Another new estimate of Iraqi deaths, another opportunity to point out the obvious. Is the murder of 50,000 people any less morally irreprehensible than the murder of 150,000 people? To whom is the murder of 50,000 innocent people justifiable, let alone 100,000, and are they the same people that have leaped from one justification to the next because those originally given for action against Iraq were false?
The world is replete with despotic regimes. Were the United States to militarily attempt to remove all of them from power based on their human rights abuses, etc, they would be faced with quite a task, not to mention a drastic reduction in business.
So what justification are we now to cling to with regards to the invasion and occupation of Iraq? They are, in fact, two separate things in truth, so let’s proceed chronologically.
The preemptive invasion of Iraq was undertaken in contravention of Article 53 of the UN Charter, despite the fact that the United States and the United Kingdom argued that the regime of Saddam Hussein was in breach of a variety of UN sanctions. During the run up to the invasion it was discovered that various UN offices had been bugged by those seeking action against Iraq, the same group that, at every turn, attempted to discredit the findings and work of Hans Blix and his team of UN inspectors. Tony Blair event went so far as to suggest, with absolutely no hard intelligence to back his claim, that Iraq possessed the ability to employ WMD’s in as little as 45 minutes.
All of this came at a time when the Bush administration was drawing completely erroneous parallels between the attacks of September 11th and the Hussein regime, parallels that President Bush himself would later claim had never been made despite the existence of news and video footage to the contrary (that, in and of itself, is justification enough for impeachment). In a variety of speeches and interviews given prior to the invasion, numerous members of the administration directly claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, a claim for which they did possess intelligence – just not intelligence that proved their assertions.
Unfortunately, the intelligence in question was never included in any PDB – that the CIA had used American Iraqis with relatives that had worked on Iraq’s nuclear project in the 80’s to return to Iraq and learn what they could from them. The unanimous conclusion of every single American Iraqi that agreed to become an operative was that Iraq’s attempts to develop WMD’s had been abandoned more than a decade before. One relative of the operatives was, according to James Risen’s account in State Of War, shocked to learn that the United States would even use WMD’s as context for an invasion and couldn’t believe that it was even being discussed.
Despite the uncertainties and objections of seasoned CIA station personnel and analysts, many of whom recognized that the invasion was being created by the administration using political allies within the CIA and Pentagon, the CIA provided then Secretary of State Powell some of the most inaccurate and embarrassing information ever given a US official to present to the United Nations. And with the Director of the CIA sitting behind him, Secretary Powell fed the world community information that was fabricated and manipulated for a single purpose – to ensure that military action could be taken and that the United States could seize the opportunity presented them to secure a lasting military footprint in the Middle East as fast as was possible, one far less restricting than their current assets in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Still reeling from the shock and horror of 9/11, a majority of the American public opted to shove their heads in the sand and allowed their government to lead them into what can now only be characterized as the biggest US military fiasco since Vietnam.
The subject of detainees, of human rights abuses, of a complete disregard for the Geneva Conventions is for another entry, and has been the subject of many past entries, but for the time being let’s look at the sliding scale of justifications since the invasion itself.
After it was discovered that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, the removal of Saddam Hussein became the primary justification leaned upon, one that is still commonly used, and one that is never coupled with the historical reality that the United States provided Hussein with financial and tactical support in the 80’s. The toppling of Hussein’s statue and the now famous ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech helped solidify in the minds of many Americans that the task had been as simple and straightforward as they had been promised. Of course, what they didn’t know was that the Pentagon had absolutely no realistic post war plan, not even initiatives for combat commanders to pass on to their subordinates with regards to what was to be done after Baghdad fell. Rather than fight the Americans openly, remnants of the Ba’athist regime and similar factions disappeared into the surrounding countryside and the insurgency, which was first sold as a small problem that could be easily handled, began to grow and diversify. And, like every guerrilla resistance in modern history, it kept learning how best to be effective. Three years later, it continues to be.
After the capture of Saddam Hussein, and the realization that the insurgency wasn’t going to dissipate, the new line taken by the Bush administration was that the insurgency was being bolstered by al-Qaeda, even though foreign fighters that had entered Iraq to fight the Anglo-American occupational forces, most of whom were Saudis, constituted less than 5 or 6% of the insurgency. Ironically, to this very day, the American media still commonly helps promote the myth that the majority of the insurgency, which consists of dozens of factions, has strong ties with al-Qaeda.
Of course, one can’t forget the promise of democracy, a promise that the Bush administration has claimed fulfilled numerous times over the last three years, each new occasion resulting in yet another ineffectual Iraqi government that relies heavily on US support in some areas and disassociates itself in others in an attempt to prevent a full blown civil war. The Kurds are flying their own flag, a man that the US once wanted killed or captured, Muqtada al-Sadr, is now arguably one of the most influential men in southern Iraq, and the Iraqi police and various ministries are reportedly rife with corruption and extreme factionalism. The monthly mortality rate in the country is through the roof and still, after three years, most people have, at best, intermittent electricity and water.
50,000 lives, 100,000 lives, the death of Saddam Hussein, the quietly hidden deaths and maiming of thousands of Americans, and to what end? Do the continued construction of 14 permanent US bases in the country mean nothing? How about the US embassy, which will be the most well defended, largest embassy on earth, complete with Starbucks and Burger King. While foot soldiers get combat pay, private contractors are getting rich doing practically the same job, and yet the utterly blatant corporate rape of the American taxpayer during the conflict has slipped under the radar.
So was it all worth it? What is worth the life of a child, or ten children? If, in Israel, we are to lament the loss of a single child, then why not in Iraq? Those who innocently perished on September 11th had families whose lives were destroyed forever that day. But when an Iraqi man loses his wife and three children to American ‘precision’ bombing it’s somehow not as important.
The struggle between right and wrong, goodness and malignancy, is not one that can be measured by political or religious ideologies because neither can bring dead children back to life. But what they can do is ensure that they aren’t killed in the first place.
Saddam Hussein, it has been reported, will be executed by the end of the year. And what will it matter? Will it change the fact that while he was gassing Halabja that the United States government was pumping money into his regime? Will the existence of a permanent Western presence in the Middle East alter the fact that in the 50’s Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, was removed from power by the US and the UK because of greed which they veiled as an attempt to combat communism? Instead of free elections in Iran, the Shah was returned to power and democracy in Iran vanished. And yet here we are, decades later, talking as if history, even that of a few days ago, simply doesn’t exist.
50,000 or 100,000? What does it matter when those being told such numbers don’t see the victims as people, just math?