Welcome to Wonderland: the story of Iraq
"You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake
up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the
red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole
goes."
- Morpheus,
The Matrix, Warner Bros, 1999
It happens that the story of Iraq was a part of my way out of the Dream
World. Maybe it can help you.
I started studying it in 2000 after listening to a lecture
CD on the topic by famous activist scholar.
I couldn't believe what the man said. Or rather, I didn't want to. But
he was so logical. So convincing. I remember being disturbed by what he
said for at least a couple months. But I just sat on it. I couldn't deal
with it.
Finally I went to the university library to prove him wrong.
I failed. He was telling the truth. This page is what I found.
You've noticed, of course, that the Iraq story has entered a new chapter
since then. Once you know the history below, you'll find it much easier
to understand the spring of 2003.
Let's go.
The Official Story
Let's start with the Official Story -- the things you hear all
the time:
- We attacked Iraq (and have sanctions on Iraq) because Hussein is
a murderous dictator who used chemical weapons against his own
people - The US defended the innocent country of Kuwait against
aggression, because we will not let aggressors pick on small
countries - The US attacked Iraq's military with surgical precision.
The war and the sanctions which followed were carefully crafted to
avoid civilian casualties. - The US wanted, and still wants, the people of Iraq to overthrow
Hussein - The US works to promote democracy and human rights in the
world
Questions
And here are some questions you might consider about the whole
affair:
- Why did we leave Hussein, the latest Hitler, in power--when we
were willing to take out Noriega, a minor thug, in Panama? - Before our attack in 1991, we said repeatedly that we wanted the
Iraqi people to overthrow Hussein--but when the Iraqis rebelled
against Hussein immediately after our attack, we gave no help at
all and allowed Hussein to crush them. Why? - Hussein is indeed a monster, having used chemical weapons
against his own people in 1988. Why did we do nothing when
that happened, if we care about human rights? - Likewise, the Turkish government has carried out vicious attacks
against their Kurdish people. Why aren't we concerned about
their human rights violations? Shouldn't we use
sanctions against Turkey too? - If we are concerned about weapons of mass destruction held by
countries that attack their neighbors, why aren't we concerned
about Israel's nuclear weapons?
Now let's see if we can make sense of these "facts" and
questions.
The Truth -- Iran 1951 to late 70's
To understand the Iraq story, we need to start with Iran. In
1951, Iran had a parliamentary government, a type of representative
democracy like that of Britain and Canada. One of the ministers,
Mossadegh, organized the parliament to take over the oil industry
(primarily from the British). In other words, they decided it was
not fair for their major natural resource to be controlled by
foreigners. Now they didn't just take it. They offered the
British 25 percent of the profits and allowed the British employees
to keep working there.
This wasn't good enough, so the CIA began working to overthrow the Iranian
government, and in 1953 Iran's parliamentary democracy was overthrown
and replaced by a dictator, the Shah. [For a brief, fascinating
insight into the CIA, read Morpheus' interview with a former, disillusioned, US intelligence
agent .]
You might think the "liberal media" would have a problem with
this. Instead, one year later, on August 6, 1954, a New York
Times editorial said: "Underdeveloped countries with rich
resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be
paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical
nationalism." And what is "fanatical nationalism"? Again, it's the
crazy idea that a small country should have control of its own
resources.
The Official Story, of course, was that the independent
Mossadegh really planned to turn over the oil and power to the
Soviet Union. The facts do not support this (see Blum, Killing
Hope, pp 64-72). But what if they did? Did the
Iranian people benefit from their "rescue" from the communist
menace? No--they got the Shah and his secret police, SAVAK,
who ruled the country with terror, torture, and murder for the next
quarter century--WITH OUR SUPPORT. As Blum explains:
Amnesty International summed up the
situation in 1976 by noting that Iran had "the highest rate of
death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts
and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the
world has a worse record in human rights than Iran." (Killing
Hope, p 72)
Incidentally, the US got control of 40 percent of Iranian oil in
the deal.
This situation persisted until the late 70's when a popular revolution
overthrew the Shah and put the Ayatollah Khomeini in power. The Shah,
our good friend, was given asylum. (I remember seeing him shaking hands
with our leaders on TV) The Ayatollah, for (now) obvious reasons,
began calling the US the "Great Satan." Later, in 1979, Iranian students
took over the US embassy there, taking the employees hostage for a year
because they claimed that the US was attempting to overthrow their government
again , using the embassy to coordinate efforts.
Many Americans remember the late 70s and early 80s when this was happening.
I was one of them, Neo. I never heard why the Iranians thought we
were the "Great Satan" -- in fact it was suggested repeatedly that they
were just crazy "Arab" extremists who hated us for no good reason. They
never explained that we overthrew the Iranian government before and that
we were trying to do it again. This was verified in the fascinating email of a former Iranian-American citizen in
his mid-30s, who remembers this story clearly from his teenage years when
his parents took him back to Iran, when he could only read English and
the English news. So he watched one thing with his own eyes, but read
another. Incredible.
The Truth -- Iraq
Once you understand the truth behind Iran, Iraq is easier to
understand.
1970's to 1989
Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq in the late 1970s.
Eventually, Hussein got into a war with Iran. The US supported
Hussein because Iran had become our enemy (for having removed our
dictator). Our support for Iraq was quite strong as can be shown by
the fact that in May 1987, an Iraqi missile hit the USS Stark
killing 37 sailors. They got a tap on the wrist for this -- which
shows our government was really committed.
In 1988, the USS Vincennes was patrolling the Gulf and shot down
an Iranian civilian airliner in a commercial flight corridor. 290
people died. This was an accident, according to The Official
Story. Although most of us believed it, Iran didn't and
subsequently gave up.
Shortly afterwards, Hussein committed the worst atrocities of
his career -- he used chemical weapons against his own people, the
Kurdish citizens in the north. An estimated ten thousand Kurds died
from the chemical weapons attack and another 40,000 died from
conventional weapons used at the same time. Despite outcries in the
international community, comparing Hussein's use of chemical
weapons to Hitler, the United States did nothing to respond to
these atrocities. In fact, in 1989, during our invasion of Panama,
the US expedited loans to Iraq to "put us in a better position to
deal with Iraq" on human rights violations. Notice that later, we
had a different method, sanctions, that we used to deal with "human
rights violations".
1990 to present
In 1990, Hussein complained of "slant drilling" by Kuwait. In
other words he was saying that Kuwait was angling their oil
drilling rigs to tap into oil that was actually underneath Iraq. [A
young friend of mine was actually in the Persian Gulf. One of his
fellow soldiers, who used to work oil rigs in the south, actually
saw the Kuwaiti rigs and confirmed this.]
After much the saber-rattling, it appeared Iraq was about to
invade. During congressional hearings, a Bush administration
official was asked whether we had any treaties that would require
us to intervene if Iraq attacked. He said "no" and the next day
Iraq invaded--August 2, 1990.
President Bush (senior) and Margaret Thatcher (Great Britain)
immediately compared Hussein to Hitler and expressed hope for a
popular uprising to depose him. This hope was repeated several
times in the next few months. In January 1991, our government
launched Desert Storm, the attack in which one hundred thousand
Iraqi soldiers were killed and along with some 100 US soldiers.
Immediately after we ended our attack, there were uprisings
against Saddam. We were there in force, but we did nothing to stop
the vicious Iraqi counterattack that crushed the rebellion with
extreme violence and kept Saddam in power.
Interestingly, the media did notice this, and in July 1991,
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times had this to say:
"Sooner or later, Mr. Bush argued, sanctions would force Mr.
Hussein's generals to bring him down, and then Washington would
have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without
Saddam Hussein."
Curiously, Mr. Friedman didn't seem to find this idea disturbing
at all -- that the "best of all worlds" was not a democracy but an
iron-fisted dictatorship. And later you can find reporters in the
New York Times and in many other publications extolling our
greatness and our commitment to human rights in the world.
Interesting.
The sanctions against Iraq continued -- during which roughly one million people
have died for lack of food, sanitation, and medicine. Most of these people
are children. See this link for a detailed description of the state of
the Iraqi people after several years of sanctions.
Was this intentional? Yes. Thomas Nagy
published his findings in the September 2001 issue of The
Progressive--describing declassified Defense Information Agency
documents. As he states:
Over the last two years, I've discovered documents of the
Defense Intelligence Agency proving beyond a doubt that, contrary
to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used
sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after
the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis,
mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway. The
primary document, "
Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities ," is dated January 22,
1991. It spells out how sanctions will prevent Iraq from supplying
clean water to its citizens.
Don't trust Nagy--read it yourself. If the Defense Department takes
it offline, see this copy.
From time the time we have increased our bombing attacks, such as in December
1998. An explanation was needed for this, and we got one. In a New
York Times article , then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
made this remarkable statement:
" We have come to the determination that the Iraqi people would
benefit if they had a government that really represented them."
Assuming she was telling the truth, I'll leave it to you to consider
what it means that in December 1998, the US finally decided that the most
recent incarnation of Hitler was not the best ruler for the Iraqi people.
April 2003
Now, people are dying in Iraq. But, of course -- they were dying before.
But from sanctions, and depleted uranium, not current bombs and bullets.
If you're keeping track of the body count, the Clinton administration
is still in the lead by quite a ways. But the Bush administration is fighting
to catch up.
So, How Dangerous Was Iraq?
Saddam Hussein was painted as a great danger to the planet to encourage us
to go to war. Now of course he was a danger, but the danger was greatest
when we were supporting him the most during the late 80's. That's when
he had the most power and when he committed his most atrocious crimes.
He already had chemical weapons at
that time, and we knew it .
A rough estimate of the danger can be determined by simply
looking at the results of the Gulf War. But we could have known
that before by looking at the relative military spending of the US
and Iraq as seen in this chart.
Conclusions
So what were the Gulf War and the sanctions really about? What
story is left when you have debunked the others?
What comes to mind when you think of the "Middle East"? What should come
to mind is oil. The Truth was hinted at for a long time, but
finally admitted by Bush's National Security Advisor in a BBC special
on the 5-year anniversary of the Gulf War.
Actually, if we knew our history, we'd not be surprised. In the
1940's, US planners identified the Middle East as the greatest
source of strategic power in world history. Which meant, in their
minds, that the US has to control it, like the British had
previously.
But there's a problem: there are people there, and sometimes
they want to benefit from their own resources, as Iran demonstrated
in 1951. That's why we support weak dictators throughout the Gulf
region--to make sure the people of the region are suppressed so
they don't get much benefit from their major natural resource--and
we do.
Which explains why we overthrew the Iranian democracy in 1953,
and why an Iraqi junta is the "best of all worlds." Democracy in
the Gulf is too dangerous, because it might force us to make major
changes in energy policy. We might have to really, seriously
promote energy conservation, wind and solar power. It would affect
US oil and automobile corporations.
It would also affect us personally. Oil prices might
finally approach the levels Europe has been living with for years.
Germans, for example, pay around $4/gallon. How many
people are we willing to murder to keep prices below $5/gallon?
Yes, Hussein was our kind of dictator, until he got out of line.
It took until 2001 for me to finally understand what happened.
Interestingly, the famous American political analyst, Noam Chomsky,
got it right off the bat. In his important book, Deterring
Democracy , 1991, he said this:
By any standards, Saddam Hussein is a monstrous figure, .... But
his villainy is not the reason for his assumption of the role of
Great Satan in August 1990. It was apparent long before, and did
not impede Washington's efforts to lend him aid and support....
Hussein became a demon in the usual fashion: when it was finally
understood, beyond any doubt, that his independent nationalism
threatened US interests. His record of hideous atrocities then
became available for propaganda needs, but beyond that, it had
essentially nothing to do with his sudden transition in August 1990
from cherished friend to new incarnation of Genghis Khan and Hitler
"http://zena.secureforum.com/Znet/chomsky/dd/dd-c06-s14.html#SEC6.8">
(p 210-211) .
The Official Story, Revised
-
Hussein is a murderous dictator who used chemical weapons against
his own people--with our support.
-
The US defended the (not quite) innocent country of Kuwait against
aggression, and we will not let aggressors pick on small countries,
if those countries send us oil and profits.
-
The US attacked Iraq's military with surgical precision. It
also intentionally destroyed the country's civilian infrastructure,
including its water supply. The sanctions were designed to prevent
the country from rebuilding the capacity to provide safe water, in
addition to other vital civilian functions--a violation of the Geneva
Convention--which has lead to roughly a million deaths since the war.
-
The US wants the people of Iraq to overthrow Hussein (just kidding)
-
Iraq is a dangerous threat to our world (... and democracy
would make them even more dangerous.)
For more information on Iraq and the sanctions, check out these sources:
- Iraq
1990-1991. A chapter from the book, Killing Hope by William
Blum. Excellent review in a reasonably short space. Lots of references. - Iran
1953. Because you need to know Iran to understand Iraq. Excerpts
from another chapter in Blum's Killing Hope. References from
the book are not present in this web excerpt. - Voices in the Wilderness.
One of the first groups to oppose the sanctions against the people of
Iraq. - Iraq Peacebuilding Program
by the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers). - Iraq Under
Siege, edited by Anthony Arnove. If you want an entire book
on the topic.
Which leads to a most disturbing lesson:
The US foreign / economic policy is designed to project US power
into the world and control the world's resources -- not to promote human
rights or democracy. Dictators are fine as long as they give us what
we want. Democracies are not ok if we don't like their economic plans,
and we are quite willing to overthrow them if it suits our interests.
In fact, dictators have a particularly nice feature: when we get tired
of them, their real atrocities can be used as an excuse for invading
the country. Iraq is but one example of a long tradition that we would
all know if our society were operating properly.
These policies are quite in line with US corporate interests, which
is not surprising, given the extent of corporate power over our society,
as briefly described on the Why-US home
page.
Other Examples
There are many instances since World War II where our government
has overthrown the governments of other democracies or interfered
in their elections. An excellent book that describes these
is Killing Hope, by former State Department man, William Blum. Have your favorite
anti-depressant ready.
A few examples:
-
Italy, 1948.
-
Guatemala, 1954. Overthrew their democratic government. 200,000
people have been murdered since. -
Vietnam and surrounding countries, 1950-73. Destroyed the
"virus" of independent nationalism. 2,000,000 dead. -
Chile, 1973 (we put Pinochet, the ruthless dictator, in
power). Incidentally, their democratically elected president, Allende,
was assassinated in the coup on September 11, 1973 -- a day which now
lives in infamy for more than one reason. -
Nicaragua, 1980's. Our dictator, Somoza, was fine, but when a popular revolution
toppled him, we brought in the "freedom fighters" to destroy their
country. (for some important details, read Morpheus'
fascinating interview with a former, disillusioned, US intelligence
agent.) -
El Salvador, 1980....
-
Haiti, 1991
-
.... and many, many more
The Middle East in general is another part of the story. Israel-Palestine
is a difficult, emotional topic--certainly one of the "third rails" of
US politics. As you know, we really aren't supposed to think about this
situation. But there are at least two good reasons to consider that we
aren't getting the full story:
- The huge Israeli peace movement. For example, in May 2002,
there was a huge
demonstration for peace in Tel Aviv of 50-150,000 people in a country
of 6 million. That would be like a protest of 1-3 million people here. - The hundreds of Israeli "refusniks" -- Israeli soldiers
who refuse to go to the occupied territories because they claim they'll
be ordered to commit major human rights violations. Since the Israeli
fighting forces are known for their toughness and discipline -- this
is a major, major signal. Well worth trying to understand. Here's an
example,
from a refusnik, written in Feb 2002.
Of course, there is another reason we should try to understand what's
happening there: our support of what's happening there is a major reason
(not the only, however) we are hated in the Arab world. We'd better know
what we're supporting.
Chomsky gave this talk in March
2001 on Iraq, Turkey, and Israel-Palestine . Not fun to read,
but important. You'll wonder how this information, which is all
public, somehow did not make it into the public mind. The Matrix
is truly amazing.
Another important Chomsky article is "http://www.why-us.org/nc_israel_pal.shtml">this one specifically on Israel-Palestine . It
has plenty of references if you'd like to check his sources.
In short, the Awful Truth is this: the US foreign policy
machine chose option #2 in the great decision,
post-WW II . They chose to rule the world with an iron fist.
But they didn't bother to tell us--We, The People. And somehow,
most of us never noticed.
to Wonderland 2:
The Desert of the Real
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