A Modest Defence of The President and His Policies of Creative Destruction

GrGr

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A Modest Defence of The President and His Policies of Creative Destruction
NS Special Issue
John Gray
Monday 17th January 2005
Inauguration - John Gray justifies Fallujah and Guantanamo and looks forward to further developments in Bush's crusade for freedom. (With apologies to Jonathan Swift)
New Statesman

The intensifying war in Iraq looks like being a watershed in modern history. Critics of the war have focused on the suffering it has involved and pointed to a number of errors that have been made in the course of the country's ongoing reconstruction. The suffering and mistakes are real enough, but they should not be allowed to conceal the much larger change of which the war is a part. Liberal societies are evolving rapidly to a higher stage of development, in which many traditions will become obsolete.

Under the aegis of the world's most advanced liberal state, torture and collective punishment have once again become normal practice in the conduct of war. To some this may seem anomalous, even contradictory. In reality it is the inner logic of liberal values applied in a time of unprecedented transformation. Liberalism is a universal creed and the crusade for freedom cannot be fettered by archaic legal procedures. Treaties such as the Geneva Convention may have served the cause of freedom in the past, but today they are obstacles to liberal values. A global revolution is in progress in which such quaint relics have no place.

There are many signs that the new American administration has grasped this truth. In Europe, the Bush White House is frequently caricatured as an ultra-reactionary cabal, but this only shows that Europeans are mired in the past. It requires only a little impartial observation - unclouded by the anti-Americanism that is so prevalent in Europe - to see that it is, in fact, an administration dominated by ultra-liberals. By no stretch of the imagination can the neoconservatives who are the intellectual and moral backbone of the administration be called reactionaries or, indeed, conservatives. As they have always made clear, they are radical progressives dedicated to a worldwide democratic revolution in which the freedoms enjoyed by Americans become the entitlement of all. This and nothing else is Mr Bush's mission.

Over the coming four years we can expect to see its commitment to universal freedom continued and extended. In Iraq, the liberation of Fallujah will be repeated in other cities, and America will take the fight for freedom to another level. The reform of antiquated legal and penal practices that has been pioneered in Guantanamo will be taken further. Serious consideration will be given to applying the policies of pre-emptive attack and regime change to Iran, and perhaps Syria. In these and other areas the Bush administration will be acting as the vanguard of human freedom, and it will receive the unswerving support of all those - such as Tony Blair - who understand that it is doing no more than applying core liberal values in the turbulent conditions of our time.

Despite the evidence of the Bush administration's actions, there will be those who quibble with the idea that it is dedicated to liberal ideals. In order to dispel this confusion, let us consider the nature of liberalism, and what - if applied consistently - it means in practice. Take regime change. For true liberals, sovereign states can only be accidents of history, with no claim on our allegiance. Human rights know no borders. Only individuals have rights, and when states violate them they can be invaded and overthrown. A new state can then be established, which respects its citizens as autonomous individuals.

As we all know, things are not always so straightforward. When we are liberating human beings from oppressive regimes, we must reckon with the dead weight of history. Many, perhaps even most, human beings display an irrational attachment to their existing identity, and it cannot be taken for granted that they will automatically welcome the freedom that is being offered them after regime change. They may fail to perceive their culture as being oppressive and be tempted to resist the advance of liberal values. If regime change is really to work in these circumstances, the entire society must be rebuilt. However, in order for that to be possible, it must first be destroyed.

It is this insight that underpins the initiative that is presently being implemented in Fallujah. There are those who say that the destruction of Fallujah is an act of collective punishment for the murder of four American contractors last March. From a narrow legal point of view this may be correct, but "flattening Fallujah" - as the initiative has come to be described by US forces - has a larger significance. It is an early trial of the top-to-bottom reconstruction of Iraqi society that will be required if liberal values are to prevail in the country and the new regime is to survive.



According to US sources, Fallujah's 250,000 inhabitants will return to the devastated city only slowly. This is in order for them to be biometrically catalogued - fingerprinted and retina-scanned - and given an ID card which they will be required to display at all times. With these cards in view, they will be free to move to a number of authorised destinations. Access to and from the city will be controlled by well-fortified checkpoints, with authority to use deadly force if any of the city's residents violate the conditions under which they have been permitted to return. Private motor vehicles will be forbidden. With these policies in place, the entire population can be subjected to continuous surveillance.

From an historical standpoint this may seem no more than another variation on the " secure hamlet" programmes that were used by the British in Malaya and the Americans in Vietnam, with limited success - particularly in Vietnam. Looking to the future, however, it can be seen as a necessary first step in a programme of social reconstruction in which Iraqis are being prepared for life as autonomous individuals. A modern liberal society cannot function if people are locked into networks of family and clan, and acquire their beliefs and values from authoritarian religious leaders. If there is to be anything resembling personal autonomy in the new Iraq, these traditional structures must be dissolved. It is not enough to raze buildings and empty cities. The underlying framework of society must be deconstructed, and reconstituted on a liberal model. This is the experiment under way in Fallujah, which will surely be extended to Mosul, Ramadi and other cities.

It is an ambitious undertaking, with no guarantee of success. For those who are not used to it freedom can come as a shock, and in Iraq the shock of freedom has been considerable. A certain amount of disorder has resulted, and except in the Kurdish zones (where there are no US troops) the forces of fundamentalism and terrorism seem temporarily to have been strengthened. Further military action will undoubtedly be required, including intensive bombing to soften up rebel-held cities and the deployment of hit squads to eliminate insurgents, on the model of the action taken by the Reagan administration in El Salvador some 20 years ago.

Still, it cannot be expected that further military action by America's forces in Iraq - however intensive - will eradicate the insurgency entirely. The problem of terrorism is global, and it demands a global solution. It is in order to tackle this problem that Mr Bush is extending the far-reaching reforms of penal and judicial practice implemented during the first administration. It has been announced that US authorities are planning to use the facility they have established at Guantanamo for the permanent detention without charge or trial of some of its inmates. Under these new arrangements, detainees will be housed in humane conditions that permit activity and socialising during what is expected to be lifelong confinement. The first Bush II administration's directives allowing the use of modern interrogation techniques will not be altered - and rightly so. As I noted in a New Statesman essay some time ago ("A modest proposal", 17 February 2003), the common belief that torture is always contrary to liberal values has no rational basis. No one has the right to attack basic human rights - and terrorism is above all an attack on human rights. No human rights are violated when a terrorist is tortured.

The American authorities - closely followed, as ever, by the British - have understood this basic truth, and are setting up a permanent legal framework in which torture can be regu- lated. At a hearing of the Senate judicial committee this month, President Bush's nominee for the post of attorney general, Alberto R Gonzales, strongly defended his record as legal counsel in the first Bush II administration. In a memorandum to the president in 2002, Gonzales had announced the "new paradigm" that "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions". Quizzed by members of the committee, the presidential nominee held to this view and went on to suggest that the US should consider renegotiating such treaties.



Whether or not the US formally reneges on the Geneva Convention, torture has been re-established in the legal process - not only in America but also in Britain, where courts now accept evidence obtained by its use. These reforms will surely prevent many abuses. The administrative confusion that prevailed at Abu Ghraib, which allowed a number of embarrassing incidents to be widely publicised, is unlikely to recur.

It is no accident that torture has been reintroduced by the world's pre-eminent liberal state. To be sure, torture is used by many regimes - not only those inspired by liberal ideals. It is routinely employed in tyrannies and the ramshackle failed states that litter the globe; but only in liberal states is it part of a crusade for human rights. Liberalism is a project of universal emancipation, and torture will be necessary as long as the spread of liberal values is resisted. When the Bush administration authorises the use of torture, it does so in the cause of human progress.

It is this that explains why there has been so little resistance to its reintroduction. The reform of legal procedure required has been quite far-reaching, yet it has been implemented quickly and effectively, and with the evident support of enlightened opinion. It is encouraging to report that most liberal commentators have tacitly endorsed the reform, while a growing number - so far mostly in the United States - actively defend it. Sadly, continental Europe - thoroughly corroded by moral relativism and lacking any deep commitment to the universality of liberal values - has been slow to accept the need for change.

No one can doubt the scale of the revolution that is under way throughout the world, but there may still be some who question that it is inspired by liberal values. The Iraq war is old-fashioned imperialism, they will say, not the next step in liberalism. There can be no doubt that Iraq's large oil reserves figured in the strategic calculations that were made in the White House in the run-up to war. The neoconservatives who engineered American military intervention in Iraq have always made clear that securing control of the country's oil is a crucial part of their strategy of democratising the Middle East, but this is far removed from anything resembling imperialism. Aside from exploiting them for their resources, European imperialists left the countries that they conquered much as they were. While they may have talked of spreading civilisation, they did little in practice to alter the underlying societies. In contrast, America plans to transform Iraq into a freedom-loving democracy.

It is a task that must be completed in the fairly near future, or else support for the war may crumble in the United States. Mr Bush would then be under pressure to declare victory and withdraw US forces before the job is done - an outcome Europeans have expected all along. The fragile interim regime would collapse and the country would descend into civil war and theocracy. Iraq's oil would pass out of US control - most likely into Iranian hands - and Saudi Arabia would face worsening instability, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the American economy. The entire American project in the Middle East would be endangered, and American power itself put at risk.

With these dangers in mind, Mr Bush may well decide to extend the war to Iran. Such a move will be risky. US forces are already somewhat stretched, and a further land invasion would pose some difficult logistical problems. Even if the US confines itself to bombing Iran, it risks retaliation through an escalation of Iranian-supported unconventional warfare in Iraq.

However, the Bush administration's policy in the Middle East has never been one that seeks mere stability. In the words of the neoconservatives who now more than ever shape its policies, the US aims to promote "creative destruction" throughout the region. Iran's nuclear ambitions are, in any case, shifting the balance of power. In these conditions, a widening of the war is the logic of events.

It is also the logic of liberal values. Liberalism is nothing if it is not a crusade, and the Middle East clearly needs conversion. The battle will be hard and long, and the hope of progress may sometimes be dim. Yet it will not be extinguished. It is burning even now, as Mr Bush and his neoconservative strategists plan the next phase of the global democratic revolution.
 

yllus

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Aug 20, 2000
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In order to dispel this confusion, let us consider the nature of liberalism, and what - if applied consistently - it means in practice. Take regime change. For true liberals, sovereign states can only be accidents of history, with no claim on our allegiance. Human rights know no borders. Only individuals have rights, and when states violate them they can be invaded and overthrown. A new state can then be established, which respects its citizens as autonomous individuals.
That is an interesting point. What defines a legitimately defined state? Some ancient ancestral claim to the land? I'm sure most people today are okay with the borders of Germany - yet at the same time, the three wars fought under Bismarck in the late 1800s snatched pieces of Denmark, France and Austria-Hungary to create its confederation. Only by fortuitous timing do national borders seem to go unchallenged.

I've posted this a dozen times in here - I've always considered the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the ultimate goal of all of its members. That people would oppose the toppling of an obvious tyrant because "we don't have the right to interfere" is mind-boggling.

Of course, nothing is done without self-interest involved. The thought that this war was waged on economic reasons is ridiculous - especially to the people in here who grouse over every dollar spent - but certainly there is an ideological twist to this campaign. Democracy/capitalism versus all other comers. You can try to bleed Christianity and religious radicalism into this, but you'd be trotting off on the wrong path. The rights the UN outline transcend all religion.

Lastly, in parts of the world where talk is of little value and action is everything, this strikes the right chord. Think the U.S. will sit impotently by while you flout your agreements and threaten its people (even merely verbally) a la Saddam? Better think twice.
 

GrGr

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I agree about the UN's Universal Rights. But that cannot be without international law. You cannot pick and chose which laws you follow and which you do not.

I don't follow your argument. You cannot defend the UN while simultaneously breaking it's (and the US' laws). Saddam was a CIA assassin. The US has repladed him with another CIA assassin (Allawi). Do you think it was out of goodness of it's heart that the US invaded Iraq?

 

yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Aug 20, 2000
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Originally posted by: GrGr
I agree about the UN's Universal Rights. But that cannot be without international law. You cannot pick and chose which laws you follow and which you do not.

I don't follow your argument. You cannot defend the UN while simultaneously breaking it's (and the US' laws). Saddam was a CIA assassin. The US has repladed him with another CIA assassin (Allawi). Do you think it was out of goodness of it's heart that the US invaded Iraq?
No, of course not. You'd have to be a pretty blind follower to think that the Bush administration - or any administration in its place - would trip around the world liberating nations from dictatorships out of purely moralistic reasons.

I disagree with your statement - Hussein was not a CIA assassin. He ascended to power on his own, though the American intelligence agencies of the day fully knew what his methods were like. And you're right, Allawi could possibly turn out to be just as awful - though I imagine the U.S. will stick around in the region while the Iraqis become acclimated to democracy and a coup becomes permanently impossible. However - when are the sins of his forefathers also Bush's? Is he simply to let Saddam roam free in the Middle East because the CIA at the time was complicit in its noninterference? That seems like pretty poor reasoning to me.

The one legitimate complaint against action in Iraq that I see possible is this: Why must Americans lift this burden alone? Your money is spent, your equipment is destroyed, your troops are the ones killed. Why should America bother when nobody else cares how many Saddam and his family slaughter per year at home? Even for this, however, there is a response. The USA is the modern downtrodden dictator's scapegoat for all that is wrong in their lands, even when the correlation makes absoutely no sense. At some point, action becomes required to end the ridiculous pointing of fingers (and eventually, things more dangerous than fingers) at the West. Self-preservation.
 

BBond

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Oct 3, 2004
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Originally posted by: GrGr
I agree about the UN's Universal Rights. But that cannot be without international law. You cannot pick and chose which laws you follow and which you do not.

I don't follow your argument. You cannot defend the UN while simultaneously breaking it's (and the US' laws). Saddam was a CIA assassin. The US has repladed him with another CIA assassin (Allawi). Do you think it was out of goodness of it's heart that the US invaded Iraq?

Ayad Allawi: The CIA's Main Man in Baghdad

Ayad Allawi: The CIA's Main Man in Baghdad
PATRICE CLAUDE / Guardian Weekly 23jul04

Le Monde ? At first sight, the appointment of Ayad Allawi, 58, as interim prime minister of Iraq in May could not have been much to the liking of the country's two puppet-masters of the past 15 months, the United States and Britain. What counted against Allawi, a former hard-line Ba'athist, were his 32 years of exile outside Iraq, his murky reputation as a businessman, his political party, which had no grassroots backing, and above all his poor record as an MI6 and CIA agent. It was Allawi who early last year provided the British secret service with the information that President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could become "operational within 45 minutes" - information that almost cost the Tony Blair his job.

As for the CIA, in 1996 it suffered the greatest fiasco in its history, greater even than the Bay of Pigs, according to a book, Saddam Hussein: an American Obsession, by Patrick and Andrew Cockburn. More of which anon.

Dr Haifa al-Azzawi knew Allawi well in his youth: "No one who studied medicine in Baghdad in the 60s could have forgotten that Ba'athist bully boy. He walked around the campus with a pistol in his belt and chased women students. His medical degree is bogus. The Ba'ath party gave it to him before sending him off to London, with a World Health Organisation scholarship grant, in theory to complete his studies, but in fact to spy on Iraqi students abroad."

At the end of the 60s, Allawi was European president of the Association of Iraqi Students Abroad. It was a job that allowed him to travel, get to know other young Arab nationalists and track down "traitors" who, according to al Azzawi, were "denounced and punished", sometimes summarily.

Allawi broke officially with Saddam in 1971. Like most young people in the Middle East at that time, he was an Arab socialist and nationalist. Ideological "deviations" and the take-over of the party by Saddam and his Tikrit clan were not to his liking. He went into exile, first in Lebanon and then in London. What he did thereafter is a mystery. He has declined to be interviewed by Le Monde. None of the interviews he has given throws light on that period.

According to a thumbnail biography put out by the coalition in Baghdad, he got his master's degree in medicine in 1976 and his doctorate three years later. He also worked as a consultant for the WHO and the United Nations Development Programme. Was he, as Patrick and Andrew Cockbourn claim, also secretly working for the Ba'ath party? Or was he already working as a double agent for MI6?

On February 4, 1978, three men broke into his London house and hit him with an axe behind the head, on the chest and on the thigh. The final blow almost severed his leg completely. His would-be murderers left him for dead, but he survived, resurfacing a year later. His family say they received anonymous threats. Allawi, who bears no scars and walks without the slightest limp, saw that as proof that his attackers were Saddam's henchmen, even though they were never identified.

Some have found the circumstances of the attack fishy. But Professor Sadoun al-Duleimi, who returned to Iraq from exile in 2003 to run the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies, does not question the official version. "Allawi was an important figure in the Ba'ath party. He knew a lot of things and passed them on to MI6. That's why agents from the Mukhabarat, the secret police, were ordered to kill him." However that may be, the future helmsman of the US's grand plan for democracy in Iraq then dropped out of the news. During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) Allawi, who by then had a British passport, spent most of his time shuttling between Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

The son of a doctor who was health minister when the king of Iraq was deposed in 1958 and the grandson of a leading Iraqi figure who took part in the negotiations that gave the former Mesopotamia its independence in 1932, Allawi has politics in his blood. He never completely severed his ties with Ba'athist army and intelligence officers who, like him, felt that Saddam was leading the country to disaster.

In 1980, with the help of the Saudi secret service, Allawi launched Radio Free Iraq, which broadcast out of Jeddah. It had little impact but enabled him to stay in the swim. At the same time, he became increasingly active in business (reportedly in the oil sector) and built up a considerable fortune.

In 1991, when Saddam was kicked out of Kuwait by the Americans and his regime looked shakier than ever, Allawi set up Al-Wifaq, or Iraqi National Accord (INA), whose aim was to enable him to jockey for position in the apparently imminent post-Saddam period. But Saddam hung on to power.

The following year, under pressure from the Saudis and their American and British allies, INA teamed up with a rival organisation, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), led by Ahmad Chalabi. Allawi knew him well: he was his cousin by marriage.

Both men belonged to the most secular wing of Iraqi Shi'ism but heartily detested each other. Chalabi's extremely rich family had left Iraq with their fortune as soon as the king was deposed. In 1992 Chalabi was charged with banking fraud in Jordan and sentenced in his absence to 22 years in prison. The two cousins' tactical alliance did not survive for long.

Chalabi was fundamentally anti-Ba'athist. He demonstrated that in 2003 when he pressed the Americans to make the biggest tactical blunder of their occupation of Iraq: an out-and-out de-Ba'athisation campaign and the dissolution of the army and the administration. Allawi strove on the contrary to recruit his former comrades in arms and did everything he could to oppose the suicidal policy of mass purges implemented by the American proconsul, Paul Bremer.

Back in October 1995 Chalabi had persuaded his American masters to finance and arm an Iraqi people's uprising based in Kurdistan. Allawi did not believe for one moment that Chalabi had any chance of success. He was right. It was a bloody debacle.

Four months later, after getting the go-ahead from President Bill Clinton, who was already campaigning for his re-election, the CIA prepared a second coup against Saddam. This time Allawi was given his chance. According to Samuel Berger, Clinton's security adviser, Allawi had succeeded, unlike Chalabi, in gaining the confidence of Arab powers in the region, was well considered by those who mounted the operation, and seemed less interested in self-aggrandisement than his cousin. By mid-January 1996 the operation was up and running. The CIA came up with $6m, as did Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Jordan provided the venture's rear base. The coup would be carried out by the army.

Allawi flattered himself that he had the support of several dozen high-ranking officers. This may be true, but we shall never know for certain. A month before the end of June, when the operation was due to take place, Allawi, who wanted to put down his markers, told the -Washington Post that a secret operation against Saddam was imminent. No one believed him except Saddam, who had already captured one of Allawi's envoys in Iraq - and persuaded him to talk. On June 20 the arrests began. Within 10 days some 30 disloyal generals were executed; 120 others were arrested and tortured. In all, almost 800 people are believed to have lost their lives in Saddam's bloody purge. The coup attempt was a fiasco, but no Americans died and it was swept under the carpet.

In July 2003 Allawi was appointed head of the security committee of the now defunct Iraqi Governing Council set up by Bremer. In the end, "for want of someone better", the mandarins in the US state department put their money on Allawi: on May 27 he was appointed prime minister of the interim government, to the annoyance of the UN and the French - whom Allawi despises.

Does he have a chance at the national elections scheduled for next January? "With him as PM, it's rather as if the CIA had been wedded to our country," says a hard-boiled local commentator. "But given the present chaos, where the absolute priority must be a return to law and order, Allawi is probably the best of a bad bunch. He's a Shia without being devout, and pro-Sunni while not a Sunni himself. He gets on well with the Americans, the British, the Saudis and all the regimes around us.

"The exception could be Iran, though the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani [an Iranian] has lent him timid support. In short, he's someone who has the advantage of arousing a roughly equal degree of mistrust in every camp. That could work in his favour."

A European diplomat remarks: "It has to be admitted that the way he elaborated his strategy for taking over power, first by infiltrating the remnants of the secret service and putting it back on its feet, and secondly by winning the support of former Sunni generals, was smart. It was an old-fashioned strategy that has proved its worth in the past."

Is Allawi the "Iraqi democrat" trumpeted by the White House? "Come on!" snorts Qais el-Azzawi, editor-in-chief of the socialist daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jaridah. "He's a former Mukharabat officer. In the newsroom he's known as 'Saddam without a moustache'."

Hazem Abdel Hamid an-Nueimi, a political sciences researcher at Baghdad University, says: "Of course he's a democrat - an Arab-style democrat. Or an Egyptian-style or Algerian-style democrat, if you prefer . . ."

 

yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Aug 20, 2000
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Originally posted by: BBond
Originally posted by: GrGr
I agree about the UN's Universal Rights. But that cannot be without international law. You cannot pick and chose which laws you follow and which you do not.

I don't follow your argument. You cannot defend the UN while simultaneously breaking it's (and the US' laws). Saddam was a CIA assassin. The US has repladed him with another CIA assassin (Allawi). Do you think it was out of goodness of it's heart that the US invaded Iraq?

Ayad Allawi: The CIA's Main Man in Baghdad
BBond, do you have something on-topic to say, or are you going to just go with this complete sideline point that's completely irrelevant? Or, if we're really lucky, actually post your own opinion instead of regurgitating others' articles?
 

BBond

Diamond Member
Oct 3, 2004
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At first sight, the appointment of Ayad Allawi, 58, as interim prime minister of Iraq in May could not have been much to the liking of the country's two puppet-masters of the past 15 months, the United States and Britain. What counted against Allawi, a former hard-line Ba'athist, were his 32 years of exile outside Iraq, his murky reputation as a businessman, his political party, which had no grassroots backing, and above all his poor record as an MI6 and CIA agent. It was Allawi who early last year provided the British secret service with the information that President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could become "operational within 45 minutes" - information that almost cost the Tony Blair his job.

You're absolutely correct, GrGr, Hussein and Allawi -- both CIA assets. Hussein was aided and abetted by the U.S. (Reagan/Bush) and the CIA in his rise to power.

Anyone who believes Hussein wasn't aided by the U.S. and kept in power, especially during the Iran/Iraq war, by the gift of U.S. arms and dollars is either ignorant of the history, a fool, or a liar.

 

GrGr

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Sep 25, 2003
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NY Times
Roger Morris

Seattle -- March 14, 2003 -- On the brink of war, both supporters and critics of United States policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass: America's dealings with Saddam Hussein, justifiable or not, began some two decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's.

Both sides are mistaken. Washington's policy traces an even longer, more shrouded and fateful history. Forty years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington's role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since. America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.

From 1958 to 1960, despite Kassem's harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington's Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt -- much as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush would aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980's against the common foe of Iran. By 1961, the Kassem regime had grown more assertive. Seeking new arms rivaling Israel's arsenal, threatening Western oil interests, resuming his country's old quarrel with Kuwait, talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East -- all steps Saddam Hussein was to repeat in some form -- Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed.

In 1963 Britain and Israel backed American intervention in Iraq, while other United States allies -- chiefly France and Germany -- resisted. But without significant opposition within the government, Kennedy, like President Bush today, pressed on. In Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, American agents marshalled opponents of the Iraqi regime. Washington set up a base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and radioing orders to rebels. The United States armed Kurdish insurgents. The C.I.A.'s "Health Alteration Committee", as it was tactfully called, sent Kassem a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief, though the potentially lethal gift either failed to work or never reached its victim.

Then, on February 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial he was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. "Almost certainly a gain for our side", Robert Komer, a National Security Council aide, wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.

As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.

According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite -- killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.

The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the United States had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon, Western corporations like Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad -- for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq.

But it wasn't long before there was infighting among Iraq's new rulers. In 1968, after yet another coup, the Baathist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr seized control, bringing to the threshold of power his kinsman, Saddam Hussein. Again, this coup, amid more factional violence, came with C.I.A. backing. Serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in the late 1960's, I often heard C.I.A. officers -- including Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a ranking C.I.A. official for the Near East and Africa at the time -- speak openly about their close relations with the Iraqi Baathists.

This history is known to many in the Middle East and Europe, though few Americans are acquainted with it, much less understand it. Yet these interventions help explain why United States policy is viewed with some cynicism abroad. George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek 'regime change' in Iraq. Mr. Bush and his advisers are following a familiar pattern.

The Kassem episode raises questions about the war at hand. In the last half century, regime change in Iraq has been accompanied by bloody reprisals. How fierce, then, may be the resistance of hundreds of officers, scientists and others identified with Saddam Hussein's long rule? Why should they believe America and its latest Iraqi clients will act more wisely, or less vengefully, now than in the past?

If a new war in Iraq seems fraught with danger and uncertainty, just wait for the peace.
 

BBond

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Oct 3, 2004
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Originally posted by: GrGr
NY Times
Roger Morris

Seattle -- March 14, 2003 -- On the brink of war, both supporters and critics of United States policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass: America's dealings with Saddam Hussein, justifiable or not, began some two decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's.

Both sides are mistaken. Washington's policy traces an even longer, more shrouded and fateful history. Forty years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington's role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since. America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.

From 1958 to 1960, despite Kassem's harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington's Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt -- much as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush would aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980's against the common foe of Iran. By 1961, the Kassem regime had grown more assertive. Seeking new arms rivaling Israel's arsenal, threatening Western oil interests, resuming his country's old quarrel with Kuwait, talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East -- all steps Saddam Hussein was to repeat in some form -- Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed.

In 1963 Britain and Israel backed American intervention in Iraq, while other United States allies -- chiefly France and Germany -- resisted. But without significant opposition within the government, Kennedy, like President Bush today, pressed on. In Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, American agents marshalled opponents of the Iraqi regime. Washington set up a base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and radioing orders to rebels. The United States armed Kurdish insurgents. The C.I.A.'s "Health Alteration Committee", as it was tactfully called, sent Kassem a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief, though the potentially lethal gift either failed to work or never reached its victim.

Then, on February 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial he was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. "Almost certainly a gain for our side", Robert Komer, a National Security Council aide, wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.

As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.

According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite -- killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.

The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the United States had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon, Western corporations like Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad -- for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq.

But it wasn't long before there was infighting among Iraq's new rulers. In 1968, after yet another coup, the Baathist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr seized control, bringing to the threshold of power his kinsman, Saddam Hussein. Again, this coup, amid more factional violence, came with C.I.A. backing. Serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in the late 1960's, I often heard C.I.A. officers -- including Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a ranking C.I.A. official for the Near East and Africa at the time -- speak openly about their close relations with the Iraqi Baathists.

This history is known to many in the Middle East and Europe, though few Americans are acquainted with it, much less understand it. Yet these interventions help explain why United States policy is viewed with some cynicism abroad. George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek 'regime change' in Iraq. Mr. Bush and his advisers are following a familiar pattern.

The Kassem episode raises questions about the war at hand. In the last half century, regime change in Iraq has been accompanied by bloody reprisals. How fierce, then, may be the resistance of hundreds of officers, scientists and others identified with Saddam Hussein's long rule? Why should they believe America and its latest Iraqi clients will act more wisely, or less vengefully, now than in the past?

If a new war in Iraq seems fraught with danger and uncertainty, just wait for the peace.

Thanks for the link, GrGr. Like I said, anyone who says Hussein wasn't aided by the U.S. is either ignorant, a fool, or a liar. ;)

 

yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Aug 20, 2000
20,577
432
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*sighs* Okay. In 1968, General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr seizes control and Hussein...is along with the ride? Let's see.
Saddam Hussein: Secrets of His Life and Leadership:
While he was in Cairo, there's some belief that he may have had contact with Americans, with the CIA. What can you tell us about that?

There is very good reason to believe that Saddam Hussein was in contact with the American embassy in Cairo when he was in exile. This is not strange, because alliances of convenience were taking place every day, and the United States was afraid that Iraq, under Kassem, might be going communist. So was the Ba'ath Party. So they had a common enemy, a common target -- the possibility of a communist take-over of Iraq.

So there is a record of Saddam visiting the American embassy frequently, and there is a record of the Egyptian security people telling him not to do that. However, one must remember that at that time, Saddam was a minor official of the Ba'ath Party. He was not terribly important. And he was really following in the footsteps of other people who are much more important.

There was a coup in Iraq in 1963. What do we know about the U.S. involvement in that coup?

The U.S. involvement in the coup against Kassem in Iraq in 1963 was substantial. There is evidence that CIA agents were in touch with army officers who were involved in the coup. There is evidence that an electronic command center was set up in Kuwait to guide the forces who were fighting Kassem. There is evidence that they supplied the conspirators with lists of people who had to be eliminated immediately in order to ensure success. The relationship between the Americans and the Ba'ath Party at that moment in time was very close indeed. And that continued for some time after the coup. And there was an exchange of information between the two sides. For example it was one of the first times that the United States was able to get certain models of Mig fighters and certain tanks made in the Soviet Union. That was the bribe. That was what the Ba'ath had to offer the United States in return for their help in eliminating Kassem.

Do we know to what extent Saddam Hussein was involved in the killings when he came back from Cairo?

I have documented over 700 people who were eliminated, mostly on an individual basis, after the 1963 coup. And they were eliminated based on lists supplied by the CIA to the Ba'ath Party. So the CIA and the Ba'ath were in the business of eliminating communists and leftists who were dangerous to the Ba'ath's takeover.

The coup took place in April, Saddam Hussein did not return to Iraq until May. But he went to work immediately. He became an interrogator in the Fellaheen and Muthaqafeen detention camps. They are camps where they kept communists and fellow travellers, after they took power. And in interrogating people in those camps, he used torture, and undoubtedly like everybody else involved in this activity, eliminated people. In 1963 he was still one of the party's toughs, one of the party's thugs, if you wish.
If you'd like to look further down the article, there is some possible evidence of Hussein meeting with CIA agents in regards to the future Iran-Iraq war. This is also irrelevant to the discussion of his rise to power. As I said, he ascended to power on his own.
 

miketheidiot

Lifer
Sep 3, 2004
11,060
1
0
Originally posted by: GrGr
A Modest Defence of The President and His Policies of Creative Destruction
NS Special Issue
John Gray
Monday 17th January 2005
Inauguration - John Gray justifies Fallujah and Guantanamo and looks forward to further developments in Bush's crusade for freedom. (With apologies to Jonathan Swift)
New Statesman

I'm assuming that this is a "modest proposal" and not a real argument.

EDIT: shortened the quote to reasonable size.
 

GrGr

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2003
3,204
0
76
"Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite -- killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated."

"The coup took place in April, Saddam Hussein did not return to Iraq until May. But he went to work immediately. He became an interrogator in the Fellaheen and Muthaqafeen detention camps. They are camps where they kept communists and fellow travellers, after they took power. And in interrogating people in those camps, he used torture, and undoubtedly like everybody else involved in this activity, eliminated people. In 1963 he was still one of the party's toughs, one of the party's thugs, if you wish."

Conclusion: Saddam killed people that the CIA had on it's death list. In other words, he assassinated people on behalf of the CIA.
 

GrGr

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2003
3,204
0
76
Originally posted by: miketheidiot
Originally posted by: GrGr
A Modest Defence of The President and His Policies of Creative Destruction
NS Special Issue
John Gray
Monday 17th January 2005
Inauguration - John Gray justifies Fallujah and Guantanamo and looks forward to further developments in Bush's crusade for freedom. (With apologies to Jonathan Swift)
New Statesman

I'm assuming that this is a "modest proposal" and not a real argument.

EDIT: shortened the quote to reasonable size.

It is satire. (With apologies to Jonathan Swift)

 

miketheidiot

Lifer
Sep 3, 2004
11,060
1
0
Originally posted by: yllus
In order to dispel this confusion, let us consider the nature of liberalism, and what - if applied consistently - it means in practice. Take regime change. For true liberals, sovereign states can only be accidents of history, with no claim on our allegiance. Human rights know no borders. Only individuals have rights, and when states violate them they can be invaded and overthrown. A new state can then be established, which respects its citizens as autonomous individuals.
That is an interesting point. What defines a legitimately defined state? Some ancient ancestral claim to the land? I'm sure most people today are okay with the borders of Germany - yet at the same time, the three wars fought under Bismarck in the late 1800s snatched pieces of Denmark, France and Austria-Hungary to create its confederation. Only by fortuitous timing do national borders seem to go unchallenged.

I've posted this a dozen times in here - I've always considered the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the ultimate goal of all of its members. That people would oppose the toppling of an obvious tyrant because "we don't have the right to interfere" is mind-boggling.

Of course, nothing is done without self-interest involved. The thought that this war was waged on economic reasons is ridiculous - especially to the people in here who grouse over every dollar spent - but certainly there is an ideological twist to this campaign. Democracy/capitalism versus all other comers. You can try to bleed Christianity and religious radicalism into this, but you'd be trotting off on the wrong path. The rights the UN outline transcend all religion.

Lastly, in parts of the world where talk is of little value and action is everything, this strikes the right chord. Think the U.S. will sit impotently by while you flout your agreements and threaten its people (even merely verbally) a la Saddam? Better think twice.
I used to like this argument. the Liberal emprire, etc etc. Now i often feel like vomiting when I hear it, especially the way many people apply it.

IMO "liberating" people will only lead to more oppressive regimes. The only way to truely be liberated is to do it yourself.

 

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
70,504
6,046
126
Originally posted by: GrGr
Originally posted by: miketheidiot
Originally posted by: GrGr
A Modest Defence of The President and His Policies of Creative Destruction
NS Special Issue
John Gray
Monday 17th January 2005
Inauguration - John Gray justifies Fallujah and Guantanamo and looks forward to further developments in Bush's crusade for freedom. (With apologies to Jonathan Swift)
New Statesman

I'm assuming that this is a "modest proposal" and not a real argument.

EDIT: shortened the quote to reasonable size.

It is satire. (With apologies to Jonathan Swift)

doh, I believe you are right.
 

GrGr

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2003
3,204
0
76
Originally posted by: sandorski
Originally posted by: GrGr
Originally posted by: miketheidiot
Originally posted by: GrGr
A Modest Defence of The President and His Policies of Creative Destruction
NS Special Issue
John Gray
Monday 17th January 2005
Inauguration - John Gray justifies Fallujah and Guantanamo and looks forward to further developments in Bush's crusade for freedom. (With apologies to Jonathan Swift)
New Statesman

I'm assuming that this is a "modest proposal" and not a real argument.

EDIT: shortened the quote to reasonable size.

It is satire. (With apologies to Jonathan Swift)

doh, I believe you are right.

Sorry I thought it was obvious it was satire otherwise I would have pointed it out in the headline. :)

 

yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Aug 20, 2000
20,577
432
126
Originally posted by: miketheidiot
I used to like this argument. the Liberal emprire, etc etc. Now i often feel like vomiting when I hear it, especially the way many people apply it.

IMO "liberating" people will only lead to more oppressive regimes. The only way to truely be liberated is to do it yourself.
So tell me - how would you envision the Iraqis liberating themselves? The 1991 coup in the former USSR failed because the Soviet military balked at firing on civilians. If they had done so within the safety of their tanks and BTUs, there would be little the people could have done to fight back. And I think it's safe to say that the forces ensuring Saddam's survival in Iraq would not blink at an order to massacre their own countrymen. Self-liberation is the best option...when it's actually possible. Something less and less likely to occur with the modernization and proliferation of weaponry across the world.

GrGr: You have a point. Even as a mere henchman, by culling the lists compiled by the CIA Saddam acted as its assassin thus making the use of the label accurate. My peripheral point about no direct assistance going from America to Saddam still stands however. Not to mention the illogic of America being forever responsible for the actions taken a half century ago.
 

GrGr

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2003
3,204
0
76
Aimster: My peripheral point about no direct assistance going from America to Saddam still stands however. Not to mention the illogic of America being forever responsible for the actions taken a half century ago.

GrGr: It wasn't only actions taken "half a century" ago. It is a question of Modus Operandi. Bush41, Rumsfeld and Cheney were part of the administration that used Saddam to fight a proxy war against Iran. "Everybody" used Saddam for shady deals and quick profit during the 1980's.

Robert Fisk:

We always love Arab leaders who know how to keep control. King Abdullah of Jordan - the present King Abdullah's great-grandfather - was described by the first British senior official in Transjordan as "lovable, considerate and generous". His grandson King Hussein, ruthlessly suppressing the PLO's Black September revolt, became the "PLK" - the "plucky little king", a sobriquet that Hussein once told me he appreciated. We supported Nasser, before he nationalised the Suez Canal. We much preferred the military-minded Colonel Gaddafi to King Idriss, until he threw the RAF out of Wheelus Field. We positively adored Saddam Hussein.

"I welcome you as my personal friend," the then prime minister Jacques Chirac told Saddam at Orly Airport in 1975, when he arrived in France on an arms-buying spree. "I assure you of my esteem, my consideration, and my affection."

When Saddam invaded our enemy Iran five years later, the Pentagon and the CIA furnished him with photo-reconnaissance pictures - in 1996, I met the German arms-dealer who took them from Virginia to Baghdad - but when Saddam invaded our friend Kuwait in 1990, he became the Beast of Baghdad. "Our" dictators must do as they are told.

We also like to control the abilities of Arab leaders, in both war and peace. "It is true that I made you lose the war," Henry Kissinger told President Sadat after Ariel Sharon's Israeli forces had crossed the Canal into Egypt in 1973. "But, Mr President, be assured that I'll make you win the peace."

etc.
New Statesman
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
0
Originally posted by: GrGr
Originally posted by: sandorski
Originally posted by: GrGr
Originally posted by: miketheidiot
Originally posted by: GrGr
A Modest Defence of The President and His Policies of Creative Destruction
NS Special Issue
John Gray
Monday 17th January 2005
Inauguration - John Gray justifies Fallujah and Guantanamo and looks forward to further developments in Bush's crusade for freedom. (With apologies to Jonathan Swift)
New Statesman
I'm assuming that this is a "modest proposal" and not a real argument.

EDIT: shortened the quote to reasonable size.
It is satire. (With apologies to Jonathan Swift)
doh, I believe you are right.
Sorry I thought it was obvious it was satire otherwise I would have pointed it out in the headline. :)
That some in here not only missed the satire but agree with it is a bit telling. ;)


I thought moonbeam had landed a new job.
 

Starbuck1975

Lifer
Jan 6, 2005
14,698
1,909
126
Anyone who believes Hussein wasn't aided by the U.S. and kept in power, especially during the Iran/Iraq war, by the gift of U.S. arms and dollars is either ignorant of the history, a fool, or a liar.
Hindsight is always 20/20. At the time, Saddam was the lesser of two evils in that he represented a powerful but secular force within proximity to the growing Islamic fundamentalism that was, at the time, a direct threat to American national security...heightened and elevated by the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, but also because of our ties to Israel. We even supported Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan because he was fighting the Soviets, and in foreign policy, the enemy of my enemy becomes a friend.

During WW2, we formed an alliance with Stalin, knowing full well that he was as much a tyrant, if not more so, then Hitler...Patton realized this better then any American general, and wanted very much to continue pushing east, knowing that eliminating Hitler was only setting the stage for a Soviet/Allies stand off over spheres of influence throughout Europe.

Even if you examine the plight of the Third World, most of the tyrants, regimes and dictators of these nations are in place largely due to the botched foreign policy of not only America, but all the western powers that engaged in imperialism over the last several centuries.

 

BBond

Diamond Member
Oct 3, 2004
8,363
0
0
Originally posted by: Starbuck1975
Anyone who believes Hussein wasn't aided by the U.S. and kept in power, especially during the Iran/Iraq war, by the gift of U.S. arms and dollars is either ignorant of the history, a fool, or a liar.
Hindsight is always 20/20. At the time, Saddam was the lesser of two evils in that he represented a powerful but secular force within proximity to the growing Islamic fundamentalism that was, at the time, a direct threat to American national security...heightened and elevated by the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, but also because of our ties to Israel. We even supported Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan because he was fighting the Soviets, and in foreign policy, the enemy of my enemy becomes a friend.

During WW2, we formed an alliance with Stalin, knowing full well that he was as much a tyrant, if not more so, then Hitler...Patton realized this better then any American general, and wanted very much to continue pushing east, knowing that eliminating Hitler was only setting the stage for a Soviet/Allies stand off over spheres of influence throughout Europe.

Even if you examine the plight of the Third World, most of the tyrants, regimes and dictators of these nations are in place largely due to the botched foreign policy of not only America, but all the western powers that engaged in imperialism over the last several centuries.

My complaint is that, after arming and helping bring Saddam to power, he is now villified for the actions he took with full U.S. aid and knowledge.

He is what he is but we are what we are as well. Saddam is being scapegoated for actions the USA was as responsible for as he was while George W. Bush celebrates his coronation as king.

And one small point. It wasn't about evil Saddam and liberation. It was about WMD.

 

Starbuck1975

Lifer
Jan 6, 2005
14,698
1,909
126
My complaint is that, after arming and helping bring Saddam to power, he is now villified for the actions he took with full U.S. aid and knowledge. He is what he is but we are what we are as well. Saddam is being scapegoated for actions the USA was as responsible for as he was while George W. Bush celebrates his coronation as king. And one small point. It wasn't about evil Saddam and liberation. It was about WMD.

An interesting point is that I am of the opinion that developed nations have an obligation to clean up the messes we have left behind through imperialism and the insanity of Cold War foreign policy. Saddam Hussein is the nasty byproduct that America, and other nations, have created.

The UN is the appropriate forum for regime change, and the more compelling argument was to further an international policy and consensus for isolating or marginalizing any and all of these dictators that exist throughout the world and pose a risk to international or regional stability.

Saddam Hussein played a dangerous game of bluffing and failing to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors...this was largely so that he could save face and maintain his power base within both Iraq and the Middle East...we called Saddam on his bluff, and also held the UN's feet to the fire in having the resolve to enforce its own resolutions. The UN in and of itself is a world body that is supposed to represent the will of the international community, yet it lacks the ability to enforce that will.

The more compelling argument had nothing to do with WMDs, the WOT or Al Quaida...the case against Saddam Hussein was out there...the Bush Administration failed to grasp the opportunity to make that case, and therein lies the greatest failure of the war in Iraq.
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
0
Intervention in a situation formed by intervention typically leads to the opposite of the desired result.
 

Starbuck1975

Lifer
Jan 6, 2005
14,698
1,909
126
Intervention in a situation formed by intervention typically leads to the opposite of the desired result.
A lesson that many empires have learned the hard way, with plenty of historical evidence to discourage intervention, yet the cycle continues.