Revisiting History
Did President George W. Bush lie to the American people in order to go to war in Iraq? No. He relied on what was considered, at the time, as the best available information.
Was the Iraq War necessary? Given the context of the time, it probably was.
Was the Iraq War executed well? Obviously not, or the U.S. would not still have so many troops there.
Why was the Iraq War necessary?
To answer this question we have to slip back in time and review the complex set of circumstances that led up to the invasion.
First, what was there about the regime of Saddam Hussein that made U.S. leaders think it was time for him to leave the world scene?
Well, Saddam was a so-so educated megalomaniac who pictured himself as the savior of the Arab world.
The Arab world at this point in its history is nearing its nadir. Gone are the fabulous centers of learning of 700 to 1,000 years ago. Gone are the great thinkers of philosophy, mathematics and natural science. In its place, like a society caught in a time warp, is cluster of nations that have fallen behind socially and economically, surpassed by the civilization that grew out of the Hellenic traditions and blossomed forth across Europe. It was the Europeans who would undergo a Renaissance and a religious Reformation and a philosophical period of Enlightenment that would develop into the Industrial Revolution that literally that would change the world and man's relationship to it.
To the Arab world, to see all this progress and not participate in it, much less be its leader, is and was a crushing humiliation. And in the Arab culture, as with most of the non-Occidental societies, humiliation is the worst that can happen to an individual, a village, a tribe, or a nation.
So, here we have a megalomaniac, who embodies the Arab feeling of humiliation, with delusions of grandeur that under his aegis he will be the new Saladin to rule the known world, or at least the Middle East. (Granted that Saladin was a Kurd, but he was the Islamic leader that most modern Middle Eastern Islamic leaders want to emulate his was the time of the great libraries and the great intellectuals and philosophers). His country also has the technical capability to create weapons of mass destruction. He already has developed and actually used various chemical weapons. He has been playing around with various biological weapons but probably is a tad short of the research needed to weaponize it. And then there were the nuclear weapons. Back in 1990 he got awfully close to making one but the first Persian Gulf War knocked his plans a kilter.
So, by 2003, we have this idiot just champing at the bit to have the sanctions imposed withdrawn that were to keep him from developing these weapons on a mass scale. If only the United Nations and its pesky inspectors would go away and drop the Security Council demands that he pledge to be a good boy and not go building WMDs and definitely stop using any of his weapons against his neighbors. However, by the end of 2002, he had pretty well circumvented most the sanctions for his and his sons' own personal benefit. In fact, the whole sanctions regime would probably have imploded and collapsed within the next 12 months. Such is the greed of people wanting something that Iraq can give them: money or oil.
The choice then becomes whether the U.S. will allow the sanctions regime to collapse and the Iraq situation revert to status quo ante the Persian Gulf War.
Now, for clarity's sake that would be: Iraq reopens its facilities to research, develop and produce chemical and biological weapons immediately with production going into effect within six months. Within a year, the Iraqis test their first nuclear device, with several more on the shelf. In addition, the U.S. and British withdraw their air forces from the no-fly zones and Iraq immediately attacks the autonomous region with the thriving Kurdish community.
Does anyone believe this would not have happened if the sanctions regime was dropped against Iraq and it was allowed to resume normal trading routines.
Now, the U.S. at the time harbors some hopes that the U.N. can become a viable arbiter for the peaceful resolution of the world's problems. Only, as with all problems, its actions have to be backed by a credible "or else" option.
For 12 years, a U.S.-led coalition had been giving the "or else" option viability by flying and responding to attacks and provocations over areas of sky in Iraq that the U.N. had decided were areas that Iraq aircraft were not allowed to fly in order to protect not only the inhabitants of those regions from Iraqi military air attacks but also to keep his military from threatening his northern and southern neighbors. These flights by American, British and for awhile French warplanes were flying under the U.N. flag to enforce not only the ceasefire resolution at the end of the first Gulf War, but also to protect minorities in Iraqi who were being brutally suppressed by Hussein's goons.
The atrocities committed by Hussein and his sons and their henchmen on their own people have been well documented over the last five years and the deaths numbered in the hundreds of thousands, with tens of thousands happening annually during the Butcher of Baghdad's nearly 30-year reign.
So maintaining these forces that essentially are flying potential combat missions on a daily basis is not a cheap proposition and it is the U.S. who is bearing the lion's share of the financial burden, and not those people who are its primary benefactors. This is where the evil word "oil" enters the equation.
Unfortunately for the world, the largest deposits of petroleum seem to lie beneath the sands of Arabia and the old Persian and Mesopotamian homelands. Yes, there are substantial deposits in the North Sea, the South China Sea, in Russia and the nations of the Caspian Sea, in Africa, in North and South America, but the sweetest oil seems to come from the area surrounding the Arabian Gulf. It is the most accessible because there is not much to disturb but maybe a few itinerant tribesmen passing through with their camels and their tents. No gleaming metropolises here, nor are there any hubs of great industry churning out products that raise the standard of living not only for the rich but the common man as well. Not much in the way of people or development, just a lot of sand.
Unfortunately, as the world progresses from the industrial age to the information age, much of what powers those economies is fueled by gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel. Some economies are more dependent on oil from this particular region than others. Most of Europe becomes dependent on Middle East crude as does the Tigers of Asia, to which now can be added China and India. As the world continues to develop, its economies become increasingly intertwined and the supply of oil becomes increasingly inadequate.
Any threat to the smooth and peaceful extraction of oil is deemed a life-threatening event to any nation whose umbilical is tied to it.
As in the Cold War, Europe, Japan and other nations expectantly look to the United States, which came out of the Second World War relatively unscathed from the scars of that horrific conflict, with its huge economic power that seems to be the engine that drives the world economy, to shoulder the burdens of being the protector of the peace with its parallel huge military power and the protector of the smooth flow of this commodity to the rest of the world.
Only Hussein tends to make things jump off the track.
First, he invades Iran and after eight years of a bloody stalemate, decides that wasn't such a good idea after all. Yes, the U.S. and other Arab nations favored the Iraqis in this dispute, mainly because Iran, ruled by the mullahs and ayatollahs, had become a theocratic nightmare that felt the U.S. was the Great Satan and should be destroyed. Besides there was the minor humiliation of Iran violating years of diplomatic tradition and seizing the American Embassy and holding its occupants as hostages.
We won't go through the disastrous and muddled attempt to rescue the hostages who so mesmerized the Americans' attention for the 444 days of their captivity. The U.S. was looking for a little pay back and so what if Saddam was an evil person, he was fighting the right enemy. In that, sort of, it was like the U.S. alliance with Stalin's Soviet Union in World War II. Stalin may have been a totally reprehensible person and despot, but he was fighting the right enemy and better let him use his millions to grind down the Nazi war machine than to have young Americans pay that price.
It is the old credo that the enemy of my enemy is my friend for the moment.
So, not only does Saddam's megalomania pose a threat his neighbors in the region, all of whom maintain tiny militaries in comparison to the Iraqis and look for protection under the American umbrella, but also his religion seems to compel him to want to wipe out Jews no matter where they are found. Now after Hitler's nearly successful attempt to wipe out European Jewry, the Europeans who have never been partial to the Jews because they were the enablers of European hypocrisy for almost two millennia agree to a plan to settle the remainder of the survivors in their ancient homeland in Palestine. Even though the Jews have been in Palestine for at least three millennia, the Arabs who themselves are relative newcomers to area get upset with the Europeans pawning off their Jews in what the Arabs perceive as their territory. However, the nation of Israel is formed and the Arabs have spent the better part of the last 60 years thinking of ways to destroy Israel and push all the Jews into the Mediterranean, where hopefully they will all drown.
Unfortunately, for the Arabs, the United States partly because it has the largest number of Jews in the world living in it and partly because we really believe that the Jews should have some place they can call home, without the locals blaming them for everything and occasionally launching murderous riots to beat up on the hated Jews decides that it will be the big brother protector of this small nation of less than four millions. The Americans are just not going to sit by and watch another Holocaust ... we did that once and it left us feeling very bad about ourselves for letting it happen the first time. Besides, in many ways the Israelis are like us and at least their government is a functioning (or is that disfunctioning, it is hard to tell some times) democracy, unlike most of its neighbors.
But Hussein, mostly for domestic consumption (known as creating an outside devil something we in the West are not immune to doing) but also for his own aggrandizement thinks it would really go a long way to wipe out the humiliation the Arabs have suffered over the years (especially in the four wars where the Israelis basically kicked butt on them) if he could figure out a way to wipe out the Israelis.
Well, the first thing he does, after the Iraqis and other Arab nations had their collective butt handed to them in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, is he goes for the asymmetrical option and funds Palestinian groups who are taking the fight daily to the Israelis in low intensity combat (suicide bombers, random rocket and mortar attacks). Lurking in his mind, however, is a plan to use that ultimate weapon those dastardly Americans invented. Even if he dies, he will go down in history as a great Muslim martyr who died in a war to crush the infidel.
Besides if he gets a nuclear bomb, then he can hold over the heads of the Arab tribal leaders in the neighborhood as a great big club and make them dance to his tune. That would impact the flow of oil from the Gulf and that impacts the big, bumbling U.S.'s economic partners. The U.S. will be called upon to drag out the old military force option and wave its big stick around.
He had tried direct action to gain control of more of the Gulf Oil, but again his military had its collective butt handed to them in Kuwait in 1991 by the overwhelming force of a U.N.-sponsored coalition led by the United States. In a funny way, he was able to portray this humiliating defeat of his troops as a victory because had the situation been reversed he surely would be putting the head of GHW Bush on a pike and parading it around the square. Since that didn't happen to his head, then obviously Allah, peace be upon him, was protecting him.
The Gulf War also got him saddled with a series of UN resolutions designed to de-fang the Mesopotamian viper. To all of which he did what he could to defy and skirt his way around them.
In December 1998, he essentially told the UN inspectors to take a hike and leave, which resulted in President Bill Clinton ordering four days of aerial bombing and missiles strikes in an exercise called Operation Desert Fox. All that accomplishes is to get the UN inspectors permanently banned from Iraq.
At the same time, at the urging of President Clinton, Congress passes a bicameral and bipartisan resolution that it will be the stated policy of the United States government to seek out and pursue a way to terminate the rule of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
So, in the fall of 2002, the UN Security Council unanimously passes its 19th resolution advising Saddam to come clean about all his various WMD programs. In December we see this huge document dump by the Iraqis, which after review, the chief of the UN inspectors, Hans Blix, says proves nothing and does not begin to meet the requirements laid out in the UN resolution. In short, Blix says the Iraqis are lying again and trying to be evasive.
Why did the Iraqis let the inspectors back and do the document dump? It wasn't out the goodness of their hearts that is for sure. What had changed from January 1999 and January 2003? Well, the big change was in January 2003 there were increasing numbers of U.S. forces sitting in camps in the Kuwait desert. We are not talking a small group; we are talking 170,000 American Soldiers along with about 30,000 British Tommies and a smattering of forces from some 44 other nations ranging from Italy to Lithuania. Notably absent from the ranks are the French, Germans, Russians and the Chinese as well as most of the other Arab nations. The thing about this coalition, whether you want to believe it or not, was that it was hoping to put some spine into the UN and prove that its "or else" threats were not just empty air.
Now, the question comes: Do you use this force or not. While the French, the Russians and the Chinese had signed off on the previous resolutions that threatened "or else", this trio was having cold feet because it might upset their new contracts they had negotiated in violation of previous sanctions resolutions and that would never do. Besides, in a few months all support for the sanctions would collapse and the Russians, Chinese and French could go back into the very lucrative weapons trade with the Iraqis.
And if the Iraqis do come up with a device to vaporize Tel Aviv, they can always blame the Americans for not taking any action.
To cover Tony Blair's butt, GW Bush agrees that is a good idea to try to get 20th UN Security Council resolution authorizing military force. It was not that the previous 19 resolutions had not either authorized military force or at least threatened it, it was just another i to dot and a t to cross to make sure that if anything went wrong, then the blame would not fall on just the Americans and the British, but primarily the United Nations. However, since the Chinese, the French and the Russians all hold vetoes on the Security Council, the resolution stands no chance of passing.
With summer approaching, Turkey balking at letting the Americans launch a second front through its territory with the 4th Mechanized Infantry Division and with some 200,000 troops sitting in the desert in Kuwait, Bush and Rumsfeld got impatient, or realized that the French, the Russians and the Chinese had no intention of letting the UN become a truly effective organization that could impose its vision on recalcitrant nations, and looked back at the previous 19 UNSCRs and discovered they held all the authorization needed for the Coalition to strike. Besides, it would be awfully expensive and degrade the combat readiness if the juggernaut was forced to sit and wait until summer passed or the Security Council got around to agreeing on another resolution..
So, given the fact that Saddam Hussein's regime was starving his own people, murdering tens of thousands annually, oppressing millions, was merely waiting to reopen his weapons labs and rebuild his WMD facilities, funding terrorist operations against the United States through the Palestinians, flirting with the people who had pulled off the 9/11 attack on US interests (see documentation from the Iran Project), attempted to assassinate the sitting president's father, defied the UN by basically giving it the finger and last but not least, Saddam was basically an arrogant, despicable person, George Bush and Company decided that indeed Hussein posed a clear and present danger to the health and wealth of the world and it was time to depose him.
Deposing him was the easy part. It was the aftermath that caught primarily Donald Rumsfeld off base. To him, the Iraq war was just a testing ground for his new lighter, faster, more mobile, interconnected military force that substituted firepower for manpower. Despite the fact that the U.S. State Department actually had a plan to implement post-bellum, it was ignored, in fact disdained. In a bureaucratic feudal turf war, Donald Rumsefeld's DoD told those stuffed shirts at State to take a hike and the DoD's program of military shock and awe would sort things out. He disregarded the Pottery Shop rule and had illusions about being able to replace a vacuum with a non-existent laize-faire anything-goes solution.
Fumbling the aftermath of the offensive phase of the war, Rumsfeld gave those who, for whatever reason, are predisposed to dislike, nay hate, GW Bush, ample ammunition to attack the former governor of Texas. It is ironic that the first president in years who has had the courage and resolution to stand up to the relentless attacks against Americans, their businesses and their overseas representatives and say "Enough. It stops here. Beyond this we will respond with more than the niceties of our legal system. The gloves are coming off and we will strike back and hit hard."
It is as if, as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto observed, the terrorists had awoken a terrible sleeping dragon and had made it angry. The dragon was awake now and tired of the pinprick attacks. It had stared down the bear without much thanks and now was going to look out for itself.
In retrospect, the WMDs were there, especially the capability rapidly to bring production facilities on line as well as resume the pursuit of the Golden Fleece of a nuclear device. If you don't believe that, I beg that you read the Duelfer Report in its entirety and not just the news stories summarizing inaccurately its findings.
Saddam Hussein was indeed proven to be a very malevolent despot who deserved to hang at the hands of his people.
The threat that his regime is gone, but the threat from Iran has never gone away and if the U.S. can be run out of Iraq by asymmetrical warfare, financed in good part by the Iranian Republican Guard, then it will be the mullahs who have driven the Great Satan from the region and it is their time to rise, as the Xerxes of old and restore the Persian empire to is rightful place as the leader of the world, but especially the Islamic world.
If the bumbling bums of the U.S. cannot pull a rabbit out of their hat, as they seem to be doing today, then who will challenge other despots and threats to the economic stability of the world?
What it really comes down to the end of the day is all the Americans want to do is trade with other countries and sell them stuff at a profit, of course.