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Add to FavoritesIt seems obvious that life in Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein's domination of Iraqi life. But to appreciate that attitude is to understand that the recent changes in Iraq have been liberating for most Iraqis, and to believe that freedom is a better state of affairs than even the most comfortable captivity. Does a cockatoo have a better life in a cage in an American living room or living in the wild, in the rain forest where it was hatched?
There is an old story of the 98 year-old man who worked for the circus. Every day he would get up at 5 am, dress, and then spend a sixteen hour day shoveling elephant dung. Day in, day out, usually seven days a week he would clean the cages of the elephants, clean their paths, clean up after them as they trudged from town to town; years and years of shoveling dung. One day his brother came to visit him and was appalled at the way the old man was wasting his life, shoveling dung.
"You should really find another line of work", the brother said.
"What, and give up show business?" came the reply.
Okay, it's an old joke, and not hysterically funny, but it points out that various people have varying ideas about how to be happy; about what is better or worse for them.
In order to examine the question more deeply we should compare the lives of some Iraqis under Saddam's reign with their present lives, and try to judge which situation seems better. So let's discuss the lives of the Kurds, who live in Northern Iraq,
some Iraqi athletes and the Iraqis who were forced at gunpoint to act as human shields in the 1990 war.
Strictly speaking the Kurds are no more Iraqis than the people of the Ottawa tribe are Americans. The Kurds have lived in the areas of present-day northern Iraq and southern Turkey for centuries, and have little in common with a resident of, say, Baghdad or Al Bas-rah. They are, however, considered Iraqi by the United Nations and by the western world, since their homes lie within the boundaries of modern-day Iraq.
The Kurdish tribes have lived in the areas now called southern Turkey, northern Iraq and the northwestern tip of Iran for over a thousand years. The modern boundaries of Iraq were drawn by the League of Nations in the 1920's, so it's not too surprising that few Kurds consider themselves captives in a state they did not choose.
It is widely known that in 1988, probably as a demonstration of power and a punishment for perceived insolence, Saddam Hussein attacked the Kurds with conventional and chemical weapons. Operation Anfal was conducted by Saddam's Baathist regime as a culmination to three years of fighting with the Kurds. As a result, according to Wikipedia:
"Thousands of civilians were killed during chemical
and conventional bombardments
Independ ent sources estimate 100,000 to more than
200,000 deaths and as many as 100,000 widows and
an even greater number of orphans"
Estimates of one million refugees were displaced during the operation; more than 25% of the Kurdish population at that time was now homeless and mourning the loss of their families and property.
Whatever his reasons, Saddam's decision to wage a genocidal campaign against the Kurdish people stands as one of the most egregious offenses of the late 20th century. Even in a country inured to war after eight years of battling Iran, Iraqis were horrified at the actions of Saddam and his cronies. It is inconceivable that the Kurdish people believe that their lives would be better with Saddam still in Iraq.
Saddam had two sons, Uday (also rendered Odai') and Qusay; the actions of both give new meaning to the description spoiled brat.' Both sons were elevated by their father's position, though neither seemed especially deserving of the power they wielded. Uday murdered his father's valet at a party in 1988, bludgeoning the man senseless with a cane before finally stabbing him to death. Later exiled to Switzerland, Uday had the distinction of being deported from that country and asked never to return.
Uday was the de facto head coach for the Iraqi soccer team. His motivational methods were, thankfully, unique. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle Wednesday, May 7, 2003:
"the squad lived in constant fear of losing a match
because failure on the field could result in public humiliation,
imprison ment, punishment and even torture. Before every match,
players were forced to watch a video in which Odai threatened
them if they did not triumph
"A missed penalty kick could bring a humiliating head-shaving
at the Stadium of the People, team members said.
Sometimes players were forced to play "matches" in which
they would kick concrete balls around the prison yard
in 130-degree heat."
Ask an Iraqi soccer player whether his life would be better if Saddam still ruled Iraq.
Finally let me consider the plight of a Iraqi civilian pressed into service as a human shield.
In George Piro's recently publicized recounting of his interviews with Saddam during Hussein's imprisonment, Piro mentioned that Saddam intimated that he had attacked Kuwait in 1990 as a response to a perceived insult by Kuwaiti leaders. Coalition forces responded by attacking Iraq, and Saddam attempted to counter aerial assaults by rounding up civilians and forcing them to stand and display themselves in close proximity to military targets.
Known as human shields' this is a despicable tactic that stands in clear violation to the Fourth Geneva Convention. It is a foolish and clearly immoral ploy, forcing innocent civilians, often children in the 1990 war, to be used as pawns in a war they did not choose and cannot fight.
If a survivor of the 1990 Gulf War who had been used as a human shield could be found and interrogated, imagine his answer to whether his life is better without Saddam Hussein.
It is tempting to succumb to the popular political rhetoric that America's enormous outlay of time and dollars has been wasted in Iraq. I am not here to defend American occupation there, nor to advocate our continued presence in that country. But those sentiments cannot and must not be allowed to confuse the issue of Saddam Hussein's removal from Iraq.
My nephew spent 26 months doing two tours of duty with the Marines in Iraq. When he returned I asked him how he believed an average Iraqi sees American involvement there.
He replied that he thought 9 out of 10 Iraqis were grateful beyond expression that America had erased Saddam Hussein. And the 10th, he said, wearing a grim leatherneck's face, "is a crazy bastard with a gun or a bomb, who needs to be put down."
He should know.
Learn more about this author, P. Eric Bonet.
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Yes
"Iraq: After Six Years and One Million Lives"
The US war against Iraq has reached its six-year milestone. Non-government agencies estimate that more than a million Iraqis have been killed thus far.
Contrary to current US propaganda, the US did not invade Iraq to free the people from Saddam Hussein, or to help the Iraqi people establish "democracy". The US invasion was based on the claim that Iraq had "Weapons of Mass Destruction", and that these WMDs posed an immediate threat to the US. US troops going to war said they were going to fight terrorism, and to repay the terrorists for "9/11".
Six years on, the US media portrays the Iraq war in precisely the same terms as they used for VietNam: " The US is trying to help a struggling democracy against an evil and brutal enemy." - Not true then, not true now.
The invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein were US actions to establish an economic base that Hussein had taken away. As one US oil ececutive put it, "Before Hussein we owned the oil industry in Iraq".
As the "Cash Cow" of global capitalism, the US is obligated to generate profits for "investors". In order to create those profits the US government fashions both foreign and domestic policy toward particular economic goals. The removal of Saddam Hussein was called "regime change" by both Bush and Clinton. That is a euphemism for overthrow of the government. And it is illegal.
A "Cash Cow" is a product or service that a business relies on to generate profits. For example, an auto-maker like Ford Corporation might earn enough from its "F-150" truck sales to sustain operations, even though other models are not selling enough to pay for their production costs. The F-150 would be Ford's "cash cow." - The United States (more exactly, the American people) is the "cash cow" of world capitalism.
Because the United States is the largest single department-store in the world, the multi-national corporations can generate enough profits in the US "market" to keep the system going, even if other areas are not doing so well. As the primary agent of world capitalism, the US government sells "access" to the American "market" (the American people) to influence other nations and to establish cooperation with the projects of world capitalism. Those projects make up what is called "the World Bank".
"Access" to the American people comes in three forms: 1) allowing foreign companies to sell their products ( and make profits) in the US department store; 2) the actual payment or transfer of a portion of the "taxes" collected from the American people - this is called "foreign aid"; 3) "technical/military aid", which is the transfer of goods and services from the American people in order to establish a foreign "market" and to fight those people who oppose it.
People and nations that oppose the World Bank structure of society are generally called Socialist or Communist. Increasingly, they are also called "terrorists". Such nations generally believe that the distribution of goods and services should be based on equality of sharing, rather than by competition. Historically, world capitalism tries to overthrow such governments and to "contain" such persons, either through indirect political means or outright military intervention.
Since World War II especially, whenever the US government speaks of "freedom" or "bringing freedom" to some country (Middle East, Latin America) they mean, specifically, the establishment of a "market" where the distribution of goods and services is based on competition among the people.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 used all three forms of "access" to establish "freedom" in Iraq. Many of the Iraqi leaders within the American-installed government and in the areas beyond Baghdad were simply paid to cooperate. The Iraqis who had helped the US plan and justify the invasion were put in charge of Iraq's oil industry.
US oil companies subsequently reported record-breaking profits. And finally, the US government transferred the actual lives and activity of thousands of American citizens for the military operations to destroy the many-thousands of Iraqis who opposed the deal.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 followed ten years of isolation and punishment by the US, the World Bank, and its international associates. The invasion became necessary because these "sanctions" failed to destroy the Iraq government and open the country's market to international capitalism (the World Bank). Saddam Hussein was not attacked because he refused to allow entry to UN weapons inspectors, but because he refused entry to the World Bank.
The incredible claim that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD's) after ten years of economic and covert military punishment was actually true in one sense; but not as put forward by the US and Britain. The WMD's that Iraq/Saddam Hussein really had were these: 1) the world's second largest known oil reserve; 2) a state-controlled banking system; and most terrible of all, 3) the intention to begin trading Iraq's oil in Euros rather than US dollars. It was the World Bank that feared mass destruction.
Western European countries weighed the relative risk to their own economies and supported or opposed the invasion accordingly. France, whose future is tied to the Euro, adamantly opposed the invasion. Eastern European countries, recently divorced from the Soviet Union and indebted to the US, were persuaded to send a few troops to support the "international coalition". In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair lied so outrageously to support the invasion that all of Britain was embarrassed by him.
And in the US itself, still frenzied by the dubious but dramatic events of "9/11", even the "liberals" saw the danger to US economic interests if Iraq/Saddam Hussein were allowed to carry through this currency transition.
The liberal Senator Hillary Clinton (Dick Cheney in a dress) voted for the invasion of Iraq. Her stated reason one year later, after no WMD's had been found, was clear only to those who knew the inside story. She said that Saddam Hussein was a "potential threat". And even if Iraq did not have WMD's, she said, Hussein "was seeking weapons of mass destruction, whether or not he actually had them."
The idea that a person, group or nation can be attacked by the US government because they are "potential threats" has been a guiding principle in both US foreign policy and also in US national domestic policy since the Reagan administration. President Bill Clinton quietly continued that same policy.
It is a principle that is legally and ethically questionable because it amounts to "guilty by reason of suspicion". It offers no opportunity for the facts of the matter to be judged publicly. It is, of course, a violation of the US Constitution and international law.
In the invasion and occupation of Iraq, with a million Iraqis killed, the US suspicion was not that Saddam Hussein was planning harm to many people, but that he intended to transfer Iraq's accounts to another department store.
After six years and billions of dollars, electricity is still scarce in Baghdad. Clean water is still in short supply. Hospitals are still without basic supplies to treat simple ailments. Many highly educated Iraqis have no place to practice their professions. And the Iraqi people not only have a restrictive government, they have a foreign government. -end.
Learn more about this author, James Daraja.
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