By Candace Ward and Matthew Kopka, ContributorsThis is the second part of a three-part commentary. Part one was published yesterday.
AN ARTICLE by former National Security Council staffer Roger Morris in the New York Times recently described how Hussein came to power: in the aftermath of a CIA-engineered coup orchestrated exactly 40 years ago by then - president Kennedy, which brought Hussein's anti-communist Baath Party to power. Later, according to Urquhart, the US backed Hussein when he attacked Iran, gave him economic aid, helicopters, and licences for exports that were crucial to his development of chemical weapons (Rumsfeld is said to have personally delivered word of arrangements for these.) It looked away when he used those weapons against Iran (half-a-million people were killed in that US proxy war) and later, when he killed 200,000 Kurds with poison gas. "In return," Urquhart writes, "Hussein paid off his US loans, gave [the US] a one-dollar-per-barrel discount on oil, reined in Iraq-based Palestinian groups, and even supported the Arab-Israeli peace process..."
Though there have been months of wrangling about the international community's support for Bush's aims, the war, in fact, has long been under way. The US has been bombing the Iraqi no-fly zones (a dubious concept for which there is no provision under international law) for 12 years, to such an extent Pentagon officials complain they can't find targets for this offensive.
US special forces have operated inside Iraq for months, gathering intelligence and seeking to enlist opposition forces, in hopes they can make the formal war, when it comes, a virtual fait accompli. Senior US commanders moved to the Persian Gulf with 1,000 ""war planners" last July.
But how the war unfolds remains a mystery, not to mention its aftermath. Whether Iraq's three oft-warring ethnic groups can be reconciled - whether the Iraqi people will choose to be "pacified" by the US - remains to be seen. And the PNAC plan raises serious doubts about the administration's desire to "liberate" Iraq, about whether it really means to place itself at the centre of the region and initiate a whole series of "regime changes" and other "reforms". Iraqi civilians will, of course, suffer the brunt of the killing.
We searched in vain in American sources several weeks ago for an article, widely published throughout the rest of the world, disclosing that the U.N. estimated 100,000 people will die in the first week of bombing. Americans simply have not been faced with the human consequences of the planned attack, and this sickens us.
PART THREE TOMORROW.
And to that number many more thousands will be added should it come to battle on Baghdad's streets. (How President Bush and his administration can rationalise such killing in the context of a Christian faith they so often piously and manipulatively claim is beyond our understanding.)
Despite US precautions, the cost in American lives may be high. Estimates of the number of potential deaths of US soldiers range from 10,000 US troop casualties over six months, to between 500 and 1,000 if the war lasts four to eight weeks, as optimists hope. Military planners are, of course, working overtime to anticipate Hussein's moves. But as Urquhart puts it, one can't help think "that with the advantage of the avalanche of information and speculation about a US invasion" in the media, "Saddam Hussein must have had the time, and the incentive, to think up a few surprises of his own." Hussein will try to sabotage the Iraqi oil supply. US soldiers will be intent on preventing it - and Halliburton company technicians will travel in beside them - but any serious long-term disruption of Iraq's 15 per cent of the global oil supply could be the straw that breaks the back of the global economy, sending the world into profound depression (or, depending which economists one believes, deepening the current one).
Hussein has 430,000 soldiers, but what these soldiers do when faced with the US juggernaut is the US$10,000 question. The wives of many must be quietly slipping white handkerchiefs into their loved ones' kit bags even now, praying they will use them. For the war will bring a humanitarian crisis. One-and-a-half million Kurds had to flee their homes after the last war. The UN last week declared that plans to feed and (crucially) provide water for the 200,000 estimated people made homeless by planned bombing were inadequate. How many Americans know this?
And there will be many violent flare-ups, perhaps new wars to follow. The refugee camps for those 200,000 displaced Iraqis will become, as such camps have in the past, training grounds for terrorists; tired, hungry, desperate people make ideal recruits for such organisations. Experts fear, meanwhile, that weapons may fall into the hands of terrorists and former members of Hussein's army, who may attempt to sell them - or worse - use them.
It is also conceivable that war will erupt between the Turks and the Kurds. The US has, regrettably, betrayed the Kurds several times, and may be doing so again. The US was so desperate to bribe Turkey into its "coalition" (for a reported US$25 billion dollars in aid) that it agreed to allow Turkish troops into Iraq's Kurdish areas. The Turks, having largely suppressed Kurdish resistance within their own borders (where Kurds say the Turks have been far more cruel than Hussein), plan to expand their efforts and "disarm" Iraq's Kurds to block their control of oil fields.
Israel is another potential wild card. The US has apparently secured a promise from Ariel Sharon that he will keep his troops in barracks for the conflict's duration. But Iraq still has 20 to 30 Scud missiles. If one reaches Israel, Sharon has declared he will retaliate. With such a pretext, it's foreseeable the Israelis and their powerful tank divisions could quickly enter Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. Under a scenario elaborated by one Israeli leader last summer, the Israelis, using the US doctrine of "preventive attack", would use an Iraqi attack to oust the Palestinians from the West Bank, removing them to Lebanon (half of whose population are already Palestinian refugees).
Beyond the Middle East, there's nothing to prevent countries like India and North Korea from taking advantage of the war's turmoil, especially if al Qaida strikes around the globe, as Bush administration officials, self-servingly, report will happen. A few bombs in Delhi, exploded by any number of interested parties, could signal an attack by India on Pakistan. And it may be a lot to suppose that North Korea - which has done everything from starting up its nuclear reactors to firing test missiles in the run - up to the Iraqi conflict - will suddenly stop while the US stages its war.
For most Americans, however, the perception of a US "success" or "failure" will be dictated by the Pentagon's ability to control news coming out of Iraq. From Vietnam onward, the Pentagon has worked to keep tight reins on what the media sees and reports in any US military engagement. In this way, however, the long delays and decay in world opinion have imperilled US odds for an unalloyed propaganda success.
International reporters will be intent on getting around Pentagon controls and discovering the truth. And US reporters will be far less intent than they were even a month ago on glorifying US military successes. There is a real danger that the war and subsequent occupation of Iraq may ruin the US economy; air industry officials recently warned that at least two airlines are likely to go bankrupt. It will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to hold Iraq at a time when the US can least afford it.
There are also consequences for the rest of the world, consequences the Bush administration - to our profound regret - cares little for; the last Gulf War saw a doubling of oil prices in many nations, and tottering economies like Jamaica's can little afford the damage it will do to industries like tourism.
The cost of occupation, which may run five years, will be staggering. Fifty of the 80 billion dollars spent on the last war came from countries who allied themselves with the US, but little will be forthcoming this time. Claims the US will rebuild Iraq must be compared to its recent record. Similar promises were made in the case of Afghanistan, but in the most recent budget, the Bush White House failed to include any aid for that country. When the omission was pointed out, embarrassed Bush aides scrambled to tack on several hundred millions.
The war will be a catastrophe for humanity. But the contradictions between the Bush administration's aims and those of other countries, between those aims and the aims of the world's people, also present real opportunities for progressives, opportunities they must be quick to seize. The war has already altered the world's geopolitical framework.
It has revived a peace movement dormant since the Reagan era, bringing nine to 12 million to the streets in protest on February 15, and hundreds of thousands more since. The revived movement is likely to breath new fire into anti-globalisation forces that had become such a powerful global force before September 11 side-tracked their efforts. In this respect, the protracted period in which the drama in the UN Security Council has played out has cost Bush dearly.
The Italian, Spanish, and English Prime Ministers have been weakened, perhaps permanently, before a bomb was dropped; Tony Blair is discredited among the Labour Party faithful in Great Britain, and Berlusconi has been forced to declare Italian troops will not participate. France, on the other hand (whose stance belies no little hypocrisy) has raised its stature among Third World nations. The long-term significance of this, especially in Africa, may be powerful.
The Middle East and Asia, meanwhile, may be riding the waves of war for years to come. And the leaders of many Third World countries may be emboldened to begin questioning - as we think they must - a system that has many countries paying half and more of their national budgets to bankers in the United States and Europe, under the terms of usurious loans from the IMF and World Bank. The enormous power the US has gained over small country economies through this process, sometimes called the "Washington consensus", which former president Bill Clinton worked so hard to build, could be the biggest casualty of Bush's War. The Bush people - whom Washington insiders increasingly accuse of losing track of the big picture in their lust for war - may be a while in realising how badly they have stumbled in this regard.
Rumsfeld, who receives plaudits from the right-wing in the US but has hurt the Bush administration badly with his aggressive remarks, may count on the fealty of the former Iron Curtain countries (the "new Europe") in the short run; but their destiny lies with Europe, a Europe that looms as a serious threat to US power in the near term. In this sense it is not simply NATO's unity that is undermined by Bush's stand, but the process that NATO was an artefact of - the trans-Atlantic alliance. After Iraq, the Atlantic will look much wider; Europe will be far more detached from the United States, a turning that, in fact, has been long coming, and that the unilateral US war will only confirm.
WHAT NEXT?
Given these facts, it's hard to believe that the American public can support a war with Iraq at this time. But one can't discount the role of the media in underreporting (or not reporting) such information. Basic appeals to patriotism and nationalism - which the current administration has used with great success - have gained momentum even as international resistance grows. And once the blood of U.S. soldiers is spilt, we fear the Bush administration will use the tragedy to reinforce such appeals. The irony may be lost on the majority of people that those deaths were orchestrated by Bush in the first place.
Part of the very important work of intellectuals and progressives in America and the world will be to document what happens in the aftermath of a U.S. invasion, to provide objective and accurate information as events unfold. The American press must fulfil its responsibility by reporting such information. Only then will Americans be able to exercise their freedoms and exorcise the spirit of corporate greed that now directs White House policy.
Candace Ward just completed a Fulbright fellowship in the Department of Literatures in English at UWI, Mona. Matthew Kopka is a writer who specialises in developmental issues.
