Illustration by Ryan Wolfe
By Rick Feinberg
As a cultural anthropologist my job is to study comparative lifestyles, ways of thinking, and systems of social action. Moreover, I'm interested in national and international politics and try to be an informed citizen. I've followed the news about Iraq since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, through the first Persian Gulf War, and up to the present debacle. I've listened to and read speeches by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. And I think critically about what I hear and read. I'd like to share with you the results of some of that critical thinking.
Iraq has been a focal point of human affairs for a long time, as it largely coincides with Mesopotamia, the so-called cradle of civilization. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, prominently featured in the Old Testament, are its main waterways. This region, sometimes called the Fertile Crescent, has given rise to a sequence of influential civilizations, from the Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians to modern-day Iraq.
Iraq is populated predominantly by Arabs, a large ethnic group whose members are distinguished by a common language. Most Iraqis are Muslim, but that population is divided into Sunnis, Shia, and non-Arab Kurds; and relations among the groups have not always been cordial, to say the least. To understand Iraq, one must also understand its next-door neighbor Iran. Like Iraq, Iran is predominantly Shia Muslim but, unlike Iraq, it is not Arab. Rather, it is the most recent incarnation of the Old Persian Empire. Its people speak Farsi (Persian) rather than Arabic, and a long-standing rivalry between the two neighbors reached its apex in the brutal Iran-Iraq war that lasted from 1980 until 1988.
The key figure in recent Iraqi history, of course, is Saddam Hussein. Born in Tikrit in 1937, he became associated with the secular, nationalist, and vaguely socialist Baath Party. In 1968, the Baath Party came to power in a military coup. From 1968 to 1979, Hussein effectively ran the party as Secretary General; in 1979, he became party chairman and national president.
Hussein was not a kind and gentle ruler. Under his leadership, Iraq was subjected to repressive one-party rule. As reported even by such sources as the Arab news network, Aljazeera, Hussein permitted no political dissent, imprisoning, torturing, and executing opponents. He represented minority Sunnis of central Iraq, enforcing economic and political discrimination against Kurds and Shi‘ites. His troops used poison gas in the war against Iran and, it appears, against Iraqis whom he considered disloyal. He squandered national resources to build grand palaces for himself and his family. And he had his army invade Kuwait because of a long-standing political and economic dispute.
As a veteran of the movement to end the War in Vietnam, I see important contrasts between that conflict and the present one in Iraq. Many of us found a good deal to admire in North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front. It’s hard to work up much enthusiasm for Saddam Hussein. Still, reality is complex and contradictory—a point on which both partisans of Marx’s dialectic and John Kerry’s "nuanced" foreign policy can agree. Few things are either all good or all bad; all progressive or all reactionary. And this is true of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, as it is for everything else.
Importantly, we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that we went to war against Iraq because Hussein was a brutal dictator. The list of tyrants privy to American support is long and less than flattering. A much abbreviated roster includes Batista, Somoza, and Pinochet in Latin America; Diem, Thieu, and Ky in Vietnam; Marcos and Suharto in Island Southeast Asia; Savimbi in Angola; the apartheid government of South Africa, Kasavubu and Mobutu in Congo; the Shah of Iran; and the royal families of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. It’s hard to see the difference between Saddam Hussein and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, our valued ally in the alleged war on terror. And Hussein, himself, was once on our payroll.
And what of Hussein's Baath Party? Is it the paragon of evil portrayed in the US media and by the Bush administration? A second opinion, offered by Aljazeera, observes that: The party concentrated on fighting exploitation, social inequality, sectarian loyalties, apathy, and lack of civil spirit. Official statements called for the abandonment of traditional ways in favour of a new lifestyle based on the principles of patriotism, national loyalty, collectivism, participation, selflessness, love of labour and civic responsibility. Those principles were the major goals adopted by the party since 1968. By the late 1980s, the party had succeeded in socialising significant economic sectors including agriculture, commerce, industry and oil.
One might question the extent to which these goals were realized in practice, and the price that Iraqis had to pay for them. Still, the party's platform, eventually enshrined in Iraq's constitution, was among the most progressive in the Middle East. Prior to the first Gulf War, Iraq had a vibrant economy and the largest middle class of any Arab nation. Women's rights were given greater constitutional protection in Iraq than in any other Muslim country in the region. Moreover, all this was accomplished despite rampant ethnic rivalries. One wonders if an authoritarian leader like Hussein, odious as he may be, was necessary to maintain order in a land torn apart by powerful centrifugal forces. Our own recent experience supports such a conclusion.
President Bush, in defending the invasion of Iraq, declares, "The world is better off without Saddam Hussein." That, however, is like saying that the world is better off with motherhood and apple pie. Taken in a vacuum, it is unassailable. In real life, however, we need to ask, what's the alternative? And it isn't clear that Iraqis are better off amid the chaos, roadside bombs, kidnappings, beheadings, and absence of even the most basic public services. We are told that they at least have freedom and democracy. But how much freedom is there when one can't walk on the street or stand in line for a job interview without becoming the target of a suicide bomber? And how much democracy is there when candidates must run anonymously for fear of assassination?
Looking at the history of US relations with Iraq over the past half century, it seems we haven't played with a full deck. Our government supported the Baath party as an alternative to the pro-Soviet Iraqi president (Abd al-Karim Qasim) who preceded it in power. During the 1980s, the Reagan administration supported Iraq as a counterweight to Iran and its "Islamic revolution." When the dispute arose between Iraq and Kuwait over national borders and access to oil fields, Hussein consulted with President George H. W. Bush’s ambassador, Avril Glaspie. She assured Hussein that, as a conflict between two Arab states, the dispute was of no interest to the US. The next day, Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait and, shortly thereafter, Bush sent US forces into Iraq. Was Hussein snookered by Bush and Glaspie? It's hard to conclude otherwise.
Before the first Gulf War, we were told that Iraq had one of the world's most powerful militaries, including the third largest standing army and anchored by the "elite" Republican Guard. Yet, Iraqi forces quickly evaporated before our assault. Our bombs incinerated Iraqi troops by the hundredsÑmany after they'd already chosen not to fight.
The war was followed by over a decade of economic sanctions which kept Iraq from rebuilding its infrastructure. The alleged objective was to keep Saddam Hussein from producing weapons of mass destruction and regaining the power he was imagined to have wielded prior to the war. The actual effect was death to tens of thousands of Iraqis, mostly children, from diseases spread by poor nutrition, polluted water, and an ineffective sanitation system.
Supporters of the war continue to cite 9/11 as justification for the invasion and occupation. Yet, there is no evidence of Iraqi involvement. Indeed, for Hussein to have been working with al Qaeda is almost preposterous. Bin Laden and his followers are religious extremists, while Hussein and his party were militantly secular. Only after the threat of an American attack, when Hussein was desperate for allies, did he begin to invoke religious slogans and appeal to devout Muslims for support. Whatever alliance may now exist between the Baathists and Islamists is a direct result of the invasion and occupation.
Our president still argues that the war was necessary because Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Yet, in the lead-up to the war, when claims of WMD were contradicted by weapons inspectors, rather than take the reports seriously, he pressured the UN into withdrawing its personnel. Actually, that was the second time that UN arms inspectors were withdrawn, and because of actions by our government, not Iraq's government. The first was in response to Clinton's orders to bomb Baghdad. Hussein, of course, was never thrilled to have inspectors in his countryÐwhat leader of a sovereign nation would be? But when it became clear that the alternative was an all-out American attack, he readmitted them. Initially, he imposed conditions, limiting where the inspectors could go and insisting that they provide advance warning. But as the invasion approached he offered one compromise after another and, by the end, agreed to provide the UN complete freedom of access. Bush, as usual, refused to take "yes" for an answer.
Bush famously sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to make the case for WMD before the UN. Hussein insisted that he had no such weapons. However, it is impossible to prove a negative. When UN arms inspectors failed to locate evidence of WMD, the Bush administration simply argued that Hussein had hidden them. Ultimately, in the invasion's aftermath, we sent in our own inspector-with the same result.
So, when it became clear that Hussein was telling the truth about his arsenal, what was the response? Did Bush apologize; say that he had made a terrible mistake; and try to undo as much of the damage as he could? To the contrary, Bush’s supporters claimed Hussein had hidden his weapons so well that we’d never find them or when the invasion seemed inevitable he secretly shipped them out of the country—most likely to Syria. In other words, Hussein dedicated his country’s resources to creating huge stockpiles of enormously destructive weapons so that he could get rid of them the moment he was under attack. For that to be true, he had to have been crazier than even his most vehement detractors had imagined.
Finally, Bush—after repeated and increasingly emphatic reports from his own inspectors—had to concede that Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. But to this day, he insists that we did the right thing by invading Iraq and forcing "regime change"—a policy that he continues to justify by saying that Hussein "refused to disarm." Of course, if he didn’t have arms in the first place, it was impossible for him to disarm. In other words, Bush set a condition that was impossible to meet. Or, to put the matter differently, he was determined to invade Iraq no matter what, and all the talk about disarming was empty verbiage intended to cover up a course of action that had already been settled. That’s not my analysis—it comes directly from Bush’s own statements and is confirmed by the now-infamous Downing Street Memo.
Perhaps, however, the invasion, occupation, restriction of civil liberties, and all the accompanying hyperbole, are justifiable in a post-9/11 age, where we must be extra vigilant. The problem with such arguments is that we are actually less safe for all that Bush has done.
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, we were treated to reports of millions of people—mostly in the Muslim world—celebrating in the streets. You may recall the oft-asked question, "Why do they hate us?" The sense of the question, however, was rarely to explore our own behavior but to ask, "What’s wrong with them?" Pundits, mindlessly repeating slogans of our demagogic politicians, declared in their incalculable wisdom that our enemies simply envy our prosperity and despise our freedom.
This way of thinking is illustrated by an experience I had in September 2001. I offered and op-ed column to the Akron Beacon Journal, suggesting, as a social scientist, that people are born neither "good" nor "evil" but sometimes learn to behave in destructive ways because of their experience and education. I then explored some recent episodes in US history and how our actions could have generated intense—even violent—feelings among those on the receiving end. I explicitly argued that this does not justify attacks on innocent civilians, but that we must understand what motivates people to engage in terrorist activity if we hope to prevent it in the future. The editorial page editor was unable to see the analysis as anything other an exercise than "blaming the victim" and declined to publish it.
Despite the troubling video clips on Fox and CNN, the attacks of 9/11 actually generated enormous international sympathy for the United States. Remember the French proclaiming, "We’re all Americans now!"? But a mindset that refuses to consider what leads normal people to become terrorists and insists on viewing the confrontation as a generic struggle between good and evil led to the conclusion that the only possible response was military. That response, of course, confirmed the expectations of those who viewed the US as an arrogant bully. It has generated sympathy for Iraqi insurgents, for al Qaeda, and all of their allies; and it has resulted in the US being more isolated than at any time in living memory. We’re now killing and being killed by the thousands in Iraq, and we’re bogged down with no graceful way out. We’re depleting our resources in the most destructive of activities. Our economy is stagnating while the price of oil skyrockets. Government services are disintegrating. The division between rich and poor grows more and more pronounced. And our government grows ever more intrusive in our lives. For decades, allegedly conservative Republicans have called for smaller, less intrusive government. Yet, under their leadership we see unprecedented deficits, record military spending, and erosion of our civil liberties. They have radically increased the size of government and led us to a war we never should have entered.
This commentary was originally presented to a teach-in on the Iraq war at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent, Ohio: 2 October 2005.