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September 16, 2002
Iraq. Invade or not? Yes
Iraq. Invade or not?
Yes I know, my opinion has zero effect on what will or not actually happen. But on balance, I still find myself opposing an invasion. I don't really believe Saddam Hussein poses a threat to the United States, not in the way portrayed.
Here is how I think things have played out over the past 20 years:
late 1970s, I forget the exact year, Saddam Hussein rises to power in the Iraqi Ba'ath party, killing off most of his rivals.
1979: the pro-American Shah of Iran is overthrown.
1980: the 444-day hostage crisis. Iran's talk of pan-Islamism and tone of hostility to the United States alarms that country, which looks for regional allies.
Around the same time, Saddam Hussein is coveting western Iranian territory. Gambling that the US will back him, he attacks Iran.
1980-88: 8-year war with Iran, which costs over a million casualties. After an early Iraqi lead, Iran eventually starts winning, invading Iraqi territory, saying it will not end the war unless Saddam leaves power. In the US (still bitter over the memory of the hostage taking and irritated by the "Great Satan" rhetoric) media and political opinion considers Iran the aggressor. Iraq receives Soviet, French, and American military aid.
During the war, Iran threatens to shell traffic in the Persian Gulf it accuses of supplying Iraq with weaponry. The U.S. puts its flag on Kuwaiti ships and threatens war if any are attacked. None are.
1986-7: In an attempt to free American hostages held in Lebanon by terrorist groups with Iranian ties, the U.S. secretly trades arms to Iran for hostages. The illegal deal is made public and causes a big scandal, but President Reagan successfully deflects blame to lower-level officials.
Around this time (I think) Iraq starts using chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers. The US knows about this but offers only token objections.
Early 1988: An Iraqi missile hits a US
1988: Iran and Iraq sign a ceasefire. (Was Iran frightened of WMD attacks? Maybe that was why).
1988: Kurds in northern Iraq rise in revolt against Saddam. He brutally crushes them with chemical weapons. The US, again not wanting to embarrass a state it considers an essential buffer against Iran, again offers only token condemnation.
1989: Iran hits a new low, declaring a fatwa against author Salman Rushdie.
1989? 90? Death of Ayatollah Khomeini. The Islamic militants' hold on Iran weakens; the 1990s will see a power struggle between them and moderates more friendly to the US.
1989: Saddam's regime is virtually bankrupt after the war with Iran. He needs revenue, and looks at Kuwaiti oil fields enviously. He starts to accuse the Kuwaitis of drilling underground into Iraqi territory. A long diplomatic tussle ensues, which the US ignores.
Early 1990: Saddam conducts military exercises near the Kuwaiti border and hints at a strike in conversations with U.S. diplomats. No objections are voiced by the U.S..
August 1990: Saddam invades and quickly seizes Kuwait. To his surprise, the international community unanimously condemns the invastion.
Fall 1990: More than 200,000 US troops are rushed to Saudi Arabia to defend it from an alleged Iraqi assault. Media are full of tales of Saddam's alleged plans to conquer the entire Gulf and hold the world hostage.
During this period, tales of Saddam's alleged WMDs start appearing. His earlier massacre of the Kurds, ignored at the time, is now brought up repeatedly as proof of his brutality. Suddenly he is admitted to have been the aggressor in the war with Iran.
The US demands unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. Saddam cannot accept this and hold on to power, the loss of face would end his grip on the country. So he offers a deal: let Israel withdraw from the occupied territories, and he will withdraw from Kuwait. Instantly he becomes a hero to the Palestinians. The US refuses all talk of linkage.
Over the fall, President Bush persuades or bribes the rest of the world to either join him or stay silent. The Arab states (except Libya and Jordan) join him, worried about Saddam's possible ambitions in their direction.
Winter 1990: the US obtains Security Council permission to invade. US troops now total 400,000; there are about 80,000 more troops from Arab countries, and smaller contingents from other Western countries.
Saddam gradually scales back his demands, ending with an offer to withdraw if Kuwait promises to open negotiations on the border oil fields, but the US insists on an unconditional withdrawal.
Jan. 1991: US attacks Iraq, air attacks only. Iraq's air force is quickly knocked out. Its troops on the ground are nearly wiped out by continuous bombing over the next month.
During the war, Iraq does NOT:
- use any WMDs
- carry out any terrorist attacks in the West, or against Western civilians. It even permits CNN to station a reporter in Baghdad.
It DOES send Scuds to attack Israel. The missiles are laughably ineffective; some even land in the occupied territories by mistake. Palestinians are videotaped cheering on the Scuds.
Despite this, schools cancel field trips, people worry about the threat of Iraqi terrorism, even though Iraq has never been a sponsor of terrorism abroad, certainly less so than Syria, whose troops are now allied with the US.
Mar. 1991, US ground troops invade; what's left of the Iraqi army crumbles. Kuwait and much of southern Iraq are taken. US generals boast that they could have Baghdad if they want.
Some in fact counsel that. Others fear that if Saddam is removed, either Iraq will fall into civil war. The Shi'ites might ally with Iran (still regarded as an enemy) and the Kurds would cause friction with Turkey, which the US needs as a northern buffer against Syria (and Russia, if necessary). Nobody wants a long-term deployment of US troops in Iraq.
President Bush sr. decides to leave Saddam in power. He is ordered to dismantle his WMDs and have UN inspectors verify this.
The UN changes the terms of the sanctions it applied in 1990. Originally to be lifted when Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, it now demands verified Iraqi nonpossession of WMDs.
Spring 1991: First the Shi'ites, then the Kurds rise in revolt, hoping for US support. Saddam brutally crushes the Shi'ites with his elite Republican Guard. He also starts to massacre Kurds, who flee across the border into an alarmed Turkey. The US sends planes to enforce safe areas for Kurdish refugees.
After the end of the war, Saddam's regular army is destroyed; most of Iraq's industrial infrastructure is also gone. The sanctions limit food and medicine imports among other things, with only partial concessions like the oil-for-food program (which Saddam grafts from, anyway). More than 500,000 Iraqi children die of disease and malnutrition over this decade.
Saddam becomes a political straw man, resurrected with incendiary US rhetoric and bombed whenever he is alleged to be stalling on cooperating with UN inspectors.
President Clinton bombs Iraq once or twice a year throughout his administration. Rather conveniently, the bombings seem to come at moments when he is politically vulnerable at home; he usually gets a poll boost from them. The first is against an alleged plot to assassintate former president Bush; the rest are for non-cooperation, real or imagined. Extra wrinkles are added: Iraq is not permitted to put up any antiaircraft systems, not even conventional ones - the US needs open skies over Iraq.
So we settle. During this time begins the formation of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group.
1996: Taliban take power in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda sets up training operations there.
1998: Al Qaeda bombs US embassies in Africa. President Clinton orders bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan, on the very day of the Lewinsky testimony. The Sudanese bombing, allegedly of a chemical weapons plant, turns out to be a medicine factory.
It is estimated later that over 7,000 Sudanese perish because of lack of medicine that would have been made at that plant.
Fall 1998 (or was it 1999?) Iraq expels UN monitors, accusing them of harboring CIA agents. The CIA admits this is true but says the US needs to spy on Iraq.
Cat-and-mouse game of bombings continue. US planes fly over southern Iraq almost daily.
Fall 2000: Al Qaeda attacks a US warship in Yemen
Sept. 11, 2001: Al Qaeda hijacks two planes and flies them into the WTC, killing over 3,000. The US population is horrified.
Of the 19 Al Qaeda operatives, 12 are from Saudi Arabia. None are from Iraq, Iran, or Palestine.
Split in the US administration; some want to attack Iraq as well as Afghanistan; others want to concentrate on Afgh. doves win - for now.
Fall 2001: US air power enables Afghan northern rebels to overthrow Taliban. Al Qaeda's bases in Afghanistan destroyed, but they continue to hide in northwest Pakistan.
Iraq, tongue-in-cheek, offers humanitarian aid to the WTC victims. (In 2000 it had offered to send election monitors to Florida)
The US begins to distrust Saudi Arabia, which tolerates anti-US newspapers and radio and allows militant religious schools to operate. It needs to have a buffer state in the region, one usable against Iran if necessary. The only obvious choice is Iraq, but Saddam can't possibly play that role after being considered a deadly US enemy.
By spring 2002, US decides that it will push for Saddam's overthrow, using Sept. 11 as justification, using the public's tendency to blur Arabs and Muslims in a single gorup.
US realizes it cannot overthrow Saddam through diplomatic means, or a coup, or air power alone. Full-scale invasion is needed. The WMD threat is hyped up, and public fears of nuclear attack heightened in the general sense of dread after Sept. 11.
Fall 2002? early 2003? Security Council authorizes invasion of iraq. Saddam defeated. New democratic state set up in Iraq and promptly falls into ethnic infighting. US troops remain in Iraq.
For this decade, the fragile Iraq remains the main US client in the gulf, replacing Saudi Arabia. Saudi monarchy is later demonized in its own right; perhaps eventually overthrown, in order to liberate Saudi women, or some such excuse.
Just a theory.
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Posted by Tyrone at September 16, 2002 01:44 AM