Unfinished business

The rumblings about a US-led war in Iraq have been audible since the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan last November. Those rumblings have reached a crescendo of warmongering in recent weeks, with analysts and activists vying for public space to air their views on why the US appears so eager to topple the regime of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Washington maintains that its policy of "containment" -- crippling the Iraqi regime so as to retard any build-up of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) -- is no longer a viable strategy in light of 11 September. In the name of national security, and as part of the US-led "war on terrorism", it is argued that the possibility of co-operation between Hussein and an international terrorist network like Al-Qa'eda cannot be underestimated. This is the argument of "pre- emption" that was enshrined in the US National Security Strategy document released last month.

But some pundits insist that the US leadership will simply never rest until Saddam Hussein is removed from power. This is the argument of "unfinished business"; the claim that Bush junior is finishing off what Bush senior started.

Finally, there is the inevitable -- and pervasive -- accusation that all Iraq policy is about oil. To some extent this claim is barely challenged by the Bush administration. That the US covets control of Iraq's oil reserves is hardly a secret and, in fact, the current sanctions regime has virtually secured this control already.

It is often said that US President George W Bush and his administration of Gulf War-era "hawks" are still riding high off their success in Afghanistan and are thus eager to take the war to "phase two" in Iraq. But it depends on what you count as "successful", says Wilbert van der Zeijden, peace and security analyst at the Amsterdam-based think tank, the Transnational Institute (TNI). "Looking at the original aim for the whole operation, it was first of all to get [Al-Qa'eda leader] Osama Bin Laden and his network," van der Zeijden told Al-Ahram Weekly. "In that sense, they seemed to have failed." What happened, suggests van der Zeijden, is that the "successfulness" of the operation was determined by what was achieved. "The Taliban were overthrown, and that fact is now projected as a major success in retrospect."

But even this achievement is uncertain. Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and an expert on Middle East affairs, notes that Afghanistan has not been a success for people outside of Kabul, where warlordism and violence still rule. "The US killed more than 4,000 civilians in Afghanistan -- that we know about," maintains Bennis. "Not one of them was named Osama Bin Laden. Do we really think we will do better in Iraq?"

It has also been suggested that putting a democratic, Western-friendly leadership in Baghdad will spark democratic reform across the region; yet it is not clear that the US is committed to the idea of democracy in the Middle East. Steven Everts, director of the trans-Atlantic programme at the London-based Centre for European Reform, says that there are "legitimate question marks" as to whether the US is adopting consistent policies about democracy. "There is also the problem that US policy-makers still have not explained how bombing Iraq will promote moderate, reformist political forces in the region," he told the Weekly.

To many analysts, the equation between Al-Qa'eda and Iraq just doesn't compute. "Iraq is not a fan of Al-Qa'eda, nor the other way around," says TNI's van der Zeijden. Asked what he thought was the main factor leading the US into a war with Iraq, van der Zeijden remarks, "To be honest, I'm a bit in the dark on the reasons [behind an] invasion of Iraq. It cannot be about the war on terrorism ... there is no direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama Bin Laden."

Van der Zeijden argues that equally, Iraq cannot be regarded as a realistic threat to US security, since it does not possess nuclear warheads or inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). "Contrary to what some hawks want us to believe, no state or leader can 'suddenly' have functional ICBMs," says van der Zeijden. "It's just not that simple."

The threat posed by Iraq, then, is a regional one, but van der Zeijden insists that even then, post-Gulf War Iraq's armed forces and their strike capabilities are significantly weak. "Also, the sometimes used argument that Saddam is insane and could opt for a tactic of doing as much damage as possible before being brought down, is very unlikely," adds van der Zeijden. "Saddam's goals may be twisted and his methods cruel, but he is not insane. Internally, his position is secure as ever -- or even better, since embargoes and such made it near to impossible to develop oppositional forces within the country."

On President Bush's insistence on a military attack, van der Zeijden seems equally at a loss. "I cannot speculate on the possibility that Bush is pursuing to finish 'unfinished business' from his father. Again, Bush may be strange and cruel, but he is not insane."

Steven Everts, of the Centre for European Reform, suggests that the doctrine of pre- emptive strikes "works better in practice than in theory". Acknowledging that pre-emptive strikes have been used in the past, Everts adds that since 1945, "it is the UN that should be the final arbiter for such cases." Suggesting that there might eventually be a case for military action in Iraq, Everts still warns that "such actions should not be dressed up as only the first of a series." By putting forward an unabashed policy of pre-emption in the National Security Strategy, "the US is running the real risk that other states will seize on this to lend international legitimacy to aggressive policies and attacks on third countries, thus opening Pandora's box."

Phyllis Bennis, of the IPS, makes it clear that she feels pre-emption is a hollow theory. "Preventing a potential or hypothetical future military challenge is not a legal, moral, or politically viable excuse for war," she said. "To go to war in current circumstances would mean going to war based on pure speculation." The war drive, she argues, is not about any alleged danger from Iraq, nor about WMD. "It's about empire and about oil," she said. "Even if we define 'danger' as 'dangerous to the United States and its interests', Iraq is not more dangerous than North Korea ... not more dangerous than India and Pakistan." Even if the definition were broadened to the region as a whole, says Bennis, "Israel's occupation and US support for it represent a greater danger to regional stability than Iraq's feeble military capacity."

In many ways, an invasion of Iraq can be seen as aggravating the very threats perceived by the US. To base an invasion on the pursuit of oil seems like poor logic, since more suffering delivered by US bombs will certainly escalate anti-American sentiment in other key oil-producing states in the region. And the threat of WMD could actually increase with a war to remove Hussein from power. "Saddam Hussein has demonstrated that he cares first and foremost about his own survival," says Erik Leaver, of IPS's Foreign Policy in Focus Project. In the event of a US invasion, posits Leaver, Hussein would have "nothing to lose" and the "logic of self-preservation" would no longer obtain. "Rather than prevent the use of such weapons, a US invasion would create the most likely scenario that they would actually be used."

IPS's Phyllis Bennis adds that it is significant that the Iraqi leadership chose not to use chemical or biological weapons during the Gulf War, although it is known to have had a viable store. These weapons were used, however, against Kurdish civilians and Iranian troops during the 1980s, Bennis argues, "because the Iraqi regime knew no one in the US or the West cared what happened to Kurdish civilians or Iranian troops". She adds that when Donald Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in October 1983, and again in March 1984, it was not to condemn the use of poison gas, which had just been confirmed by the United Nations, "but to embrace Saddam Hussein and urge a re- opening of full diplomatic relations".

But Glen Rangwala, a prominent British anti-war activist and also a spokesman for Arab Media Watch, maintains that while we should all be concerned about the spread of non-conventional weapons, "we should also be realistic about the possibility". Rangwala notes that there has been no evidence presented that Iraq has actively kept up a biological weapons programme, and biological weapons held by Iraq in 1991 were either destroyed by UN weapons inspectors or would have deteriorated to the extent that they are no longer weaponisable. "For example, Iraq did not develop dry, storable anthrax prior to 1990," Rangwala told the Weekly. "The only form it developed -- wet anthrax -- would have deteriorated many years ago." As for production of new biological agents, Rangwala points out that Iraq's main biological facility, Al-Hakam, was destroyed by the UN in 1996.

Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 28 Nov. - 4 Dec. 2002 (Issue No. 614)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/614/in8.htm