Letīs reflect a little on the war in Iraq. Allow me to present my patented contrarian view (contrary to the view promoted by the American media, that is).
The American media, led by the Bush administration, portrays Saddam as an insane fool who had to be stopped before he killed again. Remember that this portrait was only devised by the administration after the WMD, al-Qaeda connection, and nuclear bomb justifications for invasion were discredited. The timing alone should make you want to take the administrationīs vilification of Saddam with a grain of salt. Especially considering that, not many years earlier, Saddam was Americaīs second best friend in the Middle East who was praised for bravely resisting Iranian and Afghani extremism.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. Saddam was a rational (if somewhat brutal) leader who had a logical reason for everything that he did. While I cannot agree with his methods, but I see nothing insane in his logic.
First, Saddam was determined to maintain a progressive, secular government in the midst of a sea of Islamic fundamentalist theocracies. The Taliban in Afghanistan was constantly threatening to export their extreme fundamentalism, even as far as Iraq. The Ayatollah in Iran was waging war against him with the view to installing their own theocracy in Iraq. He had no friends in Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia. Jordan was playing a duplicitous game, trying to cater to all sides at once. Israel was pretty much ignoring him as long as he was not a threat. Turkey was doing the same. As long as he was at war with Iran, the United States considered him a friend and supplied him with arms.
Second, Saddam had a problem with the Kurds. The Kurds, hardly an enlightened people themselves, had been split between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria after World War One. The Treaty of Sevres in 1920 considered the possibility of creating a separate Kurdish state. but that was never implemented. It did introduce the notion of nationalism among the Kurdish people in those four countries. The Kurds in Iraq, benefiting from Saddamīs reasonably free government which awarded them language rights and self rule, organized themselves and posed a continual threat of civil war in the north. This broke out in violence against the local Iraqi population on several occasions.
So what happened?
After the end of his war with Iran, Saddam was left with one of the largest armies in the world. Kuwait had been part of Iraq before World War One and Iraq had always maintained a claim on Kuwaitīs territory. Russia had been defeated in Afghanistan, Iran was stalemated, and Saddam had good relations with the US so he thought that it would be a good time to re-establish sovereignty over Kuwait. The US had been ignoring countries invading each other in central Africa; why would they care about tiny, undefended Kuwait who would fall to a largely bloodless invasion? Kuwait was no particular friend to the US, being more Islamic than Iraq. Saddam mentioned his plan to the American ambassador and she said a diplomatic version of "Okay, whatever." He invaded Kuwait. Big mistake. Kuwait has buckets of oil and everyone wants to see the control of oil spread over as many hands as possible. Everyone condemned the invasion and Bush the First kicked him back out of Kuwait. And for good measure, imposed heavy limitations on him. And for extra good measure, told the Kurds that if they wanted to overthrow Saddam, the US would support them. The US has never shied away from getting foreigners to fight their battles for them (not to imply that the US doesnīt fight plenty of their own battles, too - the US has enough battles to go around) and Bush thought that the Kurds would cause Saddam a nice little headache, maybe even overthrow him.
The Kurds took Bush I at his word and started a full-blown civil war in the North. To everyoneīs surprise, Saddam had enough army left to fight the Kurds. But it wasnīt so easy after the Gulf War so he has to resort to chemical weapons. The Americans didnīt mind when he used chemical weapons against Iran, so whatīs the problem with him using them in his civil war? Plenty. It turns out that Bushīs "support" for the Kurds wouldnīt involve any military action, but was limited to braying long and loud about the use of chemical weapons to end the Iraq civil war. Who would have guessed? Not the Kurds who had to give up their war and go back to living as they always have.
Meanwhile, back in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq, Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise. Saddam has always been fighting a political battle against the fundamentalists and itīs getting a lot worse now that his neighbors perceive him as having been weakened, first by the war and second by the American economic sanctions. Iran couldnīt defeat him in a military war so they start pumping religious evangelists into Iraq as fast as they can. Contrary to what the American media are saying, Saddamīs not pulling people off the street at random just for kicks. Heīs putting Islamic fundamentalists in prison and chasing them back to Iran because they are trying to overthrow him and establish an Iranian-style theocracy.
Along comes Bush the Second. For reasons that are incomprehensible to me, Bush II has a serious hate-on for Saddam. He starts formulating plans for an invasion the day he takes office. He flogs WMDs as a rationale and that flies for a while, but doesnīt get quite the support he needs. Nine-eleven happens and he starts blaming Iraq, but too many people donīt believe that for an instant - Saddam has been fighting against Islamic extremists for decades so heīs not going to give them weapons. Bush II is forced to delay his invasion of Iraq because he is forced to deal with the most obvious real supporter of terrorism: Afghanistan. Even before Afghanistan is under control, he turns his attention back to his big boogieman, Saddam. He still insists that Saddam, despite all history and logic to the contrary, is an al-Qaeda supporter. He gets approval from congress to invade Iraq on that basis. What was congress thinking?
After the invasion of Iraq, no one believes the terrorism connection any more - thereīs no more evidence of that than there is chemical weapons factories under the streets of Baghdad - so Bush II turns to the evil dictator rationale. Heīs saving the Iraqi people from death and destruction by ousting their evil leader and bringing democracy to the country. Except that when those people pulled down Saddamīs statue, what were they chanting? "Now we can be free and democratic?" Nope, afraid not. They were chanting "Now we can be an Islamic country!" Thank goodness American voters donīt understand Arabic and donīt understand the implications of Saddamīs enemies gaining control of Iraq.
To support Bushīs demonization of Saddam, we hear about rape rooms, body shredders, and mass graves. "Rape room" is certainly a loaded term. The facts are hard to come by, but it seems that one method of torturing fundamentalists was to rape their wives and female relatives. Bad stuff, that, but not insane. Saddam had a real problem with extremists who wanted to remake his country in Iranīs image. Even a large number of Americans believe that torture is justified if it is necessary to protect themselves, their families, and their country. Personally, I donīt agree with torture, either by Americans or by others, but I seem to be in the minority.
The mass graves as evidence of Saddamīs brutality are even more suspect. You have to follow the numbers carefully. "Hundreds of thousands of bodies" are mentioned all the time. Those are bodies that are "suspected" to be found, not the ones actually found. The number of bodies actually found is much smaller. "Dozens of mass graves" is also mentioned all the time, usually in the same paragraph as the "hundreds of thousands of bodies." The number of mass graves is high, but you have to realize that the US defines a "mass grave" as six bodies or more. Dozens of mass graves does not necessarily equal thousands of bodies. Worse, many of the mass graves are found up in the north. Remember that Kurdish civil war? The Kurds were killing Iraqis, too; it wasnīt just the Kurds who were being killed. We donīt know how many of those mass graves were dug by Saddamīs supporters to bury the Kurds and how many dug by the Kurds to bury Iraqis. But we do know that there were a lot of Americans buried in mass graves in the US during the first part of the American Civil War. Civil wars are like that. Bad stuff all the way around.
So what do we end up with? A man who was trying to keep his country intact, progressive and prosperous, and was willing to stoop to some rather brutal techniques to do so. Not exactly the Mr. Lincoln of Iraq, but not exactly the American media image of an insane fool who killed for the joy of it, either. Uday, now, was a rather different kettle of fish, but even Iīm not about to step forward to try to explain him.