Archives 2003: U.S. Aggression Against Iraq

[John Churchilly]

posted to the_iraqi yahoo group on 3/1/2003 that was liquidated on 2020. Sent by sumerian 1000

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U.S. Aggression Against Iraq:
Historical and Political Context
by S. Brian Willson
1999
"We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait and there are no
special defense or security commitments to Kuwait."
--U.S. State Department, July 24, 1990

"We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border
disagreement with Kuwait....We have many Americans who would like to
see the price go above $25 because they come from oil-producing
states."
--April Glaspie, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq officially conversing
with Saddam Hussein, Baghdad, Iraq, July 25, 1990

When U.S. President Bill Clinton unilaterally chose to launch weapons
of mass destruction into Iraq on December 16, 1998, his decision was
simply a continuation our country's historical pattern of grotesque
criminal and lawless foreign interventions. The U.S. has exhibited
extraordinary opportunism in how and when it chooses to either abide
by, or defy, the United Nations Charter, other international laws,
and its own Constitution. By far, the U.S. has become the worst
offender in the world for committing lawless aggression and
interventionism. It is now an unprecedented global empire.

U.S. Presidents have chosen to overtly intervene with U.S. armed
forces on more than 400 occasions since 1798, violating the
sovereignty of over 100 nations. Since World War II, as the Cold War
unfolded, the U.S. constructed a global network of several thousand
military bases and "listening" installations which have supported
more than 200 U.S.-led interventions, virtually all in the "Third
World" [Joseph Gerson and Bruce Birchard (Eds.), The Sun Never Sets:
Confronting the Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases (Boston: South
End Press, 1991), p. 12]. The U.S. is the only nation to have used
nuclear and atomic weapons, causing the deaths and maimings of
millions. In addition, U.S. Presidents have directed more than 6,000
major and minor covert actions since 1947, destabilizing and
overthrowing governments and justice movements, and assassinating
political leaders throughout the world. More than 20 million people
have been murdered, many more maimed for life. All of these overt and
covert interventions have been illegal and unconscionable under the
United Nations Charter, international law, and, as well, under U.S.
Constitutional law.

During the impeachment proceedings against U.S. President Clinton,
many U.S. Congresspersons declared that their Constitutional duty to
consider impeachment was equal in gravity to their duty to consider a
declaration of war. It is one of the tragedies of our so-called
constitutionally-based civilization that while the House of
Representatives was preoccupied with impeaching a President for lying
about consensual sex, the same political body didn't even blink when
the President chose punish the people of Iraq, whether with cruise
missiles or sanctions.

The economic sanctions imposed against Iraq, enforced by
international blockade, have reportedly led to premature deaths of
over one million children under the age of 5--in effect, a weapon of
mass destruction. The insensitivity of U.S. political leaders is
revealed by remarks made by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright on CBS "60 Minutes," May 12, 1996. Leslie Stall
commented, "We have heard that half a million children died; that's
more children than died in Hiroshima." Then Stall asked, "Is the
price worth it?" Madeleine Albright responded, "We think the price is
worth it," and did not deny the fact that a massive number of
children had died.

It is difficult to comprehend the arrogance of our governmental
leaders. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, in addressing military
combat troops on the USS George Washington aircraft carrier in the
Gulf poised to attack Iraq, declared, "You are the steel in the sword
of freedom. You are the tip of the sword" (Associated Press story,
Feb. 12, 1998). Whose freedom? Whose sword? And who has thought about
the justice, fairness, and long-term wisdom of the sword?

The tragedy and sickness continue: We think and act as if we are
worth more than others; that others are worth far less than us.

Congress has declared war on only five occasions in the history of
our Republic, the last vote being in 1941, authorizing our
participation in WWII. Since WWII, as noted above, the U.S.
Presidents have initiated over 200 overt military and 6,000 covert
interventions. None of these interventions, nor the Presidents who
ordered them, have been the object of serious discussions in Congress
about impeachable offenses, and none of these aggressions have
received serious debate, if any, about the need for declaring war as
required under our Constitutional system of government.

Recent major examples of U.S.-led or supported aggression include the
bombing of Libya in 1986, the invasion of Grenada in 1983, the
invasion of Panama in 1990, and the "contra" wars against the people
of Mozambique (at least 900,000 murdered), Angola (at least 500,000
murdered), and Nicaragua (at least 50,000 murdered and maimed).

The recent U.S. interventions against Iraq include "Desert Storm" in
1991 (perhaps 300,000 murdered), bombing of missile sites and a
nuclear facility near Baghdad in January 1993, and bombing in 1996
ostensibly to punish Iraq for venturing into Kurdish "safe havens."
Additionally, President Clinton sent 40 Tomahawk Cruise missiles into
downtown Baghdad in June 1993 in an effort to punish Saddam Hussein
for a supposed plot to assassinate ex-President George Bush when he
was visiting Kuwait during Spring 1993. Seymour Hersch wrote a New
Yorker article about this incident in which he could find no credible
evidence for the plot. Furthermore, 16 of the 40 missiles missed
their target, killing eight people, one of whom was a famous Iraqi
painter.

When President George Herbert Walker Bush quickly ordered U.S. ground
and naval forces to Saudi Arabia on August 7, 1990, in response to
Iraq's August 2nd "naked aggression" against the Sheikdom of Kuwait,
many knew that was not the real issue. There have been
numerous "naked aggressions" committed by one country against another
in the Middle East, as well as elsewhere, including Iraq's invasion
of Iran in 1980, and Israel's numerous "naked aggressions" against
Arab people--Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, and Egyptians--
over three decades. These include Israel's 1981 bold and criminal
bombing of Iraq's nuclear power plant, and Israel's 1982 invasion of
Lebanon where over 20,000 people were killed. Though all of Israel's
aggressions have received harsh condemnation from the United Nations,
never have sanctions been imposed or bombs launched against Israel by
the U.S. It is significant to note that we have always either overtly
supported these aggressions or abstained from voting in the U.N.
Rarely, if ever, has the U.S. condemned Israel's aggression.

The U.S. has consistently provided Israel $3-4 billion of aid each
year, despite the fact that Israel is a nuclear state which has
refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and U.S. law
prohibits furnishing aid to any country that has not signed this
treaty. In a similar situation, the U.S. ceased aid to Pakistan in
1988 when her nuclear weapons program was discovered.

So the immediate response by the Bush administration to Iraq's 1990
actions--when the U.S. has ignored, voted against, and/or defied 42
U.N. resolutions during the previous 23 years condemning Israel's
aggression against four sovereign nations as well as her occupation
of Palestine--demonstrates an incredible double standard that
infuriates people of conscience everywhere. This double standard
promotes a seething bitterness among many of its victims, and
revolutionary activity among those who refuse to be silent or
complacent. It creates shame for conscientious citizens of the United
States and demands their nonviolent revolutionary resistance and
affirmation of an alternative vision. The behavior of the U.S.
Government shows total contempt for international law and reveals,
for anyone and everyone who wishes to face basic empirical truth,
what a shameless international outlaw our nation-state really is.

Though President Bush declared Iraq's invasion and occupation of the
Sheikdom of Kuwait as an arbitrary and egregious aggression, Kuwait
in fact had been a historic district of Iraq under the Ottoman empire
up to WWI. During the breakup of Middle East lands after the war,
Great Britain created tiny Kuwait as a separate territory, cutting
off much of oil-rich Iraq's convenient access to the Persian Gulf.
Subsequently, to this day, Iraqi governments have never accepted
Kuwait as a separate sovereign nation.

On July 25, 1990, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie personally
told Saddam Hussein, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts,
like your border disagreement with Kuwait" (New York Times, 9/23/90).
This conversation has led some analysts to suggest that Saddam
Hussein had clear reason to believe that the U.S. would not respond
to Iraqi aggression against Kuwait over border and oil well location
disputes.

Furthermore it is important to note that the U.S. and Western
European countries were major suppliers of chemical and biological
weapons to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. A report from the U.S.
Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs declared that
9 out of 10 biological materials used in Iraq's weapon systems were
bought from U.S. companies. Furthermore, the U.S. supplied satellite
intelligence to Iraq when they used U.S.-supplied chemical weapons
against Iran in 1988 (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1998).

U.S. double standards were again revealed when a 1997 Senate Bill
allowed the President to deny international inspections of U.S.
weapons sites "on grounds of national security," which violated the
global treaty mandating the dismantling of chemical weapons
(Associated Press, Feb. 27, 1998). The U.S./U.N. sanctions imposed
against Iraq are a gross violation of the Geneva Protocol 1, Article
54, prohibiting starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.

Furthermore, the U.S. government and U.S. companies sell billions of
dollars of weapons of mass destruction to other Gulf states and
Israel. It is believed that fundamentalist Iran has a nuclear weapons
program. In effect, Iraq has its own legitimate defense
considerations in that its adversaries, Israel and Iran, each are
believed to have numerous weapons of mass destruction in addition to
nuclear weapons. Thus Iraq has every reason to believe it is being
unfairly singled out for unprecedented punishment. This
discrimination is bound to breed deep resentment against the U.S. for
generations to come. Resentment is further deepened by knowledge that
President Clinton ordered the CIA to plan and carry out a major
program of sabotage, subversion, and organization of armed resistance
groups inside Iraq designed to overthrow Saddam Hussein (New York
Times, Feb. 26, 1998)--another example of arrogant, outlaw behavior
by the U.S. Government.

Following World War II, Pax Americana launched into full swing. The
1947 National Security Act set in motion the intense covert as well
as overt activities mentioned above to assure that "Manifest Destiny"
would become globally successful. Many of the veterans who have
become active against war, for peace through justice, have directly
participated in these covert and overt interventions during their
military service. For this reason, veterans bring an important
infusion of insight and passion to various efforts by people of
conscience to end this continuation of the Columbus Enterprise.

In March 1990 the White House issued its National Security Strategy
of the United States, reminding its readers that the U.S.
has "...always sought to protect the safety of the nation...and its
way of life," requiring efforts aimed at "contributing to an
international environment...within which our democracy--and other
free nations--can flourish." The report states that these goals have
guided "American" policy "throughout the life of the Republic," being
the "driving force behind President Jefferson's decision to send the
American Navy against the Pasha of Tripoli in 1804 as they were when
President Reagan directed American naval and air forces to return to
that area in 1986." Tripoli, of course, is today's Libya, and 1801-
1805 was the period of the First Barbary or Tripolitan War.

The report continues by declaring our "pivotal responsibility for
ensuring the stability of the international balance," and it
identifies the Middle East as a region in which "even as East-West
tensions diminish, American strategic concerns remain," identifying
threats to, for example, the "security of Israel" and the "free flow
of oil." Israel is strategic for assuring U.S. hegemony even beyond
the Middle East.

The interest in oil is made very clear: "Secure supplies of energy
are essential to our prosperity and security. The concentration of 65
percent of the world's known oil reserves in the Persian Gulf means
we must continue to ensure reliable access to competitively priced
oil and a prompt, adequate response to any major oil supply
disruption." Of course this policy is not surprising, nor is it new.
It is simply worth noting again that the American Way Of Life (AWOL)
leaves us little choice but to continue our addiction to oil and
other fossil fuels.

It is interesting to note that a post-Korean War major intervention
of U.S. troops occurred in 1958 in Lebanon as British paratroopers
landed in Jordan. This military action was in response to the
perceived threat to the unstable Lebanese government created by the
summer 1958 military coup that overthrew the feudal, Western-friendly
monarchy in Iraq. The coup in Iraq was considered a shocking setback
for the U.S. Our access to cheap oil was thought to be at stake.
Gamal Abdel Nasser, head of the newly created United Arab Republic,
in February 1958, advocated Pan-Arab nationalism which was considered
extremely threatening to Western oil interests. Citing the Eisenhower
Doctrine, first espoused in 1957 to protect friendly Middle East
countries, President Eisenhower, in a message to Congress, declared
Lebanon's territorial integrity and independence as "vital to U.S.
interests" and concluded the likelihood of "indirect aggression from
without" [Richard B. Morris and Jeffrey B. Morris (Eds.),
Encyclopedia Of American History (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p.
488]. With 15,000 military forces present in Lebanon, Eisenhower,
joined by Britain, warned Iraq's new revolutionary government to
respect Western oil interests. Kuwait and its oil was one of the
major concerns in 1958, especially as Iraq was actively seeking to
resolve the long problem of incorporating Kuwait which, in Iraq's
mind, had been unfairly taken from its territory by the British in
1922.

Since OPEC's spectacular achievement in 1973 when it took control of
oil away from the private companies that had historically possessed
control of the industry, the United States has been desirous of
military intervention in the Middle East. President Ford threatened
to use military force in 1974 if necessary to "break an embargo or
fashion reasonable prices" (Gerson and Birchard, op. cit., p. 284).
Since the mid-1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with private
U.S. contractors, has built an extensive network of military bases in
Saudi Arabia, according to U.S. specifications and under U.S.
supervision, but owned by the Saudis. These installations, more
elaborate than needed by the Saudi Arabian military, have been over-
built specifically for use by U.S. military forces.

The early 1979 Iranian revolution that toppled the Western-friendly
Shah, the hostage crisis that followed, and the Soviet December
invasion of Afghanistan, all contributed to catalyze open domestic
support for escalated U.S. military buildup in the Middle East.
President Carter responded with the "Carter Doctrine," in which he
warned that the "United States would use any means necessary,
including military forces," to protect its vital interests in the
Gulf (Gerson and Birchard, op. cit., p. 283). This went further than
the Eisenhower Doctrine espoused in 1957.

When the U.S. was robbed of its closest ally in the Gulf region with
the deposition of the Shah in 1979, the newly selected President of
Iraq, Saddam Hussein, became a (temporary) replacement, of sorts. The
U.S. gave tacit approval and support for Iraq's September 1980
invasion of the hostile (as perceived by Iraq and other nations in
the Middle East), revolutionary Islamic Iran. When the war turned for
the worse against Iraq in 1982, the Reagan administration provided
loans and credit guarantees despite continuing allegations of human
rights violations by the Iraqi government. Iraq's working
relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon became ever closer.

In 1986 and 1987 when Iranian troops occupied the city of Fao, the
Shatt al-Arab Waterway, and other Gulf port areas of Iraq adjacent to
Kuwait, the U.S. became even more alarmed. The U.S. reflagged Kuwaiti
tankers for protection and introduced a 42-warship armada to the
Gulf, in effect openly aligning itself with Iraq to deter shelling of
oil tankers by Iran. A cease-fire was finally signed by Ayatollah
Khomeini and Saddam Hussein on August 20, 1988. After 8 years of war,
Iraq suffered 750,000 dead and wounded, a ravaged economy and huge
foreign debts, the majority owed to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Hussein
had always claimed that the war against Iran was fought in the name
of the "Arab nation" and that Iraq had acted as an "Arab shield"
against Khomeini's provocative, fundamentalist Iran.

Before President Carter left office, the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF)
was developed, initially as a force that could seize oil facilities.
It has grown to comprise one quarter of all active duty Army and
Marine divisions, Navy carrier groups, and Air Force tactical fighter
wings. On January 1, 1983, the RDF was officially transformed into
the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) with responsibility for all U.S.
military activities in the Middle East region, stretching between
Egypt, Kenya and Pakistan. CENTCOM's strategy for intervention in the
Middle East was, and continues to be, based on (a) improvement of
military bases in Middle East countries in exchange for U.S. access
rights, (b) increased stockpiling of U.S. weapons and supplies in the
region, (c) expansion of sealift and airlift capabilities, and (d)
development of highly mobile and heavily armed "special operations"
forces and "light infantry" divisions. President Reagan described the
latter units as "power projection" forces designed for quick in and
out intervention in the "Third" world. The "New World Order" was well
prepared for the change from a bipolar to unipolar world, ruled by
Pax Americana, i.e., peace, U.S. style.

As the "East-West" conflict dwindles, the longstanding "North-South,"
or rich-poor conflict comes into sharper focus. However, in effect,
the rich-poor, or North-South conflict has been operating under the
cover of the "Cold War" for 45 years. In 1948, George Kennan, a major
architect of the post-WW II containment policy in President Truman's
State Department, wrote:


"We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its
population...we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment.
Our task...is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit
us to maintain this position of disparity...we should cease to talk
about...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living
standards, and democratization...we are going to have to deal in
straight power concepts."
If only our political leaders today were this honest.

The first major military crisis in the post-Cold War period warns us
all of the nature of the New World Order: rich countries, especially
as defined by income and consumption patterns, are united under the
violent military enforcement power of the United States against local
and regional "Third" world, i.e. generally poor, countries to acquire
necessary global resources and the profits derived from them. The
U.S.-led intervention into the Middle East in 1990-1991, with "the
heaviest sustained bombing in history" (New York Times, Feb. 3,
1991), Iraq being the unfortunate victim, was a defense of the
hegemonic Western economic system. The Kuwaiti Sheikdom, the other
Gulf Sheikdoms, and the Saudi royal family were being defended
because of their allegiance to the consumer addicted, waste
unconscious, profit for the minority, Western Way of Life as managed
by the American Way of Life (AWOL). As one commentator put it, "It is
a perfect marriage of a bank without a country [the Sheikdoms] with a
country without a bank [the U.S.]."

The U.S. military intervention in the Middle East in 1990-1991 was
the first time in 45 years that such action could not be rationalized
as defense of "democracy" in response to the Soviet/"Communist"
threat. Although about much more than oil, this intervention assured
control over the region's oil by maintaining Saudi and the Gulf
Sheikdom's power in serving as convenient banks for the West. The
issue is not so much energy, though that is extremely important in
the long run, but the incredible economic and consequently political
power deriving from control of energy resources and profits.
Petrodollars invested in the Western economies by the Gulf Sheikdoms
amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. Such massive intervention
and destruction as occurred in Iraq is an ominous warning to all
people who get in the way of Pax Americana. Watch out poor people,
you are the threat to AWOL, you are the threat to the "New World
Order."

The March 1990 White House National Security Strategy, discussed
above, declared the presence of "lower order threats" and
that "poverty and the lack of political freedoms contribute to the
instability that breeds such conflict." It identified regions of
concern: East Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and South Asia,
Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. I guess Western and Eastern
Europe, the USSR, and Antarctica are safe for now. By the end of the
1990s it was clear that Eastern Europe was also not safe in the
region of former Yugoslavia.

A few months before the Gulf War of 1990-1991, General A.M. Gray,
commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, stated the problem very clearly:

"The underdeveloped world's growing dissatisfaction over the gap
between rich and poor nations will create a fertile breeding ground
for insurgencies which have the potential to jeopardize regional
stability and our access to vital economic and military resources.
This situation will become more critical as our nation and allies, as
well as potential adversaries, become more dependent on these
strategic resources.
"If we are to have stability in these regions, maintain access to
their resources, protect our citizens abroad, defend our vital
installations, and deter conflict, we must maintain within our active
force structure a credible military power projection capability with
the flexibility to respond to conflict across the spectrum of
violence throughout the globe" (Marine Corps Gazette, May 1990)

Gray is fairly blunt, with shades of the honesty displayed by George
Kennan 42 years earlier. The New World Order means that new pretexts
for intervention have to be articulated to continue rationalizing
intervention ("narcoguerillas," "terrorists," "madmen");
globalization of the Banana Republics, to include Eastern Europe and
the USSR, as well as the remainder of the "Third" world; and the
unlimited "freedom" of the U.S. to use whatever military force it
thinks is necessary to maintain its hegemony and the American Way of
Life (AWOL). This is why I and many others, veterans and non-veterans
alike, opposed the 1990-1991 U.S. military operations in the Gulf and
the continued bombings and sanctions against the people of Iraq, and
later, the bombings in Kosovo and Serbia. Who is next? You? Me? The
New World Order is dangerous!

This is the context, historically and politically, for the 1991
Veterans Peace Delegation that traveled to the Middle East to expose
the diabolical nature of Pax Americana. We found Armageddon in
Megiddo, Green Line Israel; later we explored Babylon in Iraq. But in
our hearts we know we are facing Armageddon and Babylon within
ourselves, within our culture and society, within our nation-state,
within AWOL. We know that the change that really must happen, the
transformation that is awaiting, is within us. It is not the poor, of
course, who are the threat to the world (order). Our greed blinds us
to the kind of injustices that AWOL inevitably, and necessarily,
imposes on Mother Earth and her inhabitants. It is only a matter of
time before it will catch up with us as well. I hope that we wake up
and become willing to endure the painful, but ultimately joyous,
process of liberation to the new man, the new woman, i.e. homo
amicus. We need you, now!
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