On Iraq: Some Amendments to the Conventional Wisdom

For those of us that strive, whenever possible, to avoid falling into the false security of consensus, and who recognize that most often the position held by the majority is at best unrefined, the war in Iraq presents a bit of a quandary. As most Americans understand, especially among the young, the intervention in Mesopotamia was a grave mistake as well as an instance of high governmental corruption and malfeasance, one which involved much fabrication and had as its only significant objective the exploitation of Iraq’s oil. For the generation that grew to maturity with all of this as a formative backdrop, and especially for those among it who, like I, sit squarely on the left, these notions are taken in with the morning’s milk.

Nevertheless, as is usually the case in one way or another, what appears to be the ossified and entrenched conventional wisdom on the war in Iraq is far from unarguable. Apart from some historical cases, like the Jewish Holocaust, which I submit are beyond sufficiently egregious to merit this status, I believe it is nearly always a sure sign of complacency when a statement such as “Iraq war bad” unaccompanied by a real understanding of the events will draw to its exponent no disputation at all.

What is necessary for a healthy democracy and, in my view, a robust left is the encouragement and the inculcation of a commitment to incisive and sound historical judgment. This leads me to my own position on the topic at hand: namely, while one concedes that the Iraq war was in many ways a mistake, the anti-war opposition’s many shortcomings go quite underemphasized. This directly links to the other set of unexamined arguments, themselves quite separate from the criminal incompetence of the Bush administration: the many moral and noble components of the case for war.

One logically elects to begin any discussion of this subject with its pertinent historical context, and such context ineluctably centers around Saddam Hussein. Leader of the nominally secular Iraqi Ba’ath Party, Saddam was the private owner of Iraq and all of its inhabitants from 1979, when he seized power and immediately forced one half of his cabinet to execute the other, until his ouster by Coalition forces in 2003. As some have said, a decent test of an opponent’s credentials in a debate on this subject involves seeing if they utter the phrase, “Yes, Saddam was a bad guy, but…”. This kind of understatement immediately betrays a deficient conception of the man who long stood as the most brutal, most cruel, most psychopathic, and most evil fascist dictator in the Middle East. A discussion of his specific crimes is forthcoming, but first please allow an adumbration of the quotidian under his regime. Saddam’s Iraq was a place most aptly described as “a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave below”, to which those present for the excavations of such pits of human decay after the liberation can partly attest. Filling in the gaps was Saddam’s sadomasochism, coercively transmitted to his associates and the secret police. To own a cellphone or satellite dish, or to give even the slightest impression of the capability of dissent in his state meant a slow, torturous death for an individual and their family. If one were to commit such an offense, moreover, in alternative cases a video might be made of his or her murder or rape to be sent to the family, who was then made to watch it. And in perhaps the most vicious instances, public executions were attended by the victim’s family, who were then forced at gunpoint to applaud. A rough conception of this man’s evil is a requisite condition for partaking in debates concerning Iraq, and sketchy moral equivalencies between him and men like Bush are hardly serious.

Many despots around the world, in history and at present, possessed such gross moral deformities and displayed such shows of brutality as did Saddam, but no concurrent or current leader did or has done so more flagrantly than he. Under international law, there are four conditions by which a state can lose its sovereignty and sacrifice its autonomy as an independent global actor. These are, in no particular order of importance: violations of the genocide convention; repeated aggressions into the territory of one’s neighbors; infringements on the non-proliferation treaty coupled with demonstrations of intent to do so again; and the sponsorship or harboring of international terrorists. In addition to the moral case on behalf of the Iraqi people and the Kurds, a case for regime change certifiable under international law thus presents itself, as Saddam was a serial offender on all four counts and had shown a readiness to repeat them again.

On the first charge concerning the genocide convention, Saddam is guilty not only against his own people but against the Kurds, namely during the fledgling phase of their autonomy. As a brief aside, space in print should go to those Iraqis whom Saddam subjected to obliteration in the two wars he initiated. As a result of his invasion of Iran in 1980, nearly 500,000 Iraqis died; from his incursion into Kuwait, another 100,000 lost their lives. As John Burns wrote in the New York Times in the leadup to the intervention, adding in estimates of those dissidents killed in Iraq’s ‘gulags’ probably brings the total to 800,000. And by the international definition of genocide, we know that Saddam murdered, with chemical weapons, close to 180,000 Kurds during the Anfal campaign of 1988 and a similar number of Shia Muslims throughout the 1980s and very early 1990s. (The two most prominent massacres on these fronts were the ones in Halabja, which eviscerated 5000 Kurds in 1988, and in Dujail, in which 150 Shiite men and boys died in 1982). What’s more, insofar as ecological destruction compounds and contributes to genocide, Saddam’s burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields and the great marshes of southern Iraq have been deemed one of the worst environmental crimes of all time by UNESCO.

Equally less disputed are Saddam’s aforementioned offenses against neighboring countries. These began with his invasion of Iran barely one year after taking power. This action precipitated the eight-year-long war between Iraq and Iran in which Saddam sought to expand his holdings against an Iranian adversary led by the newly installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shia Muslim theocratic dictator. (A note on the supposed secularism of Saddam’s Baathist regime: to designate his regime as ‘Sunni’, which it essentially was, would be to invite the obvious charge of fanning sectarian flames in a majority-Shia country. In fact, his fashioning of a Koran written in his own blood and his support of jihadist groups in Palestine over their secular counterparts suggest the true character of the setup). In all, this conflict with Iran cost nearly 1.5 million lives and was a criminal act of imperialist aggression.

Kuwait featured prominently in Saddam’s ongoing descent into madness and paranoia in August of 1990. It was then that Iraq’s dictator sought to invade, annex, and abolish the existence of a UN member state and Arab league constituent nation. Iraqi Ba’athist forces were pushed out in 1991 during the Gulf War by US and other coalition-member troops, but Saddam succeeded in utilizing chemical weapons and in wreaking havoc on Kuwaiti terrain on his way out. Not only does this offense solidify his guilt on charge number two, but it was also particularly consequential and revealing. First, without the intervention against him, the Kurds would not have been supported via the no-fly-zones out of their post-war condition (strewn across the mountains in Northern Iraq and starving) into what became a flourishing civil society. Second, the outcome of the Gulf War inaugurated a period in which Saddam’s regime would gradually weaken. Finally, the response of Saddam to his own self-acknowledged blunder in invading Kuwait revealed his incessant commitment to the acquisition of nuclear weaponry: he after all stated that he should have gotten the bomb before invading Kuwait, not the other way around as he had planned to do.

Having delineated his crimes of genocide and imperial aggression, one arrives at the more contentious points of the indictment against Saddam Hussein. Following from where we left off, the matter of weapons of mass destruction arises and can no further be evaded. I will at present adhere solely to Saddam’s offenses and clearly demonstrated objectives, with a discussion of the interpretation of intelligence saved for later. As has been established, Saddam had used chemical weapons against both his own people and his neighbors repeatedly within the previous two decades of his rule. It was his stated objective, and the primary basis of his economy, to the extreme detriment of the Iraqi people, to acquire and amass large quantities of WMD. Additionally, he consistently obstructed UN inspections processes, whether by not allowing inspectors into the country, by erecting ‘dummy facilities’ to trick them, or by coercing his scientists on threat of death to them and their families into lying to the inspection officials flat out. One such scientist, chief nuclear physicist Mahdi Obeidi, published a book entitled The Bomb in My Garden after the liberation of Iraq in which he recounts being directed to bury a centrifuge for the splitting of enriched uranium in his backyard garden. These facts demonstrate, in spite of the lack of nuclear stockpiles found in Iraq post-invasion, that Saddam was, firstly, as engaged as ever in his hunt for weapons, which had borne some fruit; and, secondly, that he was not a man whose word could be trusted or to whom the benefit of the doubt could be granted. Add to this both the knowledge that Iraq was next in line to chair the UN committee on nuclear disarmament in 2003 and the revelation that in March of 2003, Ba’ath party associates met with North Korean officials in Damascus with the intent of purchasing nuclear weaponry, and the notion that Saddam Hussein and WMD cannot be uttered in the same breath would seem to dissipate.

And then comes the connection, or lack thereof, between Iraq to 9/11 or, rather, to Al Qaeda; after all, these were the true matters of direct concern to American national security rather than Iraq, right? In a word, yes, but it remains the case that evidence exists to suggest at least some linkage between the jihadist organization which carried out the 9/11 attacks and the murderous marauder in Baghdad. By no means has any evidence surfaced which suggests that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, nor did the Bush administration assert any such connection. Rather, with respect to Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, the charge against Saddam is one of sponsorship and harboring international gangsterism. Most critically, records confirm that top Al Qaeda founder and Bin Laden rival Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been in Baghdad prior to the war, an occasion which assuredly could not have taken place without the express consent of Saddam Hussein, the man who controlled everything that entered and exited the city. Moreover, numerous other members of jihadist organizations, including the man who killed Leon Klinghoffer, traveled with Iraqi diplomatic passports, and Saddam also directly funded those among the jihadist ranks in Palestine who volunteered for suicide bombings. While surely not indicative of any sort of involvement in the events of September 11th, 2001, Saddam’s support of such figures incriminates him on the fourth condition for forfeiture of international sovereignty.

In my view, this forms the core of the argument for intervention in Iraq. Additionally, it functions as a solid counterargument to the slightly cheap, though not entirely invalid, point made by many opponents of the war: that if the US invaded Iraq unilaterally, a harmful precedent of taking out, on a whim and with direct military force, those dictators or foreign leaders unfavorable to US policy or ideology would be set. In fact, one is only justified in calling for such intervention when the four stipulations above outlined are repeatedly met, as was the case for no world leader besides Saddam at the time of the war.

Still, some elements of this position merit consideration and clarification; these involve a recourse to both the ideological and practical grounds for war as well as to its positive results. On the former, it is my view that the Iraq War could have been nobly supported (and was done by some) staunchly from the democratic left, not merely from a neoconservative perspective. This derives from what should always be the left-wing principles of internationalism and solidarity with the victimized — namely, the Iraqi and Kurdish left, including groups like the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Iraqi National Congress. (The PUK is in fact the corresponding member of the Socialist International in the region). Additionally, a defense of the Enlightenment and all of its principles, each so critical to democratic society, needed to be mounted against those, like Al Qaeda, who wished to destroy it in favor of a society devoid of culture, music, secularism, religious freedom, multiculturalism, and freedom for women. It cannot be forgotten that Islamic jihadism and groups like Al Qaeda are inherently expansionary, that the recuperation of the Ottoman caliphate is their explicit, imperialist vision, and that neutrality in such a confrontation is impossible. Given that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein constituted an important front in the struggle against theocratic fascism — see here his endorsement of such elements and his own embodiment of them — it seems an odd time for parts of the left to have wanted to sit on the sidelines.

And as for the positive consequences of regime change, despite the innumerable shortcomings and failures, one can point to an Iraq that had democratic elections going within a few years of the liberation, a society with many newspapers and multiple television channels, and which was freed from the private ownership of a sadistic, barbaric demagogue. Even amidst the rampant sectarian violence inflamed by ‘insurgents’ like Zarqawi, a system much more democratic and a society much less dangerous than those of Saddam’s state was beginning to germinate. What’s more, Saddam’s removal by the Coalition induced the capitulation of Muamar el Gadafi and his nuclear arsenal, which proved much more expansive than previously thought. Through his cession of nuclear stockpiles, the Pakistan-based AQ Khan nuclear arms network, which sold to the North Koreans and Gadafi and had contacts with Saddam Hussein, came to light and was at least partially broken up. On top of the democratic gains made in Iraq, this nonproliferation victory amounts to veritable successes as direct results of interventions.

In contrast to the noble principles and meaningful benefits directly associated with the liberation of Iraq, some of the lamer, seedier elements of the “anti-war” movement appear reprehensible. (For all my pestering, I should specify that I have much respect for the many level-headed liberals who opposed the war on very strong grounds; after all, I come down somewhat on their side). My criticisms are reserved for the much less serious and dignified of the bunch who in many cases constituted parts of its leadership. Beginning broadly, one cannot help but find fault with the celebratory air of many anti-war protests in the lead-up to the invasion. After all, was not their position based on opposition to the removal of a gruesome fascist tyrant? Captured quite vividly by Ian McEwan in his novel about the largest day of antiwar protests, Saturday, these sorts of scenes facilitate the mental separation of the more principled in the anti-war crowd than the frivolous and insincere.

Then come men like Ramsey Clark and British MP George Galloway, the bungling Ba’athist blowhard himself. The former, perhaps seen as the leader of the American chapter of anti-war politics, served as Lyndon Johnson’s Attorney General and as Saddam Hussein’s defense lawyer in his trial post-intervention. Among the list of crimes brought against Saddam at trial — and by the way, by all means should he have the best lawyer available on principle — was the aforementioned murder of dozens of Shia men and boys in Dujail in 1982 as retribution for an assassination attempt against him. Saddam’s team initially denied the allegation; Clark arrived and proceeded to defend it as a just course of action. As the leader of a country at war, he argued, one cannot tolerate such shows of defiance. Never mind that he, Hussein, started the war himself; a massacre in response to an attempt to knock him out is perfectly justifiable. This, from a leading figure of the “anti-war” cohort?

With Galloway, widely seen as a maverick leader of the European antiwar crowd, the pro-Saddam element which Clark only intimates reveals itself in full color. As Iraqis suffered under UN sanctions against Saddam, and as the UN’s oil for food program allowed for Saddam to sell his oil to companies in exchange for basic supplies and food, ostensibly for the Iraqi people, Galloway’s own humanitarian fund for the Iraqis was tainted with illicit oil-for-food cash. While claiming quite self-righteously the moral high ground against American and British imperialism, he himself colluded with Saddam Hussein in the continued immiseration of the Iraqi people; then, he lied about doing so before the US Senate. Apparently just as amiable with Bashir al-Assad as with Saddam and the latter’s deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, Galloway visited Damascus during the Iraq war and praised Assad in front of the Syrian people. While Syrian death squads murdered forces in occupied Lebanon, Galloway lauded the Zarqawi-ite ‘resistance’ tactics as heroic operations — the blowing up of the UN headquarters, which killed Sergio de Mello, the explosion of mosques, the bombing of Red Cross offices, and the killings of innocent civilians in the process, to be clear. This is hardly an anti-imperialist position; after all, those whom Galloway praised hoped to rebuild the Caliphate and then run their own people into the ground within it. It is precisely this brand of insipid, masochistic mood into which the antiwar crowd occasionally contorts itself which demonstrates that this is by no means a black and white issue.

Through the preceding words, I have essentially hoped to emphasize the moral case for war, to defend those on the democratic left whose backing of the intervention is unstained by corruption, and in general to complicate the picture held by most people today. But, nevertheless, the full scope of the issue bears outlining. As most liberals suspected from the opening tones of pro-war rhetoric in Washington, the Bush administration proved both incompetent and corrupt in its prosecution of the effort. Proper planning was not conducted, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died, elections were not brought forth as speedily as hoped for, atrocities were committed against Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, Nisour Square and elsewhere, and the malevolent influences of Cheney and others meant that oil-thirst was high on the administration’s list of priorities. In addition, Iraq sank into years of sectarian violence and civil war, including a virtual takeover by ISIS in 2014, and has enjoyed as a democratic country neither a blissful honeymoon nor a tranquil infancy. Most egregiously in the eyes of many, and as discussed in the British Chilcot Inquiry, Bush and Blair knowingly manipulated flawed intelligence on Saddam’s WMD supply to frighten their electorates into war and ultimately flouted the UN altogether by proceeding without authorization. And to those who supported the intervention for idealistic reasons, the justifiable retort was that one should have known the Bush administration to be incapable of that kind of operation from the beginning. Such skeptics were also quick to remind them of the US’ business partnership with Saddam and its cynical equivocations during the Iran-Iraq war along with its ‘creation’ of Al Qaeda during the late eighties — footnotes to a catalogue of Cold War-era American foreign policy crimes which is by no means lost on this author. (The latter point is rather facile. Yes, the CIA trained and armed local Afghani mujahideen fighters like Bin Laden to oppose their invader, the Soviet Union, during the mid to late 1980s, but America did not create jihadism, nor can one extricate the Kashmir conflict from Al Qaeda’s genesis).

So while I align with the peaceniks on their ultimate judgment of the war, and while a degree of contrition on the part of those who led an initiative that has caused so much strife should be expected, I am perhaps more resolved in my conviction that this question must remain complicated. Lazy fulminations and useless treatments will not do. Thus, it seems to me fitting to conclude by outlining the matters with which any diligent opponent of the war must constantly wrestle. Without an intervention, the evidently imminent implosion of the Ba’athist regime would have unfolded on Saddam’s terms at the direct expense of the Iraqi people. Their suffering would have been prolonged and deepened without the rejuvenating introduction of civil, democratic government. Moreover, without the coalition, a newly Saddam-less Iraq would have sat intensely vulnerable to incursions from all sides — the Saudis for Iraq’s Sunnis, Iran for the Shiites, and Turkey to offset Kurdish autonomy — leaving it a vortex of misfortune akin to the Congo. In the meantime, should a future confrontation with Saddam have arisen, the US would likely have been called upon for an equally costly venture. And by this time, perhaps the would-be UN Chair on non-proliferation would have made inroads on its unyielding drive for apocalyptic weaponry via AQ Khan and the North Koreans. In light of the disgraceful outcomes in Rwanda and, later, Darfur, one can even manage some commiseration with Bush and Blair’s unilateralism after being denied UN authorization. (For the record, future inspections, particularly if run by, say, Hans Blix, were probably doomed to continued futility given Saddam’s corrupt maneuvering. Much of what was known about Iraq’s WMD, including Obeidi’s account, would not have come to light without an intervention).

Maybe the judgment of many, namely that however desirable, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the smooth recuperation of Iraq simply had become infeasible by 2003, stands to reason; perhaps the missed opportunity of 1991 was fully a sunk cost. But for the sake of historical interpretation, and of the left, and of the countless Iraqis and Kurds slain by Saddam, do not allow these matters to be packaged so crudely or articulated so glibly. Afford the argument the substance it merits and, above all, eye with reproach the baser illusions which crop up in this and related arenas. If the war was, as is the conventional wisdom, a full-blown mistake, no one should get away quite so easily with saying so.