking action? Did your country take action?

Yes, I am. The US were one of the main supporters of Saddam at the time - alongside France and Russia. Call it a realpolitik devil's alliance. Those countries were instrumental in scuttling any attempt to intervene, even just through diplomatic censure or sanctions, to scare Saddam off from further genocide.

As for my country, the Netherlands ... well, its true we were always pretty good at going, "Holland is warning the dictators of the world one last time", but, you know ... it never really did impress anyone much. As for that specific case, if we were not on the Security Council, we wouldnt even have had the opportunity to vote on it.

The European Parliament did condemn the attempted genocide, but of course back then even more than now, the EP is relatively powerless on foreign policy - thats the prerogative of the national leaders. Among whom the French President ... <sighs>

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America was fully aware of Saddam's war crimes. A November 1983 US memorandum from the bureau of politico-military affairs to the then secretary of state George Shultz, headed Iraqi Use Of Chemical Weapons, confirms that America knew that Saddam was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily basis". Another State Department memo, also written in November 1983 - this time from the office of the assistant secretary for near Eastern and South Asian affairs - says the US should tell Saddam that America knows about the use of poison gas, as that would "avoid unpleasantly surprising Iraq through public positions we may have to take on this issue". However, State Department documents also reveal that America decided to limit its "efforts against the Iraqi CW [chemical weapon] programme to close monitoring because of our strict neutrality".

Other State Department cables sent around this time show that America knew Iraq used chemical weapons in October 1982 and in July and August 1983, "and more recently against Kurdish insurgents". Reagan also knew by the end of 1983 that "with the essential assistance of foreign firms, Iraq has become able to deploy and use CW and probably has built up large reserves of CW for further use".

Iraq's use of chemical weapons was not discussed at all during Rumsfeld's meeting, an omission entirely consistent with US policy. On November 1, 1983, the State Department noted in a memo that Saddam had acquired "CW capability", possibly from the USA. But two sentences later, the same memo says: "Presently Iraq is at a disadvantage in its war of attrition against Iran. After a recent meeting on the war, a discussion paper was sent to the White House for a National Security Council meeting, a section of which outlines a number of measures we might take to assist Iraq."

Rumsfeld was accompanied on his Baghdad trip by Howard Teicher, the then US National Security Advisor. In 1995, Teicher lodged a sworn declaration in the US district court in the Southern district of Florida, saying: "While a staff member to the National Security Council, I was responsible for the Middle East and for political-military affairs. During my five years' tenure on the National Security Council, I had regular contact with both CIA director William Casey and deputy director Robert Gates Casey personally spearheaded the effort to ensure that Iraq had sufficient military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to avoid losing the Iran-Iraq war ... In 1986, President Reagan sent a secret message to Saddam Hussein telling him that Iraq should step up its air war and bombing of Iran. Similar strategic advice was passed to Saddam Hussein through meetings with European and Middle Eastern heads of state."

http://www.sundayherald.com/42648

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And when you get done learning this story fox, you might ask yourself 'where did Sadaam get those chemicals from?'

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Bush 1, for the few who may not be familiar with the Kurd situation, roused the Kurds to revolt against Saddam, promising help.

In some cases, US warplanes witnessed horrible murders of Kurdish people, running from Iraqi militia. They begged to strafe. Just strafe to give some minimal assistance--and were told to stand down. What followed mass murder, and Bush (and America, by association) was culpable.

Bush was too much of a diplomat-- For those, who praise diplomacy over all else (no one particular in mind), this is what that can look like. A disaster. Lack of integrity. Lack of balls. Lack of honor.

He was afraid to escalate with Iraq. He betrayed the Kurds, and left a mess.

This type of divided mind (finger in the air decision-making) is what I expect from Kerry.

Sometimes, you must follow through, whether it is popular or not. A President may pay politically--but at least they can leave, knowing they kept their word, and performed with the larger picture in mind, rather than playing to the crowd.

<end rant>

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Agreeing with the spirit of your post, Sofia, but a few second thoughts.

First, Saddam's use of chemical weapons was known since 1983 or something. Of course it had been Iranian soldiers they were used on, but still, use of chemical weapons during war - pretty bad. Predictable harbinger of other pretty bad things to come, too, seeing how even in the rotten world of the 1980s, few dictators were both in possession of WMD and unscrupulous enough to use them. A man who'd do that, might well do more. And Saddam did, first off by using the chemical weapons against the civilian Kurds. Yet that still didnt faze Reagan - note that the initial Pell Senate bill was accepted under Reagan's watch and against his will.

So in short, the American betrayal of the Kurds cant be fully written off towards Bush Sr. Reagan played an essential role there, too.

My second aside is on the scene you describe, with US warplanes witnessing from above the murders on the ground. Are you talking of the period directly after the Gulf War? Because I recognize that whole story - the US encouraging a revolt, but then standing by when it was clamped down ruthlessly - from after the Gulf War; but then about the Shi'ite Marsh Arabs, rather than the Kurds. Course, it could equally well have happened with the Kurds.

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My gawd. Take the history of Bush/Reagan/Rumsfeld with Iraq and the Kurds, and then suggest that's an argument against a Kerry presidency! Is there some award we can offer up to note this excellent bit of thinking.

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Sofia's take, I gather, is that the history in question shows Bush Sr's way of half-stepping in this kind of thing - something she suspects Kerry will do, too.

My take is that it shows Reagan's and Bush Sr's lack of scruples in foreign policy, when distinguishing between dictators that are strategical allies and dictators that should be attacked in the name of democracy. Something I suspect Bush Jr will continue to exhibit as well.

Just two different takes on the matter. The main problem I see with Sofia's take, as noted, is that Bush Sr merely continued Reagan's Iraq policy.

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In the essay (link posted in my previous post) there is this paragraph:

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Two kinds of scholarly publications on the Ba'thi rule in Iraq is dominant. One of them is at its best exemplified by Frederick Axelgard's (8) book published in 1988. His main theme is that, during the Iraq-Iran war in Iraq a 'coherent national identity' emerged, thanks duly to the leadership of Saddam Hussein and the Ba'th Party. The war and the 'modernisation' policies embarked on by the regime of Saddam Hussein, although it appeared to be harsh in outsiders' eyes, created a 'new nation' characterised by loyalty to the Iraqi state and the leadership of Saddam Hussein. The main evidence of this successful enterprise is that the Shi'is in the South, despite all the Iranian attempts, never attempted to rise against the Ba'thi regime. The Kurds were also brought under control, and were in 1988 mainly loyal to the regime.

Is it possible the U.S. administration and others thought the matter was an Iraqi internal problem and that there was insufficient justification to forcibly interfere? That isn't an argument as I don't know. It is a question.

In answer to somebody else's question, I don't know whether the U.S. supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical warfare capabilities. I do know we supplied them with equipment and ammo. One of George I's unintended blunders was in a speech after the successful Gulf War in which he said something to the effect, "I was gratified that there was no American equipment found abandoned by the Republican Guard." His advisors cringed when he said it because there was a LOT of abandoned American equipment and munitions. Eventually we'll have that full history too re whether we were justified in arming Iraq to withstand Iran.

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Foxfyre wrote:

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The war and the 'modernisation' policies embarked on by the regime of Saddam Hussein, although it appeared to be harsh in outsiders' eyes, created a 'new nation' characterised by loyalty to the Iraqi state and the leadership of Saddam Hussein. The main evidence of this successful enterprise is that the Shi'is in the South, despite all the Iranian attempts, never attempted to rise against the Ba'thi regime. The Kurds were also brought under control, and were in 1988 mainly loyal to the regime.

Is it possible the U.S. administration and others thought the matter was an Iraqi internal problem and that there was insufficient justification to forcibly interfere? That isn't an argument as I don't know. It is a question.

Even if there was a school of thought that sincerely believed that what was going on in Ba'athist Iraq was a kind of nationalising modernisation (kind of like some believed that to be the case in the Soviet Union), then the very news about the use of chemical weapons by the state against its Kurdish civilian population should have put any assumption that "the Kurds were mainly loyal to the regime" by that time to rest for good, shouldn't it? That alone should put any hypothesis that the Shi'ites, Kurds and Sunnis were being pacified by anything other than brute force into its theoretical grave.

I admit to being a bit astonished by this take in the first place. The gassing of the Kurds was hardly the first time we heard of Saddam's human rights atrocities. The ways of his dictatorial state (the torture chambers, mass executions and persecution of national minorities that you'll find mentioned by default now in defence of this war fifteen years later) were already long known by 1988. There were the stories of Iraqi exiles, the human rights reports, and the news of an earlier wave of violent persecution (mass deportation and the like) of the Kurds. The gassing of them in 1988 merely upped the ante.

But yes, there has of course always been a strong sentiment that any such matters were a country's "internal problem and that there was insufficient justification to forcibly interfere". National sovereignty was the holy cow of 20th century diplomacy, and as long as a dictatorship left its neighbours at peace, didn't start any war and didnt suddenly start importing soldiers or rockets from the Cold War enemy, other countries universally tended to butt out. What a regime did to its own people was its own business. And millions of victims of genocide will forever shamefully remind us of that attitude. It was a long struggle, mainly waged by the Left, to make human rights issues an element, at all, in any foreign policy consideration. The struggle to get sanctions in place against the South-African Apartheid regime, for example, was a protracted one that the Left in the end mostly lost.

But slowly the discourse has evolved, especially as the Cold War ended. If anyone deserves credit for breaking the mould, its Bill Clinton. The decision to start a war over Kosovo was the first time the mass murder or deportation of an ethnic minority within a country by the national state was deemed a valid cause for intervention, rather than just an "internal matter". And oddly enough, whatever we may think about its sincerity in bringing the reason up, the Bush administration's claim that one of the casi belli in Iraq now had been the liberation of the wretched victims of dictatorship builds on that new trend - even if its just rhetorically, thats still a gain. FDR or Churchill would never have claimed the right to go to war against Nazi Germany if it hadnt started occupying neighbouring countries. And Bush Sr didnt dare to go beyond repairing the way Saddam had overstepped his national borders - Kuwait was liberated, what he did to his own citizens was his own business.

But before you go, 'well in that case Reagan and Bush were merely being exponents of their time, weren't they?', let's take a step back and realise that those who urged them to take action against Saddam were nowhere near asking him to send troops to liberate the Kurds or anything. The demand by the US Senate (and the more liberal players on the world stage) was merely to at least stop propping the guy up. Noone was asking the President to violate national sovereignty and start a war over it - merely to stop providing Saddam with arms, strategical goods and loans. For that, there were precedents, despite the failure to deal with the Apartheid regime that way: Cuba and embargo come to mind.

Finally, regarding the context of your initial post, of course, if one does retrogressively revert to an argument that at the time, national sovereignty and some of the geostrategical assessments of Iraq meant that we were wiser to just consider the matter of national minorities being gassed "an Iraqi internal problem", then one forfeits all rights to moralistic rebukes of others not having shown "similar concern when Saddam was systematically attempting to exterminate" the Kurds. Cake, have it, eat it and all that :wink:

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If the issue were really one of principle, much in the last twenty or so years would have played out very differently, in Somalia, in East Timor, in the Phillipines, with the Kurds, with Sukarno, Suharto, Noriega, etc. The case of Kosovo is unique. Iraq is not.

One of the reasons the Bush administration's retroactive claim to a humanitarian motive is so egregious is that the humanitarian rationale has been so absent in actual American foreign policy in such cases as noted above AND because it is the only morally justifiable reason to violate sovereignty or to overthrow a foreign government.

Yes, foxfyre, Sadaam did receive essential components from the US for his chemical warfare program. If you do your homework, you'll find the data (it's even here, on a2k, in the first or second iteration of the US,UN, Iraq thread.

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nimh wrote:

My second aside is on the scene you describe, with US warplanes witnessing from above the murders on the ground. Are you talking of the period directly after the Gulf War? Because I recognize that whole story - the US encouraging a revolt, but then standing by when it was clamped down ruthlessly - from after the Gulf War; but then about the Shi'ite Marsh Arabs, rather than the Kurds. Course, it could equally well have happened with the Kurds.

Yes. I saw footage of the thing you describe happening to the Marsh Arabs being inflicted on the Kurds, post-Gulf War.

Proxy warring seemed to be a reasonable alternative at the time. The GOP weren't the first, or only to use it. In hindsight, it does seem to pave the way for future trouble, but it's invention and use can't be laid at the feet of one party.

I am comfortable admitting the failures of policy and action by the GOP. I think we could all learn equally from past errors. Easy to see them now.

And, I think the ploy of inaction to avoid mistakes is equally disasterous. The 'soft power' didn't work with Iraq, IMO, and wouldn't have worked with Kuwait. Wouldn't we have been criticised avoiding action? What would the result of inaction been re Kuwait? Iran/Iraq?

Trying to think historically, not politically.

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Sofia wrote:

And, I think the ploy of inaction to avoid mistakes is equally disasterous. The 'soft power' didn't work with Iraq, IMO,

Depends on what you consider the stated goal to have been.

Up until 1991, you had an Iraqi dictator who
1) repressed his people,
2) had WMD and
3) used them actively against both enemy soldiers and
4) a national minority (the Kurds),
5) whom he also persecuted through violent deportations etc

Under Reagan and Bush 1, we let him get away with all of that. Hell, we even lent him money and sold him arms throughout the time we were aware he had and used WMD, even against his own civilian population. Only when he occupied Kuwait, we intervened.

To liberate Kuwait, we went to war. Then, throughout the nineties, "soft power" (if you include no-fly zones, inspections, etc) succeeded to:
- disarm Saddam of the overwhelming majority of his WMD*
- stop Saddam from using any WMD against anyone
- stop Saddam from airstrikes against his own minority populations
- create a safe haven of autonomous self-rule for the Kurdish minority

In short, Saddam still was a dictator and still repressed his people (or what people he could still effectively control), but all of points 2-5 were mostly neutralised. In effect, we are arguably talking the most succesful containment of a dictator's ability to do harm against neighbours and national minorities achieved without war yet, in history.

So if you say, the goal was to unseat Saddam from power and ended dictatorship in Iraq, then no, "soft power" didnt achieve it. But if you say, the goal was to stop genocide, stop the violent deportation, bombing and use of chemical weapons against a national minority, disarm a dictator from most all of his WMD, and stop him from trying to go to war or occupy any further neighbouring country - it worked.

With the above in mind I would say it was the policy of the 80s that constitutes the scandal, not that of the 90s.

* (the US government at one point bragged, as I recall, that 80% of the WMD were already destroyed - and the absence of any WMD found now suggests that there wasnt much left of the remaining 20% either)

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Your point is well taken.

For those who believed, and still do, that Saddam would/did give his money and weapons to terrorists, to run a proxy war of his own--it wasn't successful. For those, who didn't believe this--I can see how they would believe soft power had been successful enough.

It isn't hard for some to connect dots to other terrorist orgs, when we know he used his money to support Hamas bombings in Israel. Many people felt strongly he was a power to be reckoned with--if not at the run-up--soon after.

Few could believe he'd had a change of heart, or that his sons would be more reliably peaceful.

Yet, your point is accepted.

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Sofia wrote:

For those who believed, and still do, that Saddam would/did give his money and weapons to terrorists, to run a proxy war of his own--it wasn't successful. For those, who didn't believe this--I can see how they would believe soft power had been successful enough.

It isn't hard for some to connect dots to other terrorist orgs, when we know he used his money to support Hamas bombings in Israel. Many people felt strongly he was a power to be reckoned with--if not at the run-up--soon after.

Few could believe he'd had a change of heart, or that his sons would be more reliably peaceful.

That Saddam had not had some change of heart concerning his intentions, I think we can easily agree on. Thats why he needed to be kept being clamped down on, the only thing we disagree on is by what means - containment or ouster.

The point about Saddam's own war by proxy I'm not quite clear on. He clearly supported Palestine terrorists, Hamas for one. But wouldnt that be a war by proxy against Israel, rather than one against the US?

Otherwise it's a double proxy - he supports those who fight those who support you ... one has to wonder whether that is enough of a reason to go to war. In the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union did this all the time: the US would fund Angolan guerrillas of distinctly terrorist bent to fight against a distinctly dictatorial government that was supported by the Soviet Union - and in El Salvador, it would be the other way around.

As for giving his money and weapons to terrorists that attacked the US - al Qaeda, that is - the 9/11 commission did just conclude that (per MSNBC) "no evidence exists that al-Qaida had strong ties to Saddam [..] There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," and Bin Laden "is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded". Havent read the report yet myself, but that sounds pretty definitive. As Joe Nation flippantly but rather wittily observed:

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Osama kept calling the Iraqis to get help, money and space to train. Those calls, according to the best US intelligence, went unanswered. It is those unanswered calls that Bush and his cadre continue to cite as an Iraq-Qaeda relationship. If I call a girl for a date and she doesn't answer, I don't get to claim we had once had a relationship

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I don't see how that could 'sound definitive' to someone as open minded as you, nimh.

The big red flag for those saying Osama and Saddam didn't have a working relationship, was Osama's distain for Saddam.

The Commission RECENTLY found evidence that Osama DID deign to ask for assistance from Saddam.

This bit of information, though widely expected from those like me, was trounced as improbable by opposers of the OBL/Saddam scenario until only recently.

Given that, how does the inability to find evidence of Saddam's response convince you that it didn't occur? It is not yet proven--yes, but is it enough to close your mind to the possibility? Even Probability? What reason would Saddam not help OBL to bring the world, and his most hated adversary, to their knees?

Already slapped with the Oil for Food limitations, and being squeezed, I imagine Saddam was psychotically careful not to be traced to OBL.

What do opposers of the Osama/Saddam scenario cite as Saddam's reason NOT to join league with Osama?

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Quote:

What do opposers of the Osama/Saddam scenario cite as Saddam's reason NOT to join league with Osama?

Could be any of a bunch ...

- not wanting to build up a force that was very likely to turn against himself as soon as the opportunity would arise

- not wanting to create any opportunity for AQ to start recruiting in his own country, undermining totalitarian Ba'athist control

- judging AQ to be a bunch of reckless fanatics who were bound to bring the world's (or at least America's) wrath upon themselves in unprecedented measure ... a dictator with a bit of a sense of self-preservation might want to keep a safe distance from that. In comparison, taunting Israel with high-publicity rewards for Hamas militants and so on is as pretty no-risk PR stunt ...

- lacking any affinity with the Muslim fundamentalist cause ... Note that Hamas is also Muslim fundamentalist, but, like Abu Nidal and other terrorists Saddam can be linked to, first and foremost anti-zionist, which is a cause Saddam must have had no hesitation, neither ideological nor strategical, to support ...

- he felt he was in trouble enough as it was ...

Well, et cetera. The mere given that Saddam and Osama shared a common enemy does not necessarily imply the mutual desire to work together.

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The mere given that Saddam and Osama shared a common enemy does not necessarily imply the mutual desire to work together.
---------------

But, new knowledge that Osama asked for Saddam's help cuts the probability of that premise in half, yes?

<although I acknowledge your reasons, the second is the only one that seems plausible--for our notably crazy, megalomaniacal Saddam>

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fishin' wrote:

Hmm.. I've mulled this over for the last 2 weeks or so and have come up with a slightly different take on the whole thing.

Personally, I don't think the war was about WMDs, Freeing the Iraqi people, oil or any of the usual suspects. I think it's simply long term strategic military positioning.

Up until the late 1970s we had a solid base of military operations in Iran. That was our only real base of operations in the Middle-East and provided a staging area for the US to keep an eye on the USSR as well as other countries in the region and also served as a possible launching point for any military action.

Since the fall of the Shah of Iran the US hasn't had a solid point of operations for the Mid-East. We've had some sort of presence in Saudi Arabia since then but will considerable limitations of what we could do from there and the Saudi's have actually kept a pretty close eye on our activites there.

Taking Iraq now leaves us with the option of taking over Iraqi military installations and having a long term presence in the region. It gives us back everything we had prior to 1979 in Iran. The European nations have been groiwing more and more reluctant to allow the US to use bases there for staging areas. South Korea has their own problems. Our presence in Japan and the PI are greatly reduced. Iraq gives the US everything we'd need with few limitations and is right smack in the middle of the region with the major hot-spots in recent years.

I'd guess that there are some folks at the Pentagon drooling at the possibilities....

I was looking at something hugely different when I stumbled over this fascinating post in this fascinating thread.

hmmmmmmmmm

indeed

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ehBeth wrote:

<I was looking at something hugely different when I stumbled over this fascinating post in this fascinating thread.

hmmmmmmmmm

indeed>

You wrote this after reading Fishin's very asture analysis of the situration and you made it sound as though a little "light bulb" has just come on over your head. Yes this is a fascinating thread because most of the posters have stopped thinking small and are instead looking at the big picture. After reading many of the posts I can find bits and pieces in each that add to the big picture..........congratulations everyone. It's truly amazing what a little honest analytical thinking can do.

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What has the Iraq War wrought?

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