The Opinionated Bastard

The problem with these myths is that they are all a smidgen true, but overall, they paint too simplistic a picture.

Iraq did not come into existence with the Bush administration (either Bush). The history of US-Iraq relations goes back a ways, and it was not an easy road to get here. Just for fun, lets start with Woodrow Wilson.

At the end of World War One, Woodrow Wilson became the first sitting President to travel abroad in order to participate in the peace conferences that established the end of the war. While there, he elucidated his famous “Fourteen Points”. It is point 12 which is most significant:

XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

Though the whole speech is very interesting in its historical context. When people talk about “Wilsonian” foreign policy, it is because of phrases like this:

An evident principle runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.

What he was saying in essence was that the Ottoman Empire, which had until this point controlled the entire Middle East, would NOT fall under the dominion of Britain and France. Woodrow Wilson was trying to bring the colonial period to an end. This is perfectly consistent with US foreign policy prior to the Cold War. As an ex-colony ourselves, we were very skeptical of any European colonies, and very skeptical of the motivations of our “allies” in WWI.

Unfortunately, at some point, Wilson fell sick. Historians now think that he suffered a mild stroke, but no one knows for sure. Through a weird circumstance of history, it turns out that his interpreter at the conference was a friend of my grandfather, so I'm going to pass along something that up until now was not known outside my family:

Wilson was deathly ill. So while he was able to present this speech, in practice during the peace conferences, he was completely unable to negotiate. Lloyd George and Clemenceau took advantage of this, and conducted the entire negotiations in French, which Wilson didn't speak. They would both shout out “convenu” (agreed?), and Wilson would agree to things before he heard the translation. They ended up setting the boundaries of some countries based on rivers that didn't exist: all so that Lloyd George and Clemenceau could negotiate later on without this meddlesome American around.

While the details I've just recounted aren't commonly known, the disaster that was the Treaty of Versailles was known. In fact, Congress refused to ratify the treaty. (Presumably, we're still at war with the Kaiser.)

If you like, you can read about how most of our problems in the Middle East stem from the 1918-1920 peace treaties in this book:

Anyways, Woodrow Wilson's stroke basically created Iraq as a colony of the British Empire. It stayed that way until 1958, when it basically became a Stalinist dictatorship in the Soviet camp during the Cold War. So to some extent, all of the problems in the Middle East stem from Woodrow Wilson's stroke.

At any rate, from 1958 on, the US had no interest or relations with Iraq until 1979.

Before 1979, US policy in the Middle East was based on “two pillars”: Iran, and Saudi Arabia, both basically colonies that we inherited from the British after WWII. With the Iranian Revolution, that ended. Encouraged by the Saudi's, who were threatened by the new Iranian government, Iraq invaded Iran.

At this point, the US was strongly neutral. We couldn't really stand either government, especially given that Iraq was a Soviet satellite. It was a classic case of let's you and him fight. Typical of Saddam though, by 1982, it was quite possible that Iran was going to win, possibly taking over Iraq and making it an another Islamic hellhole.

The French, British, Germans and Saudi's came to Reagan, and convinced him that something had to be done. For one thing, while we were getting a big chunk of our oil from the Saudi's, the Europeans were getting their oil from Iraq. If Iran took over Iraq, its easy to see what a disaster that would have been.

The Reagan administration wasn't quite stupid enough to outright support Iraq. We really would have preferred Iraq and Iran to just fight continuously for the next decade, keeping both busy. It did remove Iraq from the “terrorist nations” list which was preventing all trade with Iraq, and it gave the green light to other nations to support Iraq. Eqypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, the French and the Germans all gave aid to Iraq. Famously, the French built Iraq a nuclear reactor, and the Germans built them a chemical weapons factory. While the US never sold Iraq significant amounts of arms, Iraq was able to buy “dual-use” items like bleach and computers from the US, partially because of the stupidity of the Commerce Department. Famously, the Center for Disease Control sold Iraq samples of Anthrax (for $1.67), but this is overblown: to get a sample of anthrax, one merely need walk up to a cow with a Q-Tip.

All with “easy credit terms” from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

To be blunt, Saddam got sold down the river in this deal. On the one hand, the Western nations were giving him aid against Iran, while secretly, they were also helping Iran (remember Iran-Contra?). Saddam frankly, isn't very bright, so this went on for awhile.

At the end of it, the war was a stalemate, and Iraq owed huge amounts of money to Europe, but even more money to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Loans they insisted on collecting. So from that point of view, the operation was a success: Iran was chastised, and the West held Iraq's pursestrings.

Idiot that he is, Saddam seized upon a solution. He would invade Kuwait.

Running it by the US Ambassador in 1989, Saddam beat around the “bush” so much that the ambassador was completely mystified, responding that the U.S. has 'no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.'

Saddam, being the idiot he was, decided that the US had given him the green light, invaded Kuwait, and threatened Saudi Arabia. This completely caught everyone off guard. The term for this is “Blowback”, and the first Iraq war is great example of what happens when diplomatic games go awry.

Of course, we know what happened then. Gulf War 1, famously stopping at the border of Iraq as the Saudi's got cold feet (“Hmmm... If the US goes in, they'll establish a Republic, and we're still a Monarchy...”) So we left Saddam in power, but presumably “chastised”.

Bush 1 really blew it, leaving a crazed, US-hating dictator in power, but so did the Saudi's. After the “revolt” fails, Bush establishes the no-fly zones in the somewhat vague hope that somehow, the Iraqis will manage to overthrow Saddam on their own. UN sanctions continue, preventing Iraq from selling any of its oil. For those who think that perhaps Gulf War 1 was about oil, its ironic that the war ended with all of Iraq's oil being off-limits for sale.

Clinton comes into office. Saddam continues to act up, Clinton responds with various tactics, stepping up the “no-fly” zones. This really means that US and British pilots are flying thousands of sorties over Iraq every day. Miraculously, no flights crash into Iraq, forcing the US to do “something” to recover the pilot. This is especially lucky, because frankly, we hadn't the slightest idea what to do if that happened, yet it was inevitable.

Meanwhile, clever propoganda by Saddam leads to backlash against the UN sanctions in the Muslim world. The Clinton administration creates the Oil-For-Food program in response. Stupidly, they agree to have the UN oversee the program, but with no oversight of the UN itself, and with most agreements between Iraq and third parties to be kept secret.

Not surprisingly, the Oil-for-Food program degenerates into the Oil-for-Palaces program. Saddam cements his control over Iraq even more, while the Iraqi's begin to suffer even more.

Both side in American politics realize that the Oil-For-Food program has to be revamped, discussing it somewhat in the 2000 election. In 2001, Bush takes office, and the “smart sanctions” begin. Ironically, the “smart sanctions” are beginning to work, when 9/11 happens.

At that point, the Bush administration decides that given that people from the Middle East have started flying airplanes into our buildings, we have to do something about the Middle East now rather then later. Reviewing the countries in the Middle East, there are several problem countries:

Iran: Iran hates us, though the people of Iran, not so much. It has the stated goal of exporting Islamic revolutions throughout the Middle East. It is one of the largest sponsors of terrorism in the world, and a large thorn in our side. However, dealing with Iran directly is going to be a tough problem.

Saudi Arabia: While ostensibly our allies, most of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the Saudi's are exporting their own weird fundamentalist religion to the rest of the Middle East as well.

Iraq: While not directly connected to Al Queda, Iraq is supporting other terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East. This is well documented: Saddam puts out press releases. Al Queda makes heavy use of the suffering of the Iraqis under the UN sanctions in their recruiting materials. There is also this belief that Saddam, given his history in the 90's of evading weapons inspectors has WMD. Saddam helps fuel this belief given that he keeps trying to get some new WMDs. He's unsuccessful under the new “smart sanctions”, but each failed attempt makes everyone more nervous.

Afghanistan: In the throes of an Islamofacisim, this is also the training ground for Al Queda and their current headquarters.

Pakistan: Has hundreds of Saudi-funded fundamentalist Islamic schools, also a key hideout for Al Queda.

Syria: Another state sponsor of terrorism.

Iran and Syria, despite being declared enemies of the US, are pretty much untouchable. The Saudi's are our supposed allies, as is Pakistan. That leaves two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. We approach Pakistan for help against Al Queda, in return for not leaning on Musharrif too heavily. Musharrif agrees, since the Taliban are causing him problems anyways, and besides, we wave a big checkbook under his nose.

A war against Afghanistan is inevitable, necessary, and easily wins support in both the muslim and christian spheres. It's pretty obvious that the Taliban is bad news, so that's an easy choice.

Meanwhile, seeing their opportunity, every single Arab nation outside of Iraq and Afghanistan makes a special point of nudging the Bush administration to “do something about Saddam”.

Bush decides Saddam is too dangerous to leave alone, so he begins the long process of coming up with a simple reason “why” so he can explain it to the American people without talking about Woodrow Wilson. Frankly, he does a miserable job. The press, being the press, seizes on the WMD theme, and Iraq becomes about WMD.

Is this war about Oil? To some extent given that if Iraq was poor and oil-free it wouldn't be able to cause so much trouble, and if it did cause trouble, we wouldn't care. You can say that about any country in the world though, there's always some economic reason in the background that is one piece of the puzzle.

As far as it being about oil directly, I quote the following from Spinsanity:

One argument against the war, presented by those on the left who question Bush's motives, is that it is intended to capture Iraq's petroleum resources. While there is no way to assess to what extent these resources are a strategic factor in Bush's calculations, those who assert a simple link between oil and the war almost always fail to deal with a number of inconvenient facts. First, if the US wanted its oil companies to have access to the Iraqi market, it could have simply pressed the United Nations to drop sanctions against Iraq. Also, oil is a commodity whose price is set on the world market, as Peter Ferrara points out on National Review Online. Since Iraq has been allowed to sell oil in order to purchase food and other key commodities, it is already contributing to the world supply of oil and thereby lowering the price Americans pay. Finally, as energy expert Daniel Yergin argues, Iraq has only three percent of world production capacity, and to double that “could take more than a decade. In the meantime, growth elsewhere would limit Iraq's eventual share to perhaps 5 percent, significant but still in the second tier of oil nations.”

Is this so Halliburton can sell more oil? Well, first off, its worth noting that Halliburton is not an oil company. They are mostly a construction company that happens to specialize in the sorts of large scale construction projects that oil companies need. They function as large general contractor, with various subcontractors hired either locally, or worldwide. During the Clinton administration, the Defense Department decided that it could save some money by subcontracting out some of their support services in foreign countries. Given that Halliburton already had the necessary staff (personnel who speak Arabic) and contacts to do this (Jordanian trucking firms), they bid on the “Mashed Potatoes in the Middle East” contract, coming in as low bidder. During the Bush2 administration, the Defense Department renewed the contract without resubmitting it for bid, but that's pretty typical. The other contracts for Iraq reconstructure were CPFF (cost-plus-fixed-fee), which are mandated by law to be less then 2% profit. All in all though, the government contracting business has added about $4B in revenues to Halliburton, so while in some sense, the Iraq War has caused them to make more money, a quick review of their balance sheet (symbol: HALL) will show not much of those revenues turned into profits.

A related charge is that Cheney would profit somehow from all this, which is strictly untrue, all his money is in a blind trust (by law for public officials) or donated to charity. The widely reported news that he receives deferred compensation (i.e. back pay) from Halliburton is irrelevant, he's earmarked that money for charity, the media choose to omit that because it makes a better story without it.

Is this war about WMD? To some extent, but Saddam had enough money floating around in cash ($1B recovered during the invasion) to cause a lot of problems even without WMD. Imagine, if you will, if he donated $100M to an American neo-Nazi group? I think the Bush administration just siezed on this because they thought their intelligence was better then it was. In fact, only 3 people knew that Iraq didn't have WMD: Saddam and two of his generals. The rest of the Iraqi generals thought he did, and didn't find out he was lying until after the invasion.

Is this war about liberating Iraq? To some extent. Bush2 has declared a sea change in US foreign policy in that the US will now actively push for democracy in countries. This was probably inevitable given the end of the Cold War, and the general belief of most Americans that democracy isn't just for white people, but it took Bush2 to state it. More importantly, Bush2 has actually followed through with this in about 75% of the cases.

So the war is really about all of these things, but it took the decisions of many Presidents (Wilson, Carter, Reagan, Bush1, Clinton, Bush2) to get us there. Given the decisions of the first 5, it was inevitable I think that the sixth President on the list would have had to do “something” about Iraq, whether his name had been Bush or Gore. And the “no-fly” zones were like juggling a loaded gun: at some point you'll drop it and you'll get shot.

So while I don't think the US has been blameless in this whole process, there is plenty of blame to go around: The Saudis, French, Germans, British all played a much larger role then the US in the early years. You can't blame it all on Bush2 either, the other Presidents had much bigger roles.

Since the beginning of the war though, Iraq has been very much about Al Queda. Some people call this the “flypaper strategy”. Whether this was intentional or not is hard to say, but its definitely been true that the Iraq war has been very useful for luring the crazies in the Muslim world to Iraq where we can kill them more easily. On the other hand, there might not have been so many crazies in the Muslim world for us to kill if we hadn't invaded.

Whether you think that is a good thing or not depends on how nice a person you are. I'm not that nice a person, so I suspect its a good thing, within reason.

I do think that gives Saddam's history and hatred of the US, the Iraq War is to some extent about preventing a second 9/11 which was a perfectly reasonable worry for the Administration in 2002.