A casual reader of world affairs can easily comprehend the obvious: Iraq has fallen apart. This truth, while not novel, is reinforced with every headline and story coming out of the war torn country. Today, on July 11th 2014, the New York Times has reported that the Kurds, after assuming control of state run oilfields, have pulled out of the Iraqi government. This breakdown of the tentative alliance between Shites and Kurds, if one can even use the term, has left Iraq splintered into three distinct authorities. What the future of Iraq holds is anybodys guess and the worst should be expected. One thing is certain. Namely, that it will be the average Iraqi citizen, whatever creed or ethnicity, who will suffer most from bloody civil war.
Though not without their own local culpability, western powers, in particular the United States, deserve much of the blame for the current developments. One could go all the way back to British colonization of Iraq to draw lines right up until today. Another could even point out that the CIA helped the Bath party into power in 1967, including providing lists of people to be executed. But let us focus on the 1980s to the present, when US support for Iraqi atrocities set the stage for the ensuing events that have left Iraq a battered and war torn nation.
As is well known, Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 in what they perceived would be a quick and easy victory. By 1982, Iranian counter attacks had destroyed this myth, making it clear that it would be along and drawn out war.
Fearing Iranian victory, the United States stepped up policies, already well underway to improve relations with the Sadaam. In February of 1982, the United States removed Iraq from its list of states sponsoring international terrorism. In fact, this move was done prior to Iran going on the offensive, indicating that fears of Iranian victory were certainly not the sole cause US support.
In 1983, Iran began reporting the use of chemical and biological weapons by Sadaams forces. According to documents in the national security archive, The U.S., which followed developments in the Iran-Iraq war with extraordinary intensity, had intelligence confirming Iran's accusations, and describing Iraq's "almost daily" use of chemical weapons, concurrent with its policy review and decision to support Iraq in the war. The intelligence indicated that Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces, and, according to a November 1983 memo, against "Kurdish insurgents" as well.
The United States responded to Sadaams war crimes by officially resuming relations with Iraq in 1984, even though they had already been providing intelligence for at least two years. High level meetings in the Reagan administration continued to advocate for stronger relations with Sadaam and made no mention of chemical and biological weapons use. Being as the weapons were directed against Iranians and Kurds, they were of no concern to Washington.
Donald Rumsfeld made two visits to Baghdad in 6 months between December of 1983 and May of 1984. On the first visit Rumsfeld expressed the USs close relationship with Iraq and Regans willingness to do more to counter the Iranian threat. Sadaams foreign minister had gone out of his way to praise Rumsfeld as a person" and express his extreme pleasure with the meeting.
In February of 1984 Iraq announced, "the invaders (Iran) should know that for every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it whatever the number and Iraq possesses this annihilation insecticide.
Under mounting international pressure the US did publicly condemn Iraqi chemical weapons attacks while continuing privately to maintain and expand diplomacy between the two nations. However such public condemnations were for public consumption. After warning Iraq that a condemnation was coming, Iraqs foreign minister informed Washington that Iraq strongly preferred a Security Council presidential statement to a resolution, and wanted the response to refer to former resolutions on the war, progress toward ending the conflict, but to not identify any specific country as responsible for chemical weapons use. Deputy assistant James Placke responded that he would do all he could do but that the US did not want this issue to dominate our bilateral relationship." No reason to let chemical weapons and war crimes get in the way of a budding friendship.
When the resolution condemning chemical and biological weapons was finally issued, the state department noted that, The statement, by the way, contains all three elements that Iraq wanted. According to a review of internal documents by the national security archive, indisputably in the governments own words, The Iraqi government's repressive internal policies, though well known to the U.S. government at the time, did not figure at all in the presidential directives that established U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing. Obvious to anyone not indoctrinated by western propaganda.
But US support for Sadaam was not just about the Iran-Iraq war. In fact, it continued well beyond it, right up to the day Sadaam invaded Kuwait. On October 2 1989, President Bush issued National Security directive 26. In it, he outlines plans to reinvigorate Americas relationship with Iraq. It writes that a normal relationship with Iraq will promote stability in both the gulf in the Middle east. Stability meaning under US control. It goes on that we should pursue and facilitate opportunities for US firms to participate in their reconstruction of the Iraq economy, particularly in the energy area, where they do not conflict with other significant objectives. The first sentence of the document makes the ultimate aim of such policies clear: Access to Persian gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to US national security. It should be noted, that Arab friends in the region, refer to brutal dictators, many still in power today (or their successors) and remain close allies with the United States. Bush advocated that the United States develop a long term military agreement with Saudi Arabia and generally that US must sell military equipment to help friendly regional states. Again friendly to the US, but fierce enemies to their own populations whom they repress and bludgeon whenever they dare to speak up, a strain continuing right to today. Worries about domestic opposition in the United States to weapons sales to tyrants were a concern. Anticipating controversial sales Bush tasked his administration with outlining actions in order to obtain congressional and domestic support for such sales. In short, we will concoct, as they did, some scare tactic.
Apart from Presidential plans, the directive was carried out with shocking consistency. Four weeks later, Secretary of State James A. Baker III pressed the secretary of agriculture to approve new agricultural loan guarantees totaling a billion dollars for Iraq. According to the Presidential Studies quarterly, Meanwhile, an interagency committee of the Washington government, prodded by the State Department, approved export licenses for the shipment to Iraq of such high-tech items as computers, machine tools, and optical heads for cameras. The items ostensibly were to be used for civilian purposes. Most were shipped to military installations. Again in 1990, President Bush, signed an executive order certifying that to terminate loan guarantees to the Baghdad government(over human rights concerns) would not be "in the national interest of the United States" - and thereby waived congressional restrictions on use of the Export-Import Bank by Saddam's government. During a meeting with Saddam in Baghdad on February 12, acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs John H. Kelly told the Iraqi dictator that he, Saddam, was a "force for moderation in the region, and the United States wishes to broaden her relations with Iraq. These actions were despite reports that loan funds were being misused and increasing reports of deteriorating human rights in Iraq. In early 1990, Bush sent a number of delegates to calm Sadaam down and assure him of continued US support despite reports of outrage in the western media over his human rights abuses.
On April 12, 1990, a bi-partisan senate delegation led by then senator Bob Dole and representing US agricultural states, met with Sadaam to assure him of continued US support. Alan Simpson, one of the senators, expressed to Sadaam that his problem lay not in Washington but with the pampered western press. He said to Sadaam, that the press is spoiled and conceded and that democracy is very irksome. Simpson expressed how unpopular his visit to Iraq was because of Human rights abuses but that President Bush had told him personally that he would defend his visit. Simpson told Sadaam my advice is for you to let those bastards (the press) to come to Iraq and see things for themselves. Simpson told Sadaam that the press never wants to see anything succeed and that they eat each other. But Simpson wasnt all mad. He let Sadaam know that he enjoyed meeting with frank and direct people. How touching.
US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, echoed this frustration with the American press in a meeting with Sadaam on July 25th, 1990, just before the invasion of Kuwait. She consoled Sadaam over a report by Diane Sawyer on Sadaam's internal repression and gassing of the Kurds. She called Sawyers profile cheap and unjust and notes that President Bushs job would be much easier if he had control over the US media. The pentagon even leaked misinformation claiming that the Halabja massacres, the poisoning of Kurds with gas by Sadaam, might have been accidental. Months later the Pentagon cited the attacks as reasons the US must defend Kuwait against Iraq, themselves (Kuwait) a small ruling elite of corrupt dictators. According to the Washington post, In 1988, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered chemical weapons attacks against Kurdish resistance forces, but the relationship with Iraq at the time was deemed too important to rupture over the matter. Thus, we must support chemical weapons attacks against Kurds for stability in the region. No doubt, Orwell would get a laugh out of that.
Of course chemical and biological weapons were delivered to Sadaam from the United States. As the Washington post reported in December of 2002, The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague. The administration in an effort to boost exports continued to send Iraq such weapons as well as using third parties to send more conventional military materials. According to the post, A 1994 investigation by the Senate Banking Committee turned up dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the mid-'80s under license from the Commerce Department, including various strains of anthrax, subsequently identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program. The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare. After the gassing of the Kurds and Sadaams scorched earth policy of villages, Dow chemical with US authorization sent chemical weapons to Iraq that could be used to cause asphyxiation. That the US cited these abuses as pretexts for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is not only offensive to people with coherent thought processes, but is also a profound disservice to their victims. That the US was complicit in these and other crimes is a fact, made indisputable from the documentary record. There are many an American policy maker, a number of which were in the George W Bushs administration, which deserved to stand on trial right next to Sadaam. At least if we are to abide by elementary moral standards and not relegate ourselves to complete hypocrites. The 2003 invasion killed, by some estimates, as much as 100,000 Iraqi civilians. The use of uranium tipped tank shells by US armed forces(a chemical weapon) has caused birth defects and cancer rates in Iraq higher than that in Hiroshima. Arms growing out of peoples heads, for example. Though General Wesley Clark may tell us that the American military dont do body counts, we can assure him that some do. A fact no doubt frustrating to a government body who openly admits their disinterest in determining the amount of Iraqi deaths they caused, in a country they were supposedly liberating. The logic is comical, the results not so much.
By the late 1980s and early 1990s no pretext of Soviet meddling could reasonably be used to justify support for the beast of Baghdad. Human rights concerns in Iraq, as the documents show, were limited only to public relations problems for supporting the tyrant. In todays Middle East, the US support for dictators continues undisturbed. Sisi, the dictator of Egypt, has already killed over 1000 people in his short time in power and has imprisoned over 16000. An additional 800 have been put to death in a trial that lasted five minutes. The US has recently confirmed its security partnership, despite these and other horrid abuses, with Egypt after a recent visit by John Kerry. Kerry assured Sisi that the US will send the rest of this years military supplies, including apache helicopters. US made helicopters were used by Mubarak to brutally crush peacefully dissent demanding democracy. Mubarak, a horrific dictator and ally of the United States for 30 years was praised by President Obama in 2009. Obama sided with him during the Arab spring in Egypt till the very end, when his hold on power was no longer possible. Now the US has found a new dictator in the region to support but with a different name, making such support less embarrassing. In fact, Obama refused to label Sisis take on power a coup, though it clearly was, to subvert US law restricting military aid to coup leaders. It seems either the United States hasnt learned its lesson in supporting dictators, or perhaps worse, doesnt seem to care.
But it is not just Egypt. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, etc, etc, are all ruled by brutal dictatorships that all happen to receive large military and diplomatic aid from the US. Saudi Arabia, invaded Bahrain in 2011 to help quash democratic youth protesters in that small nation. Bahrain, home to a US military base of the 5th fleet, had found a group of progressive minded secular protesters daring to demand democracy. In Pearl Square, the heart of the pro-democratic movement there, Saudi troops helped destroy any hopes for achieving freedom, by ruthlessly(and with US backed arms and anti-riot equipment) murdering demonstrators. Plans for democratic protests in Saudi Arabia itself were aborted when the Saudi government made clear that any protests would be liquidated immediately. According to the Saudi government, The Ministry of Interior will deal with any mercenary or misled person by force and will strike with an iron fist whoever wishes to do so. That put an end to that. In Yemen, the US is supporting another brutal dictator after supporting the dictator Saleh for decades. This support and the subsequent repression has spawned new terrorist networks devoted to overthrowing both the Yemeni government and attacking the US homeland. One could go on and on with documenting examples in the Middle East of such US support for horrible dictators in the region, but it would be agonizingly redundant to the reader.
That US support for dictators in the region is the prime cause of terror directed towards the United States is not seriously challenged. All of scholarship and intelligence agencies around the world confirm this with shocking consistency. In 2003, the US defense science board task force, directed by Bush to look into the matter, concluded that people in the Middle East hate the United States government polices and not the American people. They continued that the US was seen as the prop and longstanding ally of corrupt governments that block democracy and development. This was re-confirmed by Jason Burke in his study of Al-Qaeda where he argued the same. He added terrorists use American violence as useful recruitment tools to gain new members to their cause. He wrote, That every use of force is a victory for Bin laden. Of course, if we want more evidence of this, we can listen to people like Bin Laden himself, who constantly cited the Wests support for corrupt regimes as his prime motivation. That terrorists couch these struggles in religious terms is neither novel or surprising. Aside from the fact that America does to (god bless America), it is a clear fact that the aforementioned American policy in the region push the disenfranchised to the terrorist cause. In any case, there is a reason they target us, and other western collaborators(Franc, England, etc,) and not, say, Brazil.
It is difficult to ascertain what a democratic Arab country might look like should America ever change its longstanding policy of forbidding them in the region. There was one, namely Iran in 1953. But their short experiment with democracy was ended by a CIA-British coup that overturned the secular democratic leader in favor of the brutal Shah who went on to repress the country for 25 years because the prime minister had the gall to nationalize half of Iranian oil. How dare Iran break the shackles of imperial control and hav the gall to use their own resources for themselves. The Shahs repression, and the US support for it, laid the basis for the current Iranian regime, monsters in their own right.
ISIS is a brutal organization that any sane person would want eliminated. But let us be honest about our role. Iraqi and former Bush Administration one speech translator recently said in an interview with Bill Moyers:
Obviously, there are theological differences as well as political and social differences. But the fact is that Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites managed to live in the same country for a long time without killing each other, and they lived in the same neighborhoods. They intermarried I am half Sunni and half Shiite. I am one of many Iraqis who was born into these mixed marriages. The US destroyed that Iraqi national identity and replaced it with sectarian and ethnic identities after 2003.Sect wasnt really a part of the national consciousness. I was born in Iraq and Id never in my life been asked if I was a Sunni or a Shiite. And I didnt know who among my relatives or neighbors or co-workers or colleagues at school were Sunnis or Shiites, because it wasnt an issue. Its not that people were tolerant toward each other they werent aware of sectarian backgrounds. Its similar to some areas in the US where you dont necessarily know what Christian sect your friends belong to. You might know, or you might not know.That was before the US intervention. The US destroyed that Iraqi national identity and replaced it with sectarian and ethnic identities after 2003. I dont think this is something that many Iraqis argue about, because you can trace the beginning of this sectarian strife that is destroying the country, and it clearly began with the US invasion and occupation.Thats not to say that Iraqis dont have agency over their own country and lives they could and should have worked on bridging the gaps. But its not easy to fix these huge political and religious differences when the situation is as complicated as Iraq and when the US is funding and training one side of this conflict with tens of billions of dollars, its not easy to reach a point of national healing, where Iraqis work together and live in peace.
As a nation and as humans we have a stark choice. We can revel in noble proclamations of American exceptionalism in the face of an evil world and be struck with awe about our governments unprecedented nobility. Or we can be honest with ourselves. The grand fact of the matter is that the United States has treated the Middle East as an imperial playground. Human rights of those in the region are not only ignored, but their violations are actively supported by the United States. We have blocked democracy; throwing away the golden gift presented to us by the Arab spring, and preferred brutal monsters to do our bidding over the democratic will of those in the region. This policy is quite beneficial to the narrow sectors of American domestic power that profit off of them. It is obvious that actual democratic policy in the Middle East would be stoutly against American imperial planning. But, for the majority of Americans and those in the Middle East, blocking democracy in the region as a matter of principle is a dangerous and cruel policy that lead to 9/11, the current predicaments in the Middle East, and perhaps the end of any pretense that we still possess our dearly held values. No doubt there are many Americans who will prefer to argue within narrow dogmatic partisan boxes, while our self-appointed betters and mentors continue to engage in a bi-partisan policy of repression and violence. For those actually concerned with America and its well being, we should work to impose on our leaders principles that are consistent with American values and the beauty of the American people. When that battle is won, it will be the first accomplishment to ending terror both here and abroad. If we choose not to fight it it, then any of our leaders, democratic or republican, will continue murder innocents around the world with our money, in our name and at our expense.
Though not without their own local culpability, western powers, in particular the United States, deserve much of the blame for the current developments. One could go all the way back to British colonization of Iraq to draw lines right up until today. Another could even point out that the CIA helped the Bath party into power in 1967, including providing lists of people to be executed. But let us focus on the 1980s to the present, when US support for Iraqi atrocities set the stage for the ensuing events that have left Iraq a battered and war torn nation.
As is well known, Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 in what they perceived would be a quick and easy victory. By 1982, Iranian counter attacks had destroyed this myth, making it clear that it would be along and drawn out war.
Fearing Iranian victory, the United States stepped up policies, already well underway to improve relations with the Sadaam. In February of 1982, the United States removed Iraq from its list of states sponsoring international terrorism. In fact, this move was done prior to Iran going on the offensive, indicating that fears of Iranian victory were certainly not the sole cause US support.
In 1983, Iran began reporting the use of chemical and biological weapons by Sadaams forces. According to documents in the national security archive, The U.S., which followed developments in the Iran-Iraq war with extraordinary intensity, had intelligence confirming Iran's accusations, and describing Iraq's "almost daily" use of chemical weapons, concurrent with its policy review and decision to support Iraq in the war. The intelligence indicated that Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces, and, according to a November 1983 memo, against "Kurdish insurgents" as well.
The United States responded to Sadaams war crimes by officially resuming relations with Iraq in 1984, even though they had already been providing intelligence for at least two years. High level meetings in the Reagan administration continued to advocate for stronger relations with Sadaam and made no mention of chemical and biological weapons use. Being as the weapons were directed against Iranians and Kurds, they were of no concern to Washington.
Donald Rumsfeld made two visits to Baghdad in 6 months between December of 1983 and May of 1984. On the first visit Rumsfeld expressed the USs close relationship with Iraq and Regans willingness to do more to counter the Iranian threat. Sadaams foreign minister had gone out of his way to praise Rumsfeld as a person" and express his extreme pleasure with the meeting.
In February of 1984 Iraq announced, "the invaders (Iran) should know that for every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it whatever the number and Iraq possesses this annihilation insecticide.
Under mounting international pressure the US did publicly condemn Iraqi chemical weapons attacks while continuing privately to maintain and expand diplomacy between the two nations. However such public condemnations were for public consumption. After warning Iraq that a condemnation was coming, Iraqs foreign minister informed Washington that Iraq strongly preferred a Security Council presidential statement to a resolution, and wanted the response to refer to former resolutions on the war, progress toward ending the conflict, but to not identify any specific country as responsible for chemical weapons use. Deputy assistant James Placke responded that he would do all he could do but that the US did not want this issue to dominate our bilateral relationship." No reason to let chemical weapons and war crimes get in the way of a budding friendship.
When the resolution condemning chemical and biological weapons was finally issued, the state department noted that, The statement, by the way, contains all three elements that Iraq wanted. According to a review of internal documents by the national security archive, indisputably in the governments own words, The Iraqi government's repressive internal policies, though well known to the U.S. government at the time, did not figure at all in the presidential directives that established U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing. Obvious to anyone not indoctrinated by western propaganda.
But US support for Sadaam was not just about the Iran-Iraq war. In fact, it continued well beyond it, right up to the day Sadaam invaded Kuwait. On October 2 1989, President Bush issued National Security directive 26. In it, he outlines plans to reinvigorate Americas relationship with Iraq. It writes that a normal relationship with Iraq will promote stability in both the gulf in the Middle east. Stability meaning under US control. It goes on that we should pursue and facilitate opportunities for US firms to participate in their reconstruction of the Iraq economy, particularly in the energy area, where they do not conflict with other significant objectives. The first sentence of the document makes the ultimate aim of such policies clear: Access to Persian gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to US national security. It should be noted, that Arab friends in the region, refer to brutal dictators, many still in power today (or their successors) and remain close allies with the United States. Bush advocated that the United States develop a long term military agreement with Saudi Arabia and generally that US must sell military equipment to help friendly regional states. Again friendly to the US, but fierce enemies to their own populations whom they repress and bludgeon whenever they dare to speak up, a strain continuing right to today. Worries about domestic opposition in the United States to weapons sales to tyrants were a concern. Anticipating controversial sales Bush tasked his administration with outlining actions in order to obtain congressional and domestic support for such sales. In short, we will concoct, as they did, some scare tactic.
Apart from Presidential plans, the directive was carried out with shocking consistency. Four weeks later, Secretary of State James A. Baker III pressed the secretary of agriculture to approve new agricultural loan guarantees totaling a billion dollars for Iraq. According to the Presidential Studies quarterly, Meanwhile, an interagency committee of the Washington government, prodded by the State Department, approved export licenses for the shipment to Iraq of such high-tech items as computers, machine tools, and optical heads for cameras. The items ostensibly were to be used for civilian purposes. Most were shipped to military installations. Again in 1990, President Bush, signed an executive order certifying that to terminate loan guarantees to the Baghdad government(over human rights concerns) would not be "in the national interest of the United States" - and thereby waived congressional restrictions on use of the Export-Import Bank by Saddam's government. During a meeting with Saddam in Baghdad on February 12, acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs John H. Kelly told the Iraqi dictator that he, Saddam, was a "force for moderation in the region, and the United States wishes to broaden her relations with Iraq. These actions were despite reports that loan funds were being misused and increasing reports of deteriorating human rights in Iraq. In early 1990, Bush sent a number of delegates to calm Sadaam down and assure him of continued US support despite reports of outrage in the western media over his human rights abuses.
On April 12, 1990, a bi-partisan senate delegation led by then senator Bob Dole and representing US agricultural states, met with Sadaam to assure him of continued US support. Alan Simpson, one of the senators, expressed to Sadaam that his problem lay not in Washington but with the pampered western press. He said to Sadaam, that the press is spoiled and conceded and that democracy is very irksome. Simpson expressed how unpopular his visit to Iraq was because of Human rights abuses but that President Bush had told him personally that he would defend his visit. Simpson told Sadaam my advice is for you to let those bastards (the press) to come to Iraq and see things for themselves. Simpson told Sadaam that the press never wants to see anything succeed and that they eat each other. But Simpson wasnt all mad. He let Sadaam know that he enjoyed meeting with frank and direct people. How touching.
US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, echoed this frustration with the American press in a meeting with Sadaam on July 25th, 1990, just before the invasion of Kuwait. She consoled Sadaam over a report by Diane Sawyer on Sadaam's internal repression and gassing of the Kurds. She called Sawyers profile cheap and unjust and notes that President Bushs job would be much easier if he had control over the US media. The pentagon even leaked misinformation claiming that the Halabja massacres, the poisoning of Kurds with gas by Sadaam, might have been accidental. Months later the Pentagon cited the attacks as reasons the US must defend Kuwait against Iraq, themselves (Kuwait) a small ruling elite of corrupt dictators. According to the Washington post, In 1988, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered chemical weapons attacks against Kurdish resistance forces, but the relationship with Iraq at the time was deemed too important to rupture over the matter. Thus, we must support chemical weapons attacks against Kurds for stability in the region. No doubt, Orwell would get a laugh out of that.
Of course chemical and biological weapons were delivered to Sadaam from the United States. As the Washington post reported in December of 2002, The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague. The administration in an effort to boost exports continued to send Iraq such weapons as well as using third parties to send more conventional military materials. According to the post, A 1994 investigation by the Senate Banking Committee turned up dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the mid-'80s under license from the Commerce Department, including various strains of anthrax, subsequently identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program. The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare. After the gassing of the Kurds and Sadaams scorched earth policy of villages, Dow chemical with US authorization sent chemical weapons to Iraq that could be used to cause asphyxiation. That the US cited these abuses as pretexts for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is not only offensive to people with coherent thought processes, but is also a profound disservice to their victims. That the US was complicit in these and other crimes is a fact, made indisputable from the documentary record. There are many an American policy maker, a number of which were in the George W Bushs administration, which deserved to stand on trial right next to Sadaam. At least if we are to abide by elementary moral standards and not relegate ourselves to complete hypocrites. The 2003 invasion killed, by some estimates, as much as 100,000 Iraqi civilians. The use of uranium tipped tank shells by US armed forces(a chemical weapon) has caused birth defects and cancer rates in Iraq higher than that in Hiroshima. Arms growing out of peoples heads, for example. Though General Wesley Clark may tell us that the American military dont do body counts, we can assure him that some do. A fact no doubt frustrating to a government body who openly admits their disinterest in determining the amount of Iraqi deaths they caused, in a country they were supposedly liberating. The logic is comical, the results not so much.
By the late 1980s and early 1990s no pretext of Soviet meddling could reasonably be used to justify support for the beast of Baghdad. Human rights concerns in Iraq, as the documents show, were limited only to public relations problems for supporting the tyrant. In todays Middle East, the US support for dictators continues undisturbed. Sisi, the dictator of Egypt, has already killed over 1000 people in his short time in power and has imprisoned over 16000. An additional 800 have been put to death in a trial that lasted five minutes. The US has recently confirmed its security partnership, despite these and other horrid abuses, with Egypt after a recent visit by John Kerry. Kerry assured Sisi that the US will send the rest of this years military supplies, including apache helicopters. US made helicopters were used by Mubarak to brutally crush peacefully dissent demanding democracy. Mubarak, a horrific dictator and ally of the United States for 30 years was praised by President Obama in 2009. Obama sided with him during the Arab spring in Egypt till the very end, when his hold on power was no longer possible. Now the US has found a new dictator in the region to support but with a different name, making such support less embarrassing. In fact, Obama refused to label Sisis take on power a coup, though it clearly was, to subvert US law restricting military aid to coup leaders. It seems either the United States hasnt learned its lesson in supporting dictators, or perhaps worse, doesnt seem to care.
But it is not just Egypt. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, etc, etc, are all ruled by brutal dictatorships that all happen to receive large military and diplomatic aid from the US. Saudi Arabia, invaded Bahrain in 2011 to help quash democratic youth protesters in that small nation. Bahrain, home to a US military base of the 5th fleet, had found a group of progressive minded secular protesters daring to demand democracy. In Pearl Square, the heart of the pro-democratic movement there, Saudi troops helped destroy any hopes for achieving freedom, by ruthlessly(and with US backed arms and anti-riot equipment) murdering demonstrators. Plans for democratic protests in Saudi Arabia itself were aborted when the Saudi government made clear that any protests would be liquidated immediately. According to the Saudi government, The Ministry of Interior will deal with any mercenary or misled person by force and will strike with an iron fist whoever wishes to do so. That put an end to that. In Yemen, the US is supporting another brutal dictator after supporting the dictator Saleh for decades. This support and the subsequent repression has spawned new terrorist networks devoted to overthrowing both the Yemeni government and attacking the US homeland. One could go on and on with documenting examples in the Middle East of such US support for horrible dictators in the region, but it would be agonizingly redundant to the reader.
That US support for dictators in the region is the prime cause of terror directed towards the United States is not seriously challenged. All of scholarship and intelligence agencies around the world confirm this with shocking consistency. In 2003, the US defense science board task force, directed by Bush to look into the matter, concluded that people in the Middle East hate the United States government polices and not the American people. They continued that the US was seen as the prop and longstanding ally of corrupt governments that block democracy and development. This was re-confirmed by Jason Burke in his study of Al-Qaeda where he argued the same. He added terrorists use American violence as useful recruitment tools to gain new members to their cause. He wrote, That every use of force is a victory for Bin laden. Of course, if we want more evidence of this, we can listen to people like Bin Laden himself, who constantly cited the Wests support for corrupt regimes as his prime motivation. That terrorists couch these struggles in religious terms is neither novel or surprising. Aside from the fact that America does to (god bless America), it is a clear fact that the aforementioned American policy in the region push the disenfranchised to the terrorist cause. In any case, there is a reason they target us, and other western collaborators(Franc, England, etc,) and not, say, Brazil.
It is difficult to ascertain what a democratic Arab country might look like should America ever change its longstanding policy of forbidding them in the region. There was one, namely Iran in 1953. But their short experiment with democracy was ended by a CIA-British coup that overturned the secular democratic leader in favor of the brutal Shah who went on to repress the country for 25 years because the prime minister had the gall to nationalize half of Iranian oil. How dare Iran break the shackles of imperial control and hav the gall to use their own resources for themselves. The Shahs repression, and the US support for it, laid the basis for the current Iranian regime, monsters in their own right.
ISIS is a brutal organization that any sane person would want eliminated. But let us be honest about our role. Iraqi and former Bush Administration one speech translator recently said in an interview with Bill Moyers:
Obviously, there are theological differences as well as political and social differences. But the fact is that Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites managed to live in the same country for a long time without killing each other, and they lived in the same neighborhoods. They intermarried I am half Sunni and half Shiite. I am one of many Iraqis who was born into these mixed marriages. The US destroyed that Iraqi national identity and replaced it with sectarian and ethnic identities after 2003.Sect wasnt really a part of the national consciousness. I was born in Iraq and Id never in my life been asked if I was a Sunni or a Shiite. And I didnt know who among my relatives or neighbors or co-workers or colleagues at school were Sunnis or Shiites, because it wasnt an issue. Its not that people were tolerant toward each other they werent aware of sectarian backgrounds. Its similar to some areas in the US where you dont necessarily know what Christian sect your friends belong to. You might know, or you might not know.That was before the US intervention. The US destroyed that Iraqi national identity and replaced it with sectarian and ethnic identities after 2003. I dont think this is something that many Iraqis argue about, because you can trace the beginning of this sectarian strife that is destroying the country, and it clearly began with the US invasion and occupation.Thats not to say that Iraqis dont have agency over their own country and lives they could and should have worked on bridging the gaps. But its not easy to fix these huge political and religious differences when the situation is as complicated as Iraq and when the US is funding and training one side of this conflict with tens of billions of dollars, its not easy to reach a point of national healing, where Iraqis work together and live in peace.
As a nation and as humans we have a stark choice. We can revel in noble proclamations of American exceptionalism in the face of an evil world and be struck with awe about our governments unprecedented nobility. Or we can be honest with ourselves. The grand fact of the matter is that the United States has treated the Middle East as an imperial playground. Human rights of those in the region are not only ignored, but their violations are actively supported by the United States. We have blocked democracy; throwing away the golden gift presented to us by the Arab spring, and preferred brutal monsters to do our bidding over the democratic will of those in the region. This policy is quite beneficial to the narrow sectors of American domestic power that profit off of them. It is obvious that actual democratic policy in the Middle East would be stoutly against American imperial planning. But, for the majority of Americans and those in the Middle East, blocking democracy in the region as a matter of principle is a dangerous and cruel policy that lead to 9/11, the current predicaments in the Middle East, and perhaps the end of any pretense that we still possess our dearly held values. No doubt there are many Americans who will prefer to argue within narrow dogmatic partisan boxes, while our self-appointed betters and mentors continue to engage in a bi-partisan policy of repression and violence. For those actually concerned with America and its well being, we should work to impose on our leaders principles that are consistent with American values and the beauty of the American people. When that battle is won, it will be the first accomplishment to ending terror both here and abroad. If we choose not to fight it it, then any of our leaders, democratic or republican, will continue murder innocents around the world with our money, in our name and at our expense.
