Ah, the holiday season! Maybe you didn’t know it, but this is the perfect time to buy your mom and dad a gift, to send Christmas cards to your relatives, but most importantly of all, this is the perfect time to bomb the hell out of your enemies. Cold skies and unlimited visibility are good for sorties. You didn’t know that? Come on! Everybody knows that. So, what’s a superpower to do? Well apparently we’re stuck and aren’t getting our Christmas wish. We can’t bomb at will—pesky United Nations and all.
America’s foreign policy in the Middle East is easy. It really only has two major points: Sell us oil, and leave Israel alone. Now how is it that these simple interests have somehow gotten us sucked into an ancient blood feud? All we want is the right to buy and resell oil! But, it just isn’t that easy…and on top of that, there’s Saddam.
Where do you start with a guy like Saddam? Well, like most things there’s some history, and in this case, you start in the 60’s. The New York Times reports that in 1968 Saddam was the muscle behind the overthrow of the Iraq monarchy. Worse than that, he had Communist tendencies. In fact, he was downright cozy with the Russians, and at that time the Russians were our mortal enemies. To counter this new threat in the Middle East, we supplied his mortal enemy, and our ally Iran, with weapons.
There was a revolution in Iran, though. The government we supported collapsed, and in saunters the brand of religious zealotry that we all now know fairly well, thanks to today’s headlines. Meanwhile, Saddam clearly came to understand the “American way” was doing business with us. It was so lucrative for the U.S. to do business with him that the State Department set up an American interests section and our exports and imports grew.
Making a long story short, after the collapse of our original friend, Iran, we shifted our patronage and began a new love affair with Saddam
Iraq and Iran soon took to fighting a gruesome war, and Iraq had become such a good friend to the United States that when Israel bombed them in 1981 — a forgotten fact of history — The New York Times reports that, along with the United Nations, we censured Israel!
In 1984, we had full diplomatic relations with Iraq. The New York Times reports that we sold them rice and helicopters. And, at that particular point in time, Iran had American hostages.
Then came change: The hostages finally were released, and Communism died in 1989. Now that there was no more threat of Iraq going Communist, the 1st Bush Administration was stuck with having to take a hard look at the man in power—a man who had even gassed his own citizens. There was now a dilemma in terms of where American should place its support — but, which was worse, Iraq or Iran? We figured Iran, so says the NY Times, and so at the request of countries like — heh, heh — Kuwait, we coddled the “Butcher of Baghdad” even more. We even sold him more rice and helicopters.
And then — wham; out of the blue — Saddam attacks Kuwait in the early 90’s, and, yes, it was over oil. This was a potential global catastrophe. Saddam was now a threat that needed to be dealt with, the world’s economy being based on oil and all. We had to fight. And here’s the kicker: The New York Times reports that, apparently, Saddam even asked America’s permission to invade Kuwait. We thought he was kidding and so didn’t give him a clear response.
We drove Saddam back to Baghdad, but didn’t finish the job. The reason we didn’t was that we were worried Iraq would be overrun by religious fanatics (potential terrorists) who would then have billions of dollars in oil revenue lining their pockets, to apply to their efforts. So, we left him.
So now, here we are. It’s 34 years later and the story is unfinished. Are we going to get rid of him? Hell, yes, judging by the progression of events. The man is toast but he doesn’t know it yet — at least according to Dubya’s war rhetoric. Then, when he’s gone, we’re going to muck around in Iraq for an indefinite period and probably beget a whole new set of problems. But what other choice do we have in this season of peace and love?
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Copyright © 2002 by Marc Fitten. All rights reserved.
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