Iraq

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Before Baghdad burns
The author of a new book on Iraq cautions that a U.S. invasion to get rid
of Saddam Hussein could be even more dangerous than his weapons of mass
destruction.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Laura Miller

June 18, 2002  |  Behind the closed doors of the Bush administration,
officials are debating the advisability of invading Iraq, a nation it has
accused of sponsoring international terrorism. The announcement that Bush
is proposing a new national security doctrine legitimating preemptive
strikes against regimes or groups that attempt to acquire weapons of mass
destruction has strengthened many observers' conviction that it's just a
matter of time before the U.S. acts on the desires of the hawkish side of
that debate and moves in to remove Saddam Hussein from power, finally
"finishing the job" that many felt was left undone at the end of the Gulf
War in 1991. Others are urging caution, or at least more consideration of
that fateful step than some U.S. leaders currently seem inclined to take.
Sandra Mackey, a journalist and the author of books on Saudi Arabia,
Lebanon, the Arab world and Iran, as well as the new "The Reckoning: Iraq
and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein," is one of those voices.

The U.S., Mackey argues, must ask itself which is the greater potential
danger: the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam probably has and may
use, or the radical destabilization of Iraq that is likely to follow if his
regime is toppled by the West. She worries that U.S. officials barely
understand the nation they intend to liberate and foolishly believe in
"some exaggerated expectation that the removal of the despot of Baghdad
will solve all of Iraq's problems and all the challenges to the United
States in the Persian Gulf." Instead, she insists, however monstrous Saddam
is, it's likely that U.S. involvement in his ouster could lead to something
even worse: chaos, violence and even more anti-American fury in a region of
key geopolitical significance. Mackey, who has traveled in Iraq and
throughout the Arab world, describes a nation ravaged and debilitated by
decades of tyranny and years of U.N.-imposed economic sanctions, a nation
that will need to be painstakingly rebuilt once the tyrant is gone.

Salon spoke with Mackey at her vacation retreat in South Carolina.

Q: Whenever the question of U.S. military intervention in another nation
arises, as we recently saw in Afghanistan, there's usually a certain amount
of griping from the know-nothing elements of the American public along the
lines of "If everybody there hates the government so much but they don't
want the U.S. to take it out, why don't the people just overthrow it
themselves?" Saddam Hussein is hated both inside and outside of Iraq, yet
he's been running the nation for decades. What keeps him from being ousted?

There are at least two reasons. To begin with, the Iraqis are so fragmented
into ethnic, sectarian and tribal groups that there's a great fear that
overthrowing Saddam Hussein might give your adversary or rival an
advantage. This is particularly true among the Sunni population of Iraq,
which is roughly 20 percent, and the group that Saddam Hussein belongs to.
The Shia Arabs make up 60 percent of the population and there's this
rivalry between the groups.

Then you've got the Kurds, who have their own agenda. With all these
rivalries, it's very difficult to get together the cross-communal alliances
to overthrow a government, particularly a government like Saddam Hussein's.

The second reason is that Saddam Hussein has been able to put the whole
country in a prison. His security forces are so extensive. They permeate
every aspect of life in the country. They are very good at picking up any
plots against Baghdad, and they move very effectively to put those down.
I'd also add a third reason. Since 1991 and the end of the Gulf War, the
imposition of the sanctions has so decimated the Iraqi economy that
survival is all anyone is thinking about. They really don't have the energy
to rise up and overthrow the tyrant in Baghdad.

Q: You write that the current problem the U.S. has with Iraq has its roots
in what you call "the neglect of and arrogance toward the Arab world" on
the part of the U.S., going back to the foundation of Israel. How is what
we're facing today the result of that?

A: For Iraq specifically, we've never looked at it as Iraq itself, but
always as a part of another problem, like the Cold War.

We only asked ourselves how we could use Iraq to do something else?

That's exactly right. After the revolution in Iran in 1979, it becomes, How
are we going to use Iraq to fend off more Islamic revolution? Then, after
the Gulf War, while we were trying to control Saddam Hussein's arms, we
should have been thinking of the next step beyond. Is there anything we can
do to prepare the Iraqis for the time when he's gone? I think there were
some good reasons for the sanctions -- I don't just slam them in the book
-- but they destroyed the middle class, and those are the people that you
really need to get the society back on track once he's gone.

Q: The U.S. got involved in the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but once
the Soviets were forced out we abandoned the country to fall into chaos --
and the Taliban and scores of al-Qaida training camps were the result. Do
you think we're in danger of opting for another shortsighted action if we
intervene militarily in Iraq, something where the blowback consequences
could be equally perilous?

A: Yes. And Iraq is even more dangerous to our interests than Afghanistan.
Once the Taliban and al-Qaida are dismantled, the Afghans will have to sort
out their tribal conflicts, but it's not going to have a lot to do with the
strategic balance. But Iraq is sitting there between the Persian Gulf and
the pipelines bringing oil and natural gas out of those new fields in
Central Asia, and with Iran in the east and Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia
all around there, you can't afford chaos. You can't just walk out and leave
it. So that means, if there's an invasion, is the U.S. going to be in Iraq
for the next umpteen years trying to maintain some order?

full: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2002/06/18/iraq/index.html

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org



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