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
[EMAIL PROTECTED]