Iraq: What it meant, what it means, what it could mean

One may disagree with war, one may disagree with this current war, but ignorance of its history, of the surrounding political environment, and of the potential consequences of our actions can be very harmful, not only to any reasonable discussion of the war, but also to the troops bearing the direct cost of war, the future of Arab and Islamic peoples, and the future of this conflict between Islam and the West. It is not conducive to either side of the debate to demonize this president or his administration; mistakes do not make one evil. And while mistakes may be made during the course of a war, they do not negate the original goals, even if those goals are not met.

To say that this war was about oil is a vast oversimplification of all the considerations in the decision to go to war and does not take into account other more important factors. In a sense, it was about oil, but not in the way that argument has been presented. France and Russia had already cut oil deals with Saddam and as recently as the summer of 2001 had been pressuring the United Nations to lift the sanctions on Iraq. If all the United States wanted was to secure Iraq’s oil supplies, Bush could have easily cut a deal with Saddam. It had been done before and would have been much cheaper than waging any war. Iraqi government documents even suggest that Saddam expected the US to eventually cut a deal. With normalized relations between Iraq and the US, Saudi Arabia could have rested a little easier and Saddam’s opposition to Iran would have been strengthened. Several short-term policy goals could have been achieved at relatively little cost to the United States (obviously, this does not take into account the costs of further oppression of the Iraqi Shi’as and Kurds who would have felt the brunt of Saddam’s renewed strength).

If one defines “terrorism” down to “operational support to Osama bin Laden,” then, no, Saddam probably wasn’t involved in terrorism. But it is important to understand that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are not, and have never been, the be-all, end-all of terrorism. Saddam sent money to Palestinian terrorists, for a time sponsored the Abu Nidal terrorist organization, and the Iraqi Intelligence Service had trained Yemenis, Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptian and Sudanese operatives in explosives and marksmanship training. He certainly wasn’t on good terms with governments of Egypt or Syria so what else would he be training them for? In addition, the IIS had a special operations department dedicated to conducting assassinations both inside and outside of Iraq’s borders. So while Saddam might not have been in bed with Osama, he was definitely involved in terrorism.

Many people believe the absence of an active Iraqi WMD program to be “proof” that Bush lied us into war. But Bush had every reason to believe Iraq had an active WMD program. We knew Saddam had used chemical weapons before, against both the Iranians and the Kurds. He kicked out the weapons inspectors assigned to verify the UN-directed dismantling of his weapons program. Possible dual-use facilities were active. While the British intelligence report of Saddam attempting to buy uranium from Niger was dismissed by Ambassador Joe Wilson, the British still stand behind that report and for good reason. Niger has some of the world’s largest uranium deposits and uranium accounts for the vast majority (72%) of Niger’s exports, followed by livestock in a distant second. Furthermore, the intelligence agencies of every major nation concurred that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Russian President Vladimir Putin both personally warned President Bush that if he invaded Iraq, he would be attacked with chemical weapons (I personally was delayed by several weeks in my deployment to Iraq because the Ft. Dix central issue facility had run out of the protective gear deemed necessary to deploy). Even the Iraqi generals were surprised that Saddam did not launch chemical attacks against the invading Americans. Frankly, it would have been irresponsible in the extreme for Bush to not believe Iraq had WMDs. The apparent absence of an active program only proves that our intelligence agencies are woefully inadequate. Without the proper human resources on the ground in Iraq, we, along with everyone else, were reduced to depending on the word of Iraqi exiles and defectors who have their own motivations and agendas. It is a decline in the effectiveness of the operations side of our intelligence agencies that was begun under the first President Bush, accelerated under President Clinton, and has not been stopped under this President Bush. To paraphrase the ridiculed statement of Donald Rumsfeld, you never go to war with all the intelligence you want, you go with the intelligence you have. That makes President Bush neither evil nor irresponsible and it is of the highest irony that people who ridicule this president as an idiot then argue that he was able to dupe the whole world into believing Iraq had WMDs. If that’s true, who’s the bigger idiot?

Oil, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction…What was this war really about? Many, if not most, people forget that during the summer of 2002, there was much criticism of the Bush Administration for not pushing one single cause as the justification for a conflict with Iraq. To “democratize” Iraq was deemed impossible by many. Terrorist connections were not as blatantly obvious as Afghanistan. However, weapons of mass destruction were a concern to all leading politicians, both Republican and Democrat. The possible transfer of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists was the potential danger that was most easily grasped by our political leaders as well as the general public. If Bush lied, it is because of this political expedient that allowed him to garner the most support possible for a war that could be very costly both in dollars and lives.

But there is a much greater potential danger that the Bush Administration was really trying to combat. It is a danger that will threaten the West and moderate Muslims alike for decades as well as any other neighboring culture near the Middle East. It requires understanding if we are to have any hope in defeating it. It is one of Bush’s biggest failures that he has not defined and convinced the American people of this threat.

There exists within Islam a highly virulent, puritanical form of Islam known to the West as Wahhabism. Wahhabis themselves would object to this term as it somewhat implies a religious reverence for the movements founder, Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab, and is therefore contrary to their religious views on polytheism. Wahhabi Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia and is energetically spread through Saudi-supported religious schools throughout the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Europe, and even in the United States. “Puritanical” is used to describe the sect only because the Puritans were the only relatively comparable movement in Western Christianity. In truth, Wahhabis make the Puritans look like California liberals. Whereas the Puritans crushed a few witches to death and made Hester Prynne wear a red “A”, the Wahhabis have waged widespread war against Shi’a Muslims for being polytheists and enthusiastically stone suspected adulteresses to death (note that it is only the female offender that is subject to stoning). Historically, Wahhabis were confined to the Arabian Peninsula but with the advent of the Saudi oil industry, Wahhabi influence has been spread around the globe. Many Wahhabis live peacefully in their communities, looking at the Western world in revulsion. But it is this ideology that motivates Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Islamist terrorist movements worldwide. It is this ideology that encourages Muslims in Europe to segregate themselves from wider European society. It is this ideology that demands Europeans in Europe conform to Muslim custom. It is this ideology that seeks a return to the Islam they envision was practiced by Muhammad and his followers. It is this ideology that seeks the reestablishment of the Caliphate, through violent means. And it is this ideology that intimidates moderate Muslims into silence. It is an ideology that does not value life not lived according to their values, does not tolerate dissent, does not acknowledge the validity of other Muslim sects, and does not compromise its very strict beliefs. It is Wahhabist teaching that promotes the historically inaccurate command that Muhammad’s face not be depicted. It is they who demand that those who insult Islam be beheaded. Wahhabis are willing to cooperate with and use other inferior Muslims only so far as it serves their purposes and are not open to any pan-Islamic or ecumenical movement that seeks reconciliation among the various Islamic sects. Wahhabis are driven by the single-minded pursuit of glorifying Allah by converting the world to their brand of Islam, through death and destruction as necessary.

Coupled with this virulent form of Islam are the conditions that most Western observers agree drive desperate individuals to terrorism, conditions which are prevalent throughout the Middle East. Namely these are the abject poverty, chronic unemployment, and brutal oppression found in most of the autocratic regimes of the Middle East. In a highly convoluted understanding of Middle East politics, the United States is blamed by common Arabs for supporting Israel as well as the brutal regimes that oppress them while at the same time those regimes stoke the fires of hatred against Israel in order to deflect blame for their failures away from themselves. It is a tragedy that can be justly blamed on the Arab governments that the Palestinian plight has been used as a political pawn for nearly 60 years without any substantial efforts on their part to relieve Palestinian suffering. There is some consensus that were these conditions to change – if adequate social welfare could be provided, if economic development offered meaningful jobs and careers, and if some sort of representative, responsive government was in place – then many of the motivations for terrorism would disappear, benefiting the West as well as Muslims. This is the original analysis behind the Bush Administration’s decision to go to war and one most liberals should honestly share if they are consistent in their support for human rights and progressivism.

Faced with the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration very quickly perceived the need to confront the threat of Wahhabi Islamism. The first and obvious target was Afghanistan and that battle in the War on Terror quickly diminished al Qaeda’s operational capabilities. But Afghanistan has always been on the periphery of the Islamic world, it has never set historical precedents within Islam and could not be the catalyst for progressive change throughout the Islamic world. Also, Afghanistan is not ethnically Arab and Arabs in general have had a historical distrust of other ethnic groups. For similar reasons, regime change in Iran could also not provide the catalyst for change. In addition to being Persian, an ethnicity Arabs have historically feared, Iranians also belong to Shi’a Islam, a minority sect comprising only 15% of the world’s Muslims that is viewed as somewhat heretical by most Sunni Muslims. On top of that, defeat of the Shi’a religious regime in Iran would be viewed as a victory of the world’s Wahhabis, further strengthening their influence. There are only a few Muslim states with an historical role in influencing and setting trends for the Arab and Islamic world: Egypt with the historic Arab capital of Cairo is one, Syria, Turkey (the historical successor to the Ottoman Empire), and Iraq are the others. Saudi Arabia is ruled out even as a potential target because any attack there would be viewed by all Muslims worldwide as an attack on Islam outright, no matter what justification we had. Turkey’s influence had declined even under the Ottomans and in any case is not Arab. Egypt’s government is too friendly to the West and without the resources needed to fund a successful transition. Likewise, Syria is relatively resource-poor. That leaves Iraq and the historic Arab and Islamic capital of Baghdad.

Not only where there the legal justifications for regime change in Iraq, the conditions in Iraq offered more potential for successful regime change, peaceful or otherwise, than do the other states listed. Iraqis are better educated and more secular than their neighbors. The basic infrastructure needed to rebuild the Iraqi economy was present although degraded from twelve years of sanctions. Iraqi oil wealth could be used to fund the transition to a modern economy and at the same time provide the basic necessities of life to the poorest Iraqis. If Iraq, with its ethnic and religious diversity (approximately 60% Shi’a, 35% Sunni, 80% Arab, 20% Kurdish and other minorities), could make a genuine transition to a stable representative government, it would provide a positive model of change for the other Arab states as well as the non-Arab Islamic states. This would benefit not only Western nations that want stability in the Middle East, it would be an extremely beneficial development for the 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. It was not to be about “forcing democracy on backwards Muslims,” it was to be about giving brutally oppressed Muslims the opportunity develop governments that are represented by and responsive to their people. It would not be necessary for a new government to be democratic along the American or British models, but only that it would be representative and accountable to its people.

To effect this regime change, military action was necessary. Only very rarely do dictators voluntarily give up their power. Francisco Franco prepared Spain for the change to democracy but would not allow the transition until after his death. The dictatorships of Eastern Europe only fell after the withdrawal of Soviet troops and the Soviet Union itself imploded into economic ruin. Taiwan and South Korea are two remarkable exceptions to this rule and both had adopted market-oriented economies before their military regimes allowed themselves to be replaced by freely elected governments. Military coup and popular uprising had both been attempted in Iraq before only to be brutally put down by Saddam’s regime. The repercussions of the Shi’a uprising following the 1991 Gulf War included the massacre of an estimated 500,000 Shi’as, the displacement of two million more, and the draining of Iraq’s southern marshes, an ecological disaster that is considered one of the world’s worst.

There are many people who argue that Islam is incompatible with democracy. While there are strains, such as Wahhabism that are very undemocratic, the historical origins of Islam do not suggest that the religion itself is inherently incompatible. The Bedouin tribes of Arabia had an egalitarian tradition, whereby tribal leaders were chosen by consensus and only held sway as long as they had the support of their tribe. It was not what most Americans would understand as democracy but it was a system with a leader accountable to his tribe. This tradition even continues today in the unlikely form of the Saudi royal family, where succession rests not on hereditary right, but on the consensus of the senior princes of the family. The family “tribe” exercises restraint over the king and even deposed of one irresponsible king in 1964. Millions of Muslims have successfully integrated into the countries of Europe and the United States and are involved in the democratic processes in their adopted homes. The United Kingdom has several Muslim Members of Parliament and the United States has just elected its first Muslim Congressman. It is very easy to say that a people who have been living under a dictatorship and oppression which they did not choose are incompatible with democracy. It is much harder to help them make the change to decent government. It is impossible to say what type of government any people would choose if they have never chosen freely for themselves before. Iraqis did not choose to live under Saddam’s brutality; he violently forced himself upon them. A loose, but appropriate, analogy would be blaming the rape victim for the rape. Saddam certainly raped Iraq of her wealth and his sons and his security services literally raped her daughters. It is very troubling that groups of people who otherwise proclaim their dedication to human rights seem to accept the idea that this is the only form of government suitable for Arabs and Muslims.

This was the goal of the Bush Administration. It is an admittedly high goal, to be sure, but one whose long-term benefits vastly outweigh the cost of three thousand, five thousand, ten or even twenty thousand American lives. Successful representative government in Iraq means waves of change throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. It means peaceful relations between the nations of the Middle East and the West. It means a moderate and democratic Islam that can successfully counter the influence of Wahhabi Islamism. Ultimately it means marginalizing an ideology that will otherwise threaten moderate Muslims and Western society alike for the rest of the 21^st Century. This is what American servicemen and women are fighting and dying for. This is what their sacrifice can buy for America’s future and the future of the world. It is a fight our soldiers and Marines can and should be proud of.

It is both unfortunate and regrettable that the Bush Administration failed to adequately define this conflict and failed to prepare the American public for the sacrifices necessary to achieve success. Not since Vietnam has America been involved in a conflict this long or this costly in lives. Americans have become accustomed to quick, painless victories and it seems this attitude had infected the political leadership as well. War should never be expected to be quick and painless and should never be promoted to the public as such. The administration acknowledged the religious divisions between Sunnis and Shi’as and thought it could use those divisions to its advantage. However it failed to adequately take into account the divisions within Iraqi Shiism, divisions which are responsible for many of the problems in Iraq now. It has bungled political decisions as well as personnel decisions in both the American and Iraqi militaries. These failures do not make the war unjust or immoral. These failures do mean success will be more difficult to achieve.

Failure in Iraq is not a cost only Americans will bear. In addition to the soldiers’ lives lost in vain, withdrawal would cause Iraq to descend into further chaos and outright civil war causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands more Iraqis. If the extremist elements win out over the moderates who are even now fighting for decent governance, Iraq could easily split into two or three separate mini-states. A fully autonomous Kurdistan would be viewed as a threat by both Iran and Turkey, nations which both have large Kurdish minorities agitating for more rights and political autonomy. A Wahhabist-dominated mini-state in the Sunni areas would be a terrorist haven and one that would export instability throughout the region. A weakened Shi’a state, rife with its own internal divisions would be even more open to Iranian dominance, a development that would be highly threatening to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. American failure in Iraq would be perceived as a victory for Wahhabism and strengthen its influence worldwide. This would include increased influence in the Muslim communities of Europe whose populations are rapidly increasing while the surrounding European populations actually decline. Increased Muslim populations in Europe, combined with increased extremism, will result in demands for recognition of Islamic law. European society will be fundamentally changed in ways American liberals only dream about in their most dreadful nightmares about the “religious right.” Or perhaps Europe will revert to a reactionary anti-Muslim fascism that seeks to drive Muslims from their midst. There is already a strong anti-Muslim element within Europe and it is not inconceivable that increased Muslim presence there will drive more Europeans into the anti-immigrant parties. In either case, the potential for more death and war in Europe will become very real.

America cannot simply retreat peacefully to her shores. Whether we want this responsibility or not or whether other nations want us to have this responsibility or not, the fact is we have it and we must act accordingly. It is painful for the families who have lost soldiers and it is painful for soldiers who have been wounded. It is frustrating to those who have served to hear their efforts dismissed as “not worth it.” It is frustrating to not see an end in sight. But these are sacrifices that should be, must be, made. Criticize bad decisions and mistakes made during the war (there are plenty). Criticize policies that strengthen the extremists at the expense of Iraq’s moderates. But do so constructively. Denigration of the American mission in Iraq simply because of personal distrust of the president will not bring success in any meaning of the word. It will bring only failure which will be paid at a cost much more dear than the lives already lost.