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Why did it Take 13 Years to Resolve Iraq's Quagmire?Oct 25 '03 (Updated Oct 30 '04) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line To understand why Bush invaded Iraq in the first place, one must also understand what happened a full 12 years before then. The record is one of horrible failure.
The Persian Gulf War of 1991 began the quagmire that we are witnessing in Iraq. The September 11 Attacks followed by Bush's invasion helped to end one chapter of it. The ultimate losers in this complicated political struggle are the Iraqi people. Background President George Bush Sr, of course, had a legitimate case for attacking Iraq. Saddam's regime had invaded Kuwait in August 1990 to take control of its oil reserves, and were killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Kuwaitis during the military occupation of that country. Despite a growing presence of American and allied troops ready to attack the country at a moment's notice, Saddam refused to back down. The invasion and Saddam's subsequent defiance shattered a strategic relationship between Washington and Baghdad that had developed when Iran came under an Islamic extremist regime in 1979. In the end it took a massive artillery barrage in January and February 1991 to force Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. Baghdad and other cities also took a heavy beating. There was talk in US government circles or marching into Baghdad and overthrowing Saddam, but other UN members did not like the idea, so it was scrapped Saddam was too busy brutally clamping down on rebellions by Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south to care. Tens of thousands of people in both groups were stuffed into his torture chambers; many died in prison or were slaughtered outright. Around the same time, the UN imposed economic sanctions on the country, designed to force its regime to end its weapons of mass destruction program, downsize its military, and give up its claims to Kuwait. The Sanctions Regime The UN economic sanctions, openly supported by the United States, and maintained throughout the Bill Clinton Administration (all eight years of it), simply did not work. In all seriousness it not only ended up hurting civilians, especially children, thousands of whom died of various preventable diseases every month, but disrupted virtually every other aspect of Iraqi life. With lack of spare parts that could normally have entered the country, oil pipelines decayed, hospitals began to run out of health kits, construction material ran out quickly, and so on. By 2002, more than 654,000 people, including many children, had died of various diseases and starvation. This mattered little to the Clinton Administration, or to the four other Security Council members. As recently as 2000, Madeline Albright, as Secretary of State, said that sanctions would stay "in perpetuity" until Saddam's regime complied with all UN resolutions concerning WMD's, military forces, and his claims to Kuwait. Saddam Hussein, of course, made matters worse. Needless to say he either defied the resolutions or gave half-hearted attention to others. He also stepped up his repression of the Iraqi people, employing various torture tactics against his own people, particularly against Kurds and Shiite Arabs. The number of victims under his watch increased by the thousands; his torture chambers and death squads could easily be counted in his list of WMD's. His sons Uday and Qusay also helped their father set up a black market for illegal goods, including alleged weapons of mass destruction, and illegal supplies of smuggled oil and other contraband designed to bust the UN sanctions. Needless to say, most of the money went straight to Saddam's safe deposits or to his military forces, as did most of the taxes he siphoned from the people. Saddam's regime, in effect, operated like a mafia whose big boss runs his criminal enterprises from the top down, with underlings aiding in his illicit activities. During his entire administration he never renounced his territorial claims to Kuwait. He used subversive and delaying tactics against the UN inspectors repeatedly. He openly hid his WMD's in secret installations, and his officials at the plants were either evasive or hostile when questioned by the inspectors. The IAEA destroyed some of the WMD but reported that they were looking for more. The Quagmire Continues Saddam's already lackluster cooperation with the world community ended in December 1998, when American planes bombed Iraqi military installations and certain other places, as a response to Saddam's increased defiance. The airstrikes clinched this hatred of the outside world, as Saddam expelled UN nuclear inspectors from the country soon afterwards. Air strikes continued throughout 1999 through 2002, and this created growing ill-will against the US Government everywhere. Constant bickering within the UN about the extent of the sanctions, and the accompanying UN oil-for-food program, made things that much more complicated. The air strikes also produced a split among the five Big Powers over how to deal with the situation. Over time, France, China, and Russia, and later Germany, openly talked of doing business with Saddam's regime, and making investments there while his people were starving and languishing in his torture chambers. The UN sanctions also continued their dirty work. Between 1992 and 2002, tens of thousands of children (perhaps as many as 600,000) died from preventable diseases, Saddam's regime stole mony earned from the oil-for-food program, US and British airstrikes continued to hammer the country's infrastructure, which also continued to decay from lack of spare parts for oil fields, hospitals, and other facilities. The middle class collapsed utterly, and former doctors and lawyers found themselves selling old TV's and refrigerators on the street. Not surprisingly, some activists called for the sanctions to be lifted unilaterally because of all the horror stories. Much of their denunciations were aimed at the US and its allies, and none of them mentioned the brutality of Saddam and his open defiance of the international community. Few realized, however, that their bleeding-heart attitude towards the sanctions and their constant rants about the sanctions' failure would help fuel the violent invasion of the country. The Last Straw The September 11 Attacks proved to be the final straw. It forced the US to re-examine its policies in the Middle East, especially concerning Iraq. In the end President George Bush Jr. probably realized that the policy of containment and sanctions was not only a strategic failure, but it ended up harming Iraq's people instead of its regime. It had increased anti-American feeling throughout the world, especially the Middle East, which in turn led to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Thus the Bush Administration came to see the Iraq quagmire turned from a humiliating foreign policy failure into a real threat to the country's very existence. His accusations of Saddam's regime having weapons of mass destruction were only part of his reasoning for the invasion. It was clear to everyone that the policy of UN sanctions and containment had been a miserable failure. Saddam was still in power, his people were starving by the thousands every week, the WMD issue was still frustratingly unresolved, and there were reports of Islamic extremists coming into Iraq despite Saddam's hostility towards them. When Bush called Iraq (along with Iran and North Korea) part of an "axis of evil", it began to emerge that he was going directly at Saddam Hussein's regime, which had essentially become THE biggest obstacle to the resolution of Iraq's crisis. This confrontational attitude put Iraq on the political map and galvanized an antiwar movement into stopping the invasion and effectively appeasing the cruel dictator, which clearly would not have made things any easier for the Iraqi people. And it's no coincidence that he went forward to the UN General Assembly to announce his desire for regime change in Iraq the day after September 11 2002. His desire for an invasion, of course, was clearly too immoral and too unilateral to merit international approval. Bush, however, had made up his mind by then, and decided if possible to bypass the UN, which he believed would be too divided by petty differences and bleeding-heart atitudes, especially by France, Russia, and Germany, to be of any good. The Bush Administration unilaterally began pouring troops and military technology into the countries bordering Iraq even while antiwar protests erupted worldwide. And the rest we all know about. Aftermath With the invasion over and the occupation still ongoing, the evil legacy of the wars, crippling sanctions, UN incompetence, American, French, and Russian stonewalling, and Saddam's oppressive rule, are all coming to light. The sanctions alone did plenty of damage. Virtually every mode of transit in Iraq except its smooth paved highways and streets are in deep disrepair, hospitals and schools are short of vital supplies, oil wells are not flowing properly, electricity flows only intermittently, and houses in most areas are ramshackle for the most part. It will take at least a few years, and perhaps a Marshall Plan, to repair all this economic and political damage. The economic sanctions, just for the record, were finally ended in May 2003, one month after the fall of Baghdad. The search for WMD's of course, goes on, although nothing has been found yet. The human infrastructure also needs repair badly. Islamic militancy (Al Qaeda now has a presence in the country) and the resulting insurgency is killing US troops and Iraqis alike. Public safety in Baghdad is spotty at best due to increased violent crime and the breakdown of law and order. Nearly all Iraqis suffer from hunger and sometimes disease, further hampered by hospitals short of basic supplies. And new mass graves containing Saddam's victims are being dug up every week, leading to anguished relatives who have now lost all hope for the future and their loved ones. To add insult to injury, there is an emerging scandal involving the oil for food program, where Saddam's government siphoned off huge amounts of money while France and its supporters turned a blind eye. There are reports that French and Russian and Arab companies also helped in the deception, mainly out of greed, although contempt for the UN sanctions and the hard attitude of the US was also a factor. The newly formed Iraqi Governing Council is only a first step towards self-government, and if it fails... Final Evaluation It's a real tragedy that it finally took a full-scale military invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein to end the suffering of the Iraqi people under both international sanctions and a cruel, oppressive regime. While I'm no apologist for Bush's invasion of Iraq, I feel strongly that the crisis facing the Iraqi people and their nation did not begin with him- and I fear it may not end when he leaves office whether in 2004 or 2008. The biggest mistake the international powers (the US, UK, France, Russia, Germany, China, and so on) made in the Iraq quagmire was to underestimate Saddam Hussein's penchant for power and his iron will to retain it at all costs. They also failed to negotiate with him in good faith early on to get rid of the WMD's and renounce all claims to Kuwait. The US's harsh tactics towards Iraq hardened the Iraqi government's stance towards the outside, while division within the UN allowed Saddam to play one hand against the other and frustrate attempts to find a comprehensive solution. The end result was a quagmire that was virtually impossible to solve by diplomatic means. It was George Bush's recogniation of this tragic fact, not vengeance for his father, that motivated him to make plans to invade Iraq. It raises serious questions on how to cope with cruel and repressive regimes that defy the world community, resist all attempts at reform, and oppress their own people. In the case of Iraq they failed utterly. For this there is plenty of blame to go around. Counterproductive economic sanctions, a squabbling-plagued UN that even bungled its oil-for-food program, a criminal regime that emulated Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, the appeasement policies of France, Russia, and Germany towards Saddam, a bleeding-heart activist movement that wanted to lift the sanctions but failed to come up with a decisive alternative solution, a do-nothing Democratic President (Clinton), and finally a Republican President (W Bush) with an aggressive and humorless streak similar to his father's all combined to force Iraq into its current failed-state status. There is one good thing to come out of this tragedy. During the attacks and the first anniversary, Saddam's regime gleefully displayed TV images playing Bolshevik anthems and celebrating the collapse of the Twin Towers or the burning of the Pentagon. The second anniversary saw virtually no sign of this anywhere. On 9/11/2003 and on 9/11/2004 the Iraqi people were too apathetic, too depressed, or too focused on rebuilding their own lives to celebrate the attacks.  |
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