The media has us fixated on war, but who will write its history? The media seems to care little for history and frequently misses key issues when it does. We know history is being made now. We are well aware that the invasion of Iraq will do three things: kill thousands of people and lead us in a new unknown direction in the region, as well as reinforce an older direction. Iraqi families have lost children, mothers and fathers. Children in the States find out their dads or moms aren’t coming home or that dad’s not the same if he does make it back. Hostility toward the United States is soaring in the region, providing a boost to radical Islamic movements that seek to sever connections to the West. Boosting that hostility no doubt will be the United States military bases which will expand into Iraq, so we’ll have bases in the top three oil producing states: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. We will have made ourselves as much, if not more, of a colonial presence than the region has seen in the last century. Empire doesn’t come cheap, but fortunately our emperor’s tales reveal he will soon be parading with a wonderful set of new clothes as he champions democracy, while ignoring the past.

The Return of a Western Appointed Ruler

While the Bush Administration talks up democracy in post-war Iraq, there’s a debate going on within the Bush White House over who should rule Iraq. In the first step of imposing democracy, the Pentagon has apparently decided Ahmad Al-Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress umbrella group and convicted embezzler, is the best man for the job. With the installation of this U.S. appointed ruler, we have restored to the region a full set of rulers who were originally put into rule, not by their people, but by conquering Western powers.

Up until World War I most of the region was part of the Ottoman Empire, and although colonized was a fairly unified land mass. One could travel throughout the Middle East without a passport. Following the war, the Turks having been allied with Germany were defeated, and the area was largely taken over by the British. Under Britain, the land was more sternly subdivided into the countries we see today.

It is not a mistake that boundaries fell where they did, it was quite purposeful. Iraq, one of the most populace countries in the region was purposely made virtually landlocked. Because the British held such strong control over the area later to become Kuwait, they wanted to make sure Iraq remained dependent on the British after independence. You need only look at a map and note the peculiar manner in which Kuwait gives Iraq a limited and precarious access to the Persian Gulf.

What role oil resources had in making of boundaries is not clear. Since World War I, oil has been considered a strategic interest of the West. It should be noted that the vast percentage of oil reserves in the region are located in countries with relatively few people--the gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. What is clear, is that the wealth generated from this oil has not been equitably distributed. Hundreds of billions of dollars have showered upon a few wealthy families, while most Arabs continue to live in poverty. This has led to much resentment by the Arab masses, and is one reason why Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was generally greeted by friendly ambivalence.

One should also note that the post-colonial rulers in each of these newly independent states where not placed in power by the people, rather the British placed monarchs in power, whom the British knew would keep "order" within their countries and maintain policies consistent with British interests. This is how the al Sabah family came to rule Kuwait, the Saud family to rule Saudi Arabia, King Hussein of Jordan's family came to rule there, and the other emirs were placed in the other gulf states.

However, unlike the other repressive regimes in the region, Iraq has not until Saddam Hussein had a stable government. Imported from Syria, the British made Amir Faisal Ibn Hussein King Faisal I in 1921. His son (King Ghazi) and grandson King Faisal II, also a cousin of the late King Hussein of Jordan, continued in power through 1958, when that latter king was assassinated as part of a greater movement for real, rather than nominal Iraqi independence. When King Fassal II was assassinated and replaced by General Abdul Karim Kassem, the United States became concerned Iraq was becoming too closely allied with the Soviet Union, so the CIA worked with internal elements within Iraq, including a young Saddam Hussein, to foment a coup, which ultimately occurred in 1963. This ruling group became known as the Ba’ath Party. Despite internal rivalries within that party in its early years, that party is only now losing its grip on power. Saddam Hussein rose to power in 1978.

Spinning History with Invisible Thread

If we were to believe our President, Saddam Hussein is harboring weapons of mass destruction that the United Nations inspectors never discovered, and that if we hadn’t gone to war Saddam would eventually use these weapons to blackmail us as he invades the oil-rich countries of the Gulf which surround Iraq, most notably Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Already some of this history is becoming codified for our children. When I open up an Encyclopedia Americana to read about the first Gulf War, it sounds remarkably similar, "In August 1990, Saddam Hussein precipitated a second Persian Crisis when Iraq occupied and subsequently annexed Kuwait." The first crisis referred to his border war with Iran. But there’s much more to the historical context that conveniently gets omitted.

We know that Saddam is a loyal Stalinist. Like Stalin he eliminated any potential rivals to his power. He immediately purged (i.e., executed) the Ba’ath Party of would be threats, even close friends.

None of this deterred the United States from allying with Saddam Hussein in his subsequent border war with Iran, and not even the heinous use of chemical weapons that killed thousands of Kurdish civilians or the jailing, killing or torture of dissidents disturbed the United States. But overthrowing the Emir of Kuwait, well that was going too far. The first Bush administration's termed Iraq’s invasion "naked aggression" implying that the Iraqi invasion was not provoked. This misleadingly simplified the long disputes between Iraq and Kuwait which had escalated prior to the invasion. It’s particularly relevant because that invasion of Kuwait along with 9/11 were necessary societal conditioners that have been repeated used (and abused) by President Bush II to grant legitimacy to the present war and occupation.

In fact, Iraq has had a bitter relationship with Kuwait and the aftermath of the war with Iran left it at a most critical moment. The border between Iraq and Kuwait has been disputed for a long time. In fact, no legally binding border existed, as no officially ratified delineation agreement had been deposited with the United Nations. When Britain granted Kuwait independence in 1961, Iraq massed troops at the border. The British then dispensed troops to prevent an invasion. A buffer zone was created between the two countries. Both countries agreed not to engage in provocative activities or establish a permanent presence in the zone. In the early 70's after the discovery of the large Rumalia oil field which extended from Iraq into the buffer zone, Kuwait placed drilling rigs in the buffer zone, Iraqi troops crossed into Kuwait and forced Kuwait to remove the rigs.

The Iran-Iraq war played a significant role in the renewal of hostilities between Iraq and Kuwait, even though Kuwait supported Iraq during the war. The Iran-Iraq war began in 1980 shortly after the fundamentalist Islamic Revolution in Iran. Islam is divided into two primary sects Sunni and Shi'ite (perhaps analogous to Christianity being divided between Protestants and Catholics). Iran is largely Shi'ite, while the Gulf States and Iraq are largely Sunni, and ruled by Sunni families. The war was perceived by the Arab states as a battle against the expansion of Iran, a non-Arab state, and as a struggle aimed to subdue the spread of Shi'ite Islamic power into their own countries. Kuwait in particular has a history of persecuting its Shi'ite minority.

Iraq was widely supported by the Gulf States including Kuwait, as the defender of Arabs from Iranian Shi'ite expansion. During the war, Iraq was not able to fulfill its OPEC quota, so it made agreements with other gulf states which allowed them to pump oil above their quotas. In return Iraq received payments from these states. Iraq considered these payments "war relief." While Kuwait and Saudi Arabia thought of them as loans. By the end of the war Kuwait claimed Iraq owed it $22 billion.

Due to the immense loans Iraq owed to Western Banks, Iraq sought removal of these gulf state accounts from the books. Saudi Arabia agreed, but Kuwait refused. The Kuwaiti refusal escalated tension between the two countries.

After the Saudis forgave the debt, Iraq signed a nonaggression pact with Saudi Arabia. Iraq refused to make a similar arrangement with Kuwait in part because of the $22 billion and also because during the war Kuwait moved oil drills into the Rumalia oil field buffer zone (as Kuwait had done before in the early 1970's). While the Rumalia oil field is Iraq's largest, most of Kuwait's vast resources lie closer to Saudi Arabia.

When Iraq refused to sign a nonaggression pact, Kuwait began demanding a 50% increase in its OPEC quota and began pumping accordingly even though OPEC refused the request. Such massive overproducing helped depress oil prices at a time when Iraq had a war debt to pay. Iraq relies extensively on oil to generate income to pay its debt.

Saddam declared Kuwait's oil pumping policy tantamount to an act of war and began sending troops to the Kuwaiti border. On August 2, 1990 he invaded.

The Grand Deception: "We have no quarrel with the Iraqi people"

"’Iraq used to be a secular society with an educated population and a growing middle class,’ says one Baghdad professional. ‘It is simply impossible to believe what is happening. Tribalism and religion are asserting their old dominance. Urban society has been ruined, people are returning to the countryside to find food. We are utterly ruined.’"

No, this isn’t a quote from today’s wartime Iraq, but an interview in 1999. The cause of the ruin? Economic sanctions. During the first Gulf War, the United States did far more than was militarily necessary to repel Saddam’s troops from Kuwait. The United States destroyed the infrastructure of Iraq by bombing water and sewage treatment facilities, leaving millions of Iraqis without access to clean water and safe sanitation.

As a Washington Post article reported a few months after that war:

The picture on the ground is bleak as Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times discovered in December 1998 after the last bombing campaign

When properly "spinning" as Albright did in her next visit to 60 Minutes, American politicians hypocritically blame Saddam Hussein saying at one end of their mouth he cares nothing for his people and out of the other that we’ll use sanctions to make him change (and keep killing his people in the process). Unfortunately, the parenthetical part gets lopped off, so sanctions seem like a moral response to a dangerous regime. In fact, they were quite the opposite—a hidden form of genocide.

Oil for food programs administered by the United Nations only provided one-third of what Iraq needed to recover from war. As Denis Haliday, its former leader who resigned in protest in 1998 said, "We are knowingly killing kids because the United States has an utterly unsophisticated foreign policy,… "No matter how bad this bastard Saddam is, how can we justify that?… And the catastrophe of more bombing will only make matters much worse."

Haliday’s statement is from 1998 and refers to the impact of sanctions and the Clinton Administration’s 10 day intensified bombing campaign in December 1998, but it as aptly applies to the situation today.

Joy Gordon in the November 2002 Harper’s carefully documents how the United States has abused dual use concerns to used U.N. sanctions to prevent critical supplies from reaching the Iraqi people. Except for a few rare moments when the truth comes out, Americans are naively bliss about this murderous policy, which has now been replaced by war and invasion. This bliss was momentarily shattered when the Washington Post reported in the early months of the Bush Administration that the Administration was holding up vaccines for infant hepatitis, tetanus, and diphtheria, citing dual use concerns. Once this leaked, the Administration backed off, but leaks like this are rare, while the "spin" is constant.
 

The Face of Democracy in Iraq: Ahmad Al-Chalabi

As I write, Reuters reports that the Pentagon has selected, Ahmad al-Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, as their preferred replacement for Saddam Hussein. Chalabi apparently is like many of his counterparts in the Bush Administration, a believer in crony capitalism. He faces a 32 year prison term in Jordan for being convicted in absentia (he fled the country) in 1992 for embezzling millions from the Petra Bank that he owned prior to its collapse. So I guess as long as this new head of state doesn’t visit neighboring Jordan…

Even if the PR becomes too hard that the Administration ultimately selects someone else (can’t we send Richard Pearl there to live permanently?), the choices share some, if not all, of Saddam’s viciousness. As Saddam’s noted biographer Said K. Aburish discovered, "I examined my notes of the interviews I conducted with 82 Iraqi opposition leaders, and began identifying those on my list whose thinking resembles Saddam's. To my horror, I decided 75 of the people I interviewed were men who would kill to achieve their goal."

So the next time you see President Bush out there declaring American leadership as he crafts a new empire don’t forget to tell him he looks great in his new clothes!

David Wells holds a Ph.D. in Political Economy and Public Policy. He is a founding member of the Arizona Alliance for Peaceful Justice (azpeace.org) and teaches in the interdisciplinary studies program at Arizona State University. Read more at his web site devoted to critiquing the War on Iraq at http://www.pubic.asu.edu/~wellsda/foreignpolicy.

NOTES:

(sorry notes didn't convert--here's a listing of them, but I've lost the reference part in the text on conversion to html)

Giacomo, Carol, Reuters Diplomatic Correspondent, "State, Pentagon Struggle Over Post-War Iraq," April 4, 2003, http://www.reuters.com.

^.Said, Edward, "Thoughts on War: Ignorant Armies Clash by Night," The Nation, February 11, 1991, p.162.

^. Hitchens, Christopher, The Nation, (Fall issue 1990).

^. Based on discussions with numerous people from the region and American Middle East scholars.

PBS Frontline Episode, "The Survival of Saddam," original broadcast January 25, 2000, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/saddam/

Longrigg, Stephen, "Iraq," Encyclopedia Americana, 1993, p. 399.

Frontline, "Survival of Saddam."

^. Shuler, G. Henry M., "Congress Must Take a Hard Look at Iraq's Charges Against Kuwait," L.A. Times, December 2, 1990, M4--Shuler is director of energy security programs for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

^. Amnesty International 1990 report, includes imprisonment and some incidence of torture.

^. Shuler, L.A. Times

^. Shuler, L.A.Times

Quote from Sharrock, David, "Iraq ‘Utterly Ruined’ by Sanctions; A Once-Prosperous Nation Being Driven into the Dark Ages," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 12, 1999, A6.

Quoted in Barton Gellman, "Allied Air War Struck Broadly in Iraq; Officials Acknowledge Strategy Went Beyond Purely Military Targets," Washington Post, June 23, 1991. See also Thomas J. Nagy, "The Secret Behind the Sanctions: how the U.S. intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water supply," The Progressive (September, 2001).

Kinzer, Stephen, "Iraq a Pediatrician's Hell: No Way to Stop the Dying," New York Times, December 28, 1999, p. A12.

Powell, Michael, "The Deaths He Cannot Sanction; Ex-U.N. Worker Details Harm to Iraqi Children," Washington Post, December 17, 1998, p. E1

Gordon, Joy, "The Cool War: Economic Sanctions as Weapons of Mass Destruction," Harper’s Magazine, pp. 43-49. http://www.harpers.org/online/cool_war/?pg=1

Giacomo, "State, Pentagon Struggle Over Post-War Iraq"

Pratt, David, "Unveiled: the thugs Bush wants in place of Saddam," Sunday Herald, http://www.sundayherald.com/27877.

Pratt, Sunday Herald.