Saddam 2: Judgement Day

February 27, 2009 – Last Friday, US President Barack Obama announced an end to the war in Iraq. He elaborated a gradual plan that will reduce to zero the amount of American soldiers in Iraq by December 2010. This ambitious and hasty plan has clear goals to transfer all public and national security matter in Iraq to their own police and military forces. Furthermore, the withdrawal plan hopes very hard that the country’s radical factions will not quickly seize power as soon as the massive threat of American retaliation evaporates. Finally, there may exist a tacit objective in this plan: the patching up of the money haemorrhage that is the war in Iraq and to repatriate these much needed trillions of dollars back into the American recession.

Whereas most of President Obama’s new legislation since his inauguration day has been met with fervent opposition by members of the government, this measure was gladly supported by all involved. Iraq’s Prime Minister al-Maliki is confident his troops can efficiently replace the United States forces and American General Gates agrees. Democrats love the idea but then again, they would still give their left testicle (or ovary?) to please Obama these days. Finally, the Republican members of parliament and senate are timidly rejoicing that the troops and the financial resources supporting them are finally coming home. This war in Iraq seemingly no longer benefits anyone (not for oil, democracy, US presence in the Middle-East) and therefore it will end without opposition.

This all sounds nice and well but there seems to be a heavy amount of idyllic hoping in a plan that will remove 142,000 American soldiers from a heavily war-torn and politically unstable country in a short amount of time. If only there was a way to predict a realistic outcome to this policy. If only the United States had already invaded Iraq once before and then withdrew hastily. Oh gosh, they seem to have done the exact same thing in 1990-1991. What can we learn from this clear cycle of history repeating?

Firstly, we must contextualise both wars and see if their development and conclusion are similar enough or too different to compare.

Regarding the premise of both wars, Saddam Hussein was an equally major factor. He Invaded neighbouring Kuwait in 1990 and was generally threatening the region in 2003; the United-States thus deemed it necessary to directly intervene with the full might of their modern military. We could debate all-day about the ‘true’ motivations for both wars or how ‘legitimate’ they were but it definitely boils down to the threat to the Middle-East and world stability (both political and economic) that Saddam Hussein represented.

As for participants, we have an important difference between the two conflicts. It is well known that the United-States entered Iraq unilaterally in 2003 because the United Nations refused to condone the invasion of a country and the ousting of its government. The UN has always followed a strict non-intervention policy when faced with civil wars or internal conflicts; the situation was no so in 1990. Having invaded Kuwait, Saddam broke the UN’s prime rule: if one member country invades another, the United Nations will host a military action to defend the victim. This rule was established in 1945 to prevent the kind of expansionist incursions perpetrated by the Nazis from ever occurring again. This explains why dozens of countries including some whom did not participate in 2003 (Canada, France) and many from the Muslim world (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia) joined the United-States and the United-Kingdom to protect Kuwait and push back the Iraqi armies in 1991.

Now for ‘occupation’, there are other crucial differences: duration and degree. Following the highly successful expulsion of Saddam’s troops from Kuwait, the American troops followed them back into Iraq. The ground attacks were minimal yet the coalition bombarded all Iraqi installations (both governmental and civilian) for just under a year. They indeed controlled many regions of Iraq but did not in fact administer them politically as they do today. Following this year of successful pounding, the coalition troops stopped near Bagdad, turned around, and returned home. The United Nations would never have approved an American coup in another member country and President George H. W. Bush did not want to endanger the international image and relationships of the US. Although a controversial decision amongst the American people, Bush followed his allies to the negotiation table and permitted Saddam Hussein to remain in power. As for 2003, Saddam’s infrastructure was summarily destroyed, President W. Bush declared victory and Saddam was hung for crimes against his own people. This rapid sequence of events was followed by 6 years of ‘occupation’.

Finally as a result with the American withdrawal in 1991, the country of Iraq was completely destabilised even though the ruling power was allowed to remain in power. Saddam Hussein’s oppressive machine had been crippled and thus the ethnically and religiously diverse country rose up to install complete chaos. The southern Shiite Muslims and the Northern Kurds took the opportunity to voice their disagreement with Saddam’s unlimited power in Bagdad. The inevitable result involved massive terrorism by these factions and brutal repression by Saddam. With the coalition gone, the inhabitants of the Middle-East were able to return to dynastic and generational conflicts that concerned them much more than what boundaries are respected, who has what oil field and who supports the current government.

With this contextualisation and comparison, I fully expect a similar situation to occur at the end of 2010. The United States and United-Kingdom will instantly leave a vacuum measuring 150,000 soldiers, trillions of dollars and massive amounts of organisation and technology that the Iraqi government has no hope of possibly replacing. The dust will inevitably settle and the various factions will quickly forget the preoccupation of the Western visitors and will begin anew their fight for supremacy, be it religious, political or cultural.

I too will hope for the best as President Obama inspires us to do, but I will remain realistic in the face of historical evidence.

(Pictured: The aerial bombardment of 1991 demonstrated a monstrous technological gap between the US and Iraq - President Bush delivers his famous 'Mission Accomplished' speech on May 1st 2003, perhaps a tad too early.)

End.