Saddam Hussein

The Iraqi Knot

Too often I hear: “Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. They lied”. But if you have an intellect in you, you know how vacant and simplistic this is. Donald Rumsfeld, a man of great intellectual depth, demonstrated this with a quote he is now famous for.

I have read so much about him and I am stunned he died with so little recognition of his deep thinking. I am glad I actually had an opportunity to meet him in Omaha.

 

Rumsfeld, as well as others, understood: there are two types of authoritarian dictators. Those who stay within their country's boundaries and those who do not. Those eviscerating boundaries are the most dangerous. Saddam Hussein, a ruthless brutal dictator, did not like being constrained. When Saddam came into control of Iraq, the country was under Soviet influence during the Cold War. But by 1980, he was breaking free from the Soviets and leaning more toward the West. You can do plenty of searches of Saddam to find this part of history but it has been blatantly stripped from the discussion. You can download a PDF on this part of Iraq history at https://www.rand.org/pubs/notes/N1524.html

This study was made in 1980 when many experts were stating Iraq would not leave the Soviet orientation, but Saddam did. When the revolution in Iran took place, both the Soviet Union and the USA became concerned, but the idea of war was not envisioned. Everyone knew the importance of oil trade from the Persian Gulf but the idea of one Muslim country attacking another Muslim country seemed impossible to experts but it happened (https://www.britannica.com/event/Iran-Iraq-War). Saddam attacked Iran. Again, the experts were perplexed. They tried to explain this away as a conflict between different sects of Islam. Saddam was Sunni Muslim and Iran is Shia Muslim dominate. Yet, Saddam would throw another wrench at the experts.

Saddam invaded Kuwait, a Sunni Muslim country. All the Persian Gulf countries, as well as Israel, were reassessing their previous positions. President Bush (senior) understandably, took action to liberate Kuwait. I was flummoxed because I already
understood how complex geopolitics was, particularly in the Middle East, because I was one of those guys who played multiplayer video games and studied geography,  where others saw an “us versus them” chess game battle. Also, few had one of these:

Kuwait was liberated but now all the functions of the USA were gathered to contain Saddam, including placing US military forces in Saudi Arabia (https://militarybases.com/overseas/saudi-arabia/) as well as firing missiles into Iraq over breaches of the truce (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/clinton-orders-air-attack-on-iraq).

 Lost are the facts of how often the US fired missiles into Iraq during the 1990s. Western news rarely mentioned the often weekly missile attacks and the civilians and children injured. Arab anger increased and resulting in the attacks of 9/11. Rand Paul got this part right but what really was the alternative? (https://www.newarab.com/news/iraqs-security-council-approves-recent-defence-deal-us and https://www.usip.org/publications/2020/08/current-situation-iraq)

So the time came to end containment and take Saddam down. The current situation of containment was no longer acceptable or possible as it carried too many risks.  Experts had said Saddam would not leave the Soviet sphere, but he did. Experts had said Saddam would not invade a Muslim country like Iran, but he did. Experts had said Saddam would not invade a Sunni country like Kuwait, but he did.

But what of weapons of mass destruction, those WMD? Pure geopolitics. The stipulations of the truce involved weapons inspections favored by the United Nations. Oh, and all the experts said Saddam had WMD, but all the WMD was a distraction to the need of removing Saddam. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saddam-Hussein and https://www.bbc.com/news/world-64980565) There are reports stating Iraq sent the WMD to Syria (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/did-syria-receive-its-chemical-weapons-saddam/325348/).

But today, the problem is Russia in Ukraine. Again, there is a dictator who will not stay within their borders. Currently, the war is a matter of attrition, but for how long?