Why The Hell Are We In Iraq Anyway?
The revelations of the Downing Street memos provide further confirmation of what should have been obvious all along. Bush & Co. were itching to invade Iraq from the moment they came into office and they made up rationales for the invasion as they went along.
The thing about Bush's Iraq War that is fairly unusual is that even today, no one really knows why we are fighting this war and why thousands of people are dying in it. We have had stupid and/or evil wars throughout American (and of course world) history, but usually, there is a pretty good understanding of the reasons why the wars were being fought, no matter how wrong-headed or malevolent those reasons may have been. The Vietnam War was fought because of anti-Communism run amok; the Spanish-American War was fought to bring America into the great land-rush of Nineteenth Century imperialism; the Mexican War was fought to expand slavery.
The Iraq War is different because no one can really give a believable explanation as to why it is being fought. The stated reasons -- fear of Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction and connections to international terrorism -- were obviously bogus, as is now pretty much conceded even by the Bushies themselves. The Bush gang now seems to have settled upon the promotion of international democracy as the rationale du jour for the war but I don't buy that one for a minute. I don't believe that the Bush crowd gives a rat's ass about democracy. They don't seem to be very supportive of democracy here in the U.S. let alone the world, as they continue to support all sorts of vicious tyrants around the world. Even in the Middle East, Bush has recently started cozying up to Libya's Qaddafi and the love affair between the Bush crowd and the thugs across the border from Iraq in Saudi Arabia is well known (see my earlier blog on "Bush In The Role of Milosh The Bad Tennis Player").
Even the opponents of the Iraq war have had trouble coming up with a cogent explanation for the true reason why Bush is pursuing this horrible war. Most opponents would probably say that the war is really being fought "for oil", an assertion that has previously appeared on this blog ("Remember 9/11"). Candidly, however, I don't find this explanation completely satisfactory. The international oil companies are amoral profit maximizers. They have no problem dealing with all sorts of crooked tyrants, and Saddam Hussein was no exception. The oil companies had a very cozy relationship with Saddam's government for decades, and Iraq didn't have to be turned into a blighted war zone in order to protect the profits of the oil industry.
So, why then is the war being fought? I don't pretend to have any inside information on the subject, but I will suggest an admittedly speculative hypothesis. I think that the real explanation lies in what I call the true axis of evil, the one that connects Crawford, Texas with Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In this sense, I would agree that the root cause of the war is oil-related. However, I think it goes beyond that, and has to do with the security concerns of the Saudi government and the almost dictatorial influence that the Saudi royal family is able to exercise over decision-makers in the U.S. government, particularly during the two Bush Administrations. Ironically, I think that the explanation does have something to do with 9/11, but not in a way that most Americans would care about.
[Footnote: there was an outstanding documentary about the Saudi-American relationship on the PBS show "Frontline" a while ago. A lot of my thinking on this subject jelled after I watched the program. The program could hardly be called an example of "liberal bias" on PBS. Virtually everyone who appeared on the program was either a Saudi official or an official from the first Bush administration. The program was just an example of good journalism, which is what the current Bush administration really doesn't like.]
I think that the story goes something like this. The Saudis have always enjoyed the military protection of the U.S. For years, Iran served as the base for an American military presence in the Middle East, but that ended with the overthrow of the Shah. After that, the Saudis attempted to build their own defense mechanism through the promotion of Islamic fundamentalist organizations such as Al Qaeda. However, the Saudi thugs, being corrupt pigs, were never really comfortable with fundamentalists like Bin Laden or the Iranian mullahs, so they hedged their bets by giving big financial support to Saddam Hussein so that he could carry on a brutal and mutually-destructive war against Iran (see my earlier blog on "Iraqi Debt Forgiveness and More Bush Cronyism"). However, Iraq's attack against another corrupt Persian Gulf petrocracy, Kuwait, convinced the Saudis that Saddam could not be trusted. The Saudis therefore made a fateful decision by inviting the U.S. to make a direct military intervention in the region. The first Bush Administration, following the pattern of sycophancy to the Saudi government that continues to date, eagerly complied by launching the first Gulf War. In the process, the U.S. also established a massive military presence within Saudi Arabia itself, since that was the launching point for the attack against the Iraqi forces in Kuwait.
The American military presence in Saudi Arabia never sat very well with the Saudi establishment. We've all heard stories about how the sight of female American soldiers wearing t-shirts and driving jeeps drove the Islamic fundamentalists bonkers. Al Qaeda gained vast support as a result of growing Saudi hostility to the American military presence within the "holy land" of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden had been particularly pissed off about all of this from the beginning of the first Gulf War, as he had unsuccessfully sought to convince the Saudi government to bankroll an expanded version of the Al Qaeda force that had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan as the military vehicle that would drive Iraq out of Kuwait, rather than turning to the American infidels.
So, then came 9/11, an unprecedented terrorist attack directly against the U.S. launched by Saudi supporters of Al Qaeda. 9/11 made it clear to the Saudi establishment that Al Qaeda was a real threat, a threat that became even more pressing when Al Qaeda followed-up on its 9/11 spectacular events by staging bombings within Saudi Arabia itself. The Saudi government decided that the source of Al Qaeda's hostility to the Saudi royal family -- their invitation of American infidels into the holy land of Saudi Arabia -- had to be dealt with.
On the other hand, the Saudis still wanted, and needed, an American military presence in the Middle East. Again, the important thing to remember about the Saudi royals is that they are really nothing more than a bunch of corrupt thugs who feed off of a highly profitable, parasitic relationship with the large oil companies, a relationship fed by the West's insatiable appetite for oil, an appetite that the Bush administration has not shown the slightest interest in satiating. The last thing in the world that the Saudis want to see is a viable reform or revolutionary movement in the Middle East. Come the revolution, the Saudi royal family won't be around.
What then to do? The answer: get the Saudi's American military protectors out of Saudi Arabia but put them someplace else nearby. The choice of that "someplace else" was obvious. Iraq had virtually no military left after the defeat in the first Gulf War and after ten years of sanctions. Invading Iraq and eliminating Saddam Hussein would be relatively simple. What about the fact that it would embroil the U.S. in a long-term and extremely violent occupation of Iraq? That's not the problem of the Saudi royal family, and anyway, there was never any plan for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. That was the whole point of the invasion in the first place -- to establish a permanent base for a U.S. military presence in the Middle East outside of Saudi Arabia.
And that, I believe, explains the policies of the Bush crowd in Iraq. There was a largely ignored story (but shown in the "Frontline" documentary referred to above) involving the closing of every American military base in Saudi Arabia less than a month after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. If this war had truly been about the promotion of democracy in the Middle East, maintaining an American presence in Saudi Arabia would have made sense. Even from the point of view of military logistics, maintaining American bases in Saudi Arabia would have made sense so that all of our troops in the region would not have been exposed to the constant dangers of suicide bombers in the chaos of post-invasion Iraq.
But this war has nothing to do with the promotion of democracy. I believe that it is all about the protection of the oil-driven love affair between the Bush crowd and the Saudi dictators. I am sorry to say that I truly believe that as far as the Bush gang is concerned, all other factors, including the lives of thousands of Iraqis and the security of our own soldiers, are, at best, of secondary importance.
The thing about Bush's Iraq War that is fairly unusual is that even today, no one really knows why we are fighting this war and why thousands of people are dying in it. We have had stupid and/or evil wars throughout American (and of course world) history, but usually, there is a pretty good understanding of the reasons why the wars were being fought, no matter how wrong-headed or malevolent those reasons may have been. The Vietnam War was fought because of anti-Communism run amok; the Spanish-American War was fought to bring America into the great land-rush of Nineteenth Century imperialism; the Mexican War was fought to expand slavery.
The Iraq War is different because no one can really give a believable explanation as to why it is being fought. The stated reasons -- fear of Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction and connections to international terrorism -- were obviously bogus, as is now pretty much conceded even by the Bushies themselves. The Bush gang now seems to have settled upon the promotion of international democracy as the rationale du jour for the war but I don't buy that one for a minute. I don't believe that the Bush crowd gives a rat's ass about democracy. They don't seem to be very supportive of democracy here in the U.S. let alone the world, as they continue to support all sorts of vicious tyrants around the world. Even in the Middle East, Bush has recently started cozying up to Libya's Qaddafi and the love affair between the Bush crowd and the thugs across the border from Iraq in Saudi Arabia is well known (see my earlier blog on "Bush In The Role of Milosh The Bad Tennis Player").
Even the opponents of the Iraq war have had trouble coming up with a cogent explanation for the true reason why Bush is pursuing this horrible war. Most opponents would probably say that the war is really being fought "for oil", an assertion that has previously appeared on this blog ("Remember 9/11"). Candidly, however, I don't find this explanation completely satisfactory. The international oil companies are amoral profit maximizers. They have no problem dealing with all sorts of crooked tyrants, and Saddam Hussein was no exception. The oil companies had a very cozy relationship with Saddam's government for decades, and Iraq didn't have to be turned into a blighted war zone in order to protect the profits of the oil industry.
So, why then is the war being fought? I don't pretend to have any inside information on the subject, but I will suggest an admittedly speculative hypothesis. I think that the real explanation lies in what I call the true axis of evil, the one that connects Crawford, Texas with Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In this sense, I would agree that the root cause of the war is oil-related. However, I think it goes beyond that, and has to do with the security concerns of the Saudi government and the almost dictatorial influence that the Saudi royal family is able to exercise over decision-makers in the U.S. government, particularly during the two Bush Administrations. Ironically, I think that the explanation does have something to do with 9/11, but not in a way that most Americans would care about.
[Footnote: there was an outstanding documentary about the Saudi-American relationship on the PBS show "Frontline" a while ago. A lot of my thinking on this subject jelled after I watched the program. The program could hardly be called an example of "liberal bias" on PBS. Virtually everyone who appeared on the program was either a Saudi official or an official from the first Bush administration. The program was just an example of good journalism, which is what the current Bush administration really doesn't like.]
I think that the story goes something like this. The Saudis have always enjoyed the military protection of the U.S. For years, Iran served as the base for an American military presence in the Middle East, but that ended with the overthrow of the Shah. After that, the Saudis attempted to build their own defense mechanism through the promotion of Islamic fundamentalist organizations such as Al Qaeda. However, the Saudi thugs, being corrupt pigs, were never really comfortable with fundamentalists like Bin Laden or the Iranian mullahs, so they hedged their bets by giving big financial support to Saddam Hussein so that he could carry on a brutal and mutually-destructive war against Iran (see my earlier blog on "Iraqi Debt Forgiveness and More Bush Cronyism"). However, Iraq's attack against another corrupt Persian Gulf petrocracy, Kuwait, convinced the Saudis that Saddam could not be trusted. The Saudis therefore made a fateful decision by inviting the U.S. to make a direct military intervention in the region. The first Bush Administration, following the pattern of sycophancy to the Saudi government that continues to date, eagerly complied by launching the first Gulf War. In the process, the U.S. also established a massive military presence within Saudi Arabia itself, since that was the launching point for the attack against the Iraqi forces in Kuwait.
The American military presence in Saudi Arabia never sat very well with the Saudi establishment. We've all heard stories about how the sight of female American soldiers wearing t-shirts and driving jeeps drove the Islamic fundamentalists bonkers. Al Qaeda gained vast support as a result of growing Saudi hostility to the American military presence within the "holy land" of Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden had been particularly pissed off about all of this from the beginning of the first Gulf War, as he had unsuccessfully sought to convince the Saudi government to bankroll an expanded version of the Al Qaeda force that had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan as the military vehicle that would drive Iraq out of Kuwait, rather than turning to the American infidels.
So, then came 9/11, an unprecedented terrorist attack directly against the U.S. launched by Saudi supporters of Al Qaeda. 9/11 made it clear to the Saudi establishment that Al Qaeda was a real threat, a threat that became even more pressing when Al Qaeda followed-up on its 9/11 spectacular events by staging bombings within Saudi Arabia itself. The Saudi government decided that the source of Al Qaeda's hostility to the Saudi royal family -- their invitation of American infidels into the holy land of Saudi Arabia -- had to be dealt with.
On the other hand, the Saudis still wanted, and needed, an American military presence in the Middle East. Again, the important thing to remember about the Saudi royals is that they are really nothing more than a bunch of corrupt thugs who feed off of a highly profitable, parasitic relationship with the large oil companies, a relationship fed by the West's insatiable appetite for oil, an appetite that the Bush administration has not shown the slightest interest in satiating. The last thing in the world that the Saudis want to see is a viable reform or revolutionary movement in the Middle East. Come the revolution, the Saudi royal family won't be around.
What then to do? The answer: get the Saudi's American military protectors out of Saudi Arabia but put them someplace else nearby. The choice of that "someplace else" was obvious. Iraq had virtually no military left after the defeat in the first Gulf War and after ten years of sanctions. Invading Iraq and eliminating Saddam Hussein would be relatively simple. What about the fact that it would embroil the U.S. in a long-term and extremely violent occupation of Iraq? That's not the problem of the Saudi royal family, and anyway, there was never any plan for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. That was the whole point of the invasion in the first place -- to establish a permanent base for a U.S. military presence in the Middle East outside of Saudi Arabia.
And that, I believe, explains the policies of the Bush crowd in Iraq. There was a largely ignored story (but shown in the "Frontline" documentary referred to above) involving the closing of every American military base in Saudi Arabia less than a month after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. If this war had truly been about the promotion of democracy in the Middle East, maintaining an American presence in Saudi Arabia would have made sense. Even from the point of view of military logistics, maintaining American bases in Saudi Arabia would have made sense so that all of our troops in the region would not have been exposed to the constant dangers of suicide bombers in the chaos of post-invasion Iraq.
But this war has nothing to do with the promotion of democracy. I believe that it is all about the protection of the oil-driven love affair between the Bush crowd and the Saudi dictators. I am sorry to say that I truly believe that as far as the Bush gang is concerned, all other factors, including the lives of thousands of Iraqis and the security of our own soldiers, are, at best, of secondary importance.
posted by democratic core at 6:11 AM
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