The Soil Is Everything
By Gary Krasner (06/18/04)
Of all the reasons cited for toppling Saddam Hussein, the Administration’s best reason might also be the least palatable for most Americans.
Despite mistakes made in post-war operations in Iraq, as well as the recent upsurge in violence, the President’s chances of re-election will still rest on his rationale for invading Iraq in the first place.
Many people view the humanitarian reasons with skepticism. Others feel that Saddam’s violations of treaties and U.N. mandates were not worth enforcing through force of arms. Also for many, the failure to discover stockpiles of WMD curiously trumped David Kay’s findings that Saddam was ready to go with a ‘build-on-demand’ chem-bio weapons program once the scrutiny of inspections were lifted. (Not to mention the oft-ignored fact that uncovering evidence of WMDs in a non-compliant regime solely though inspections is impossible.) What remains is the geo-strategic rationale, which was not presented because it’s coldly Machiavellian and difficult to sound-bite.
The strategic issues examine the big picture of “what is” and forecasts “what can be.” By not acting today, can we tolerate for tomorrow an Iraq under Saddam with greater military capacity and in control of a third of the world’s oil supply? Would Saddam hold the world hostage by restricting the supply of oil in exchange for political concessions? Could that trigger the collapse of national economies, leading to war, famine or civil strife? How much longer could the U.S. afford to continue the $12 billion per year containment regime that included U.N. inspections, basing troops in the region, and maintaining a ‘no-fly zone’—which BEFORE the invasion many nations either circumvented or wanted discontinued, while jihadists used it as a pretext for incitement and attacks? Or, was any Mideast peace plan possible while Saddam continued to award $25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers—the only head of state to flaunt such behavior?
While the containment regime created an unstable situation for the US, did it at least shut down the terrorist training camps and Ricin production labs in Northern Iraq? Or did it halt Saddam’s ongoing genocide of the Marsh Arabs? It did not. War is the sacrifice of a few to save the many. The strategic issues coldly ponders whether sacrificing 600 soldiers and 6000 civilians in battle was worth it to save the 20,000 Iraqis (over half of which were children, according to UNICEF) that died EACH YEAR as a result of Saddam’s punitive political system, plus as we’re beginning to learn now, the greed and corruption of Saddam Hussein, U.N. officials and their contractors who were involved in the Oil-for-Food program. (Even the Taliban and al-Qaeda had profited from the kickback scam.)
Ironically, strategic factors are often part of the calculation for war, yet it’s never the explicit reason we ask young men to risk their lives. It’s at its boldest when it involves preemption. It’s what Roosevelt WOULD have done in 1937, if the political situation favored it and he had the military force to carry it out. Preemption carries great political risk, as it always destroys the evidence of what might have been—or given the peculiar pathologies of Saddam’s regime—what was likely to have been.
All told, Saddam killed more than 8 times the number that Milosovich had. The unique character of Saddam’s sadism—the imprisonment and harsh treatment of thousands of children of his political opponents; burying people alive; the unspeakable tortures and rapes—is beyond the scope of the “strategic”. Yet suffice to say that Saddam Hussein was not just a “bad guy”, as the critics of the war often refer to him, and that should count for something among those who wring their hands over Rwanda and other sites where human attrocities occurred.
[Those who wish to learn more about Saddam’s crimes and why his regime should have ended can read: “A Decade of Deception and Defiance”, a background paper for President George W. Bush’s September 12th speech to the United Nations General Assembly, at http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/iraqdecade.pdf]
Why Iraq?
A preamble question is, “Was stateless terrorism the sole threat to us?” The answer is no. Only sovereign states can provide genuine safe havens for terrorists. States also have the industrial infrastructure to manufacture the most sophisticated and deadliest types of WMD or ballistic missiles, and either hand them over to terrorists directly or allow them to proliferate on the black market. There seems to be no debate that preemptive action must be used against terrorists. Yet there’s plenty of debate about taking preemptive action against another nation, even though both entities may hate us with equal vigor, and both may employ methods of attack which provides little or no warning.
This method of attack was described by former Secretary of State George Shultz in 1997: “… I fear that what we confront is unconventional. We use the word terrorism, but you can associate that as a tactic used by states that don’t wish us well. So you have a kind of an undeclared, subterranean type of warfare that can be conducted by a country which harbors terrorists, allows them to train, helps them get equipped and, in effect, they make war on you just as in the sense somebody made war on us in Saudi Arabia and blew up those barracks.” [PBS program, “Uncommon Knowledge”, film date: October 23, 1997]
A CIA team found a diagram of a dirty bomb and documents on nuclear weapons in Osama bin Laden’s Afghanistan sanctuary. Terrorist experts warn that given the proliferation of fissionable material, it’s only a matter of time that radical muslim groups will obtain it. Once obtained, they will produce a dirty bomb and use it. Once used, western nations, and the US in particular, will cross a major precipice, as such an attack will demonstrate even for those without the slightest foresight, the efficacy of preemptive military action against terrorism, and that it must replace containment policy in some instances. Such an attack will signal a tipping point that will swing the pendulum of civil and criminal protections further in favor of the law enforcement.
If you accept that states may participate in this new form of warfare that George Shultz described, the next question was, “Why Iraq and why now?” The “Why now” was because President Bush couldn’t wait 5-10 years when we would hopefully have better intelligence on Iraq’s WMD, it’s ties to Islamic terrorist groups, nor continue the costly and risky containment policy. The “Why Iraq” requires some elaboration:
Hussein endeavored to become the pinnacle leader in a pan-Arab Middle East, by championing the Islamist cause in his speeches, inflaming anti-western, anti-Israeli tensions, and placing himself in the vanguard of Western and US defiance by resisting U.N. sanctions, inspection regimes, and post-war cease-fire agreements with the U.S.
The public record reveals ample evidence of Saddam Hussein’s alliance with al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda associates, and other international terrorist groups, through the supply of arms, funding, logistics, training, and safe haven. Before the invasion of Iraq, CIA Director George Tenet testified to Congress in February 2003 that Iraq had provided training, within Iraq, to al-Qaeda operatives in a wide range of terrorist techniques, including bomb-making, forgery, and the use and manufacture of poisons and poisonous gasses. Martin Bright and Jason Burke reported that Bin Ladden and Saddam held discussions about a possible alliance in 1998 (The Observer, 27 April 2003). Following his defeat in the Gulf War, it is widely known that Mr. Hussein was reaching out to various other terrorist groups as a way of strengthening his position.
Newsweek concluded on January 11, 1999 that, “Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas—assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network. U.S. sources say he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to Osama bin Laden, …” That same month, Clinton’s terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, confimed to the Washington Post that the links did indeed exist.
In his testimony to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary Colin Powell confirmed press reports (i.e. Jeffrey Goldberg, the New Yorker) that Iraq reached a non-aggression pact with al-Qaeda in 1993. Powell also testified then that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, “an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants,” was invited by an agent of Saddam to take sanctuary in a Kurdish controlled area of Iraq after the U.S. invasion forced him to leave Afghanistan. According to Powell, there they set up “another poison and explosive training center camp.” […] “These al-Qaida affiliates based in Baghdad now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they have now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months. […] “From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond.”
Powell said further, “We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. […] This service contacted Iraqi officials twice, and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large to come and go.” And after the invasion of Iraq, our forces are still looking for Zarqawi and his group.
Since April 20th, 2004, revelations coming from the thwarted terrorist attack in Jordan planned by Zarqawi’s group seems to confirm Powell’s concerns: The seized 20 tons of chemicals—that included VX, Sarin and 70 others and was trucked in by confessed al-Qaeda members—could have killed 80,000 people had the toxic cloud been released, according to Jordanian officials. The al-Qaeda members confessed that they received about $170,000 from al-Zarqawi to finance the plot.
Also, on May 3, 2004 Reuters reported (from Ankara) that Turkish police arrested 24 members of Ansar al-Islam—the Iraq-based al-Qaeda offshoot—foiling a bomb plot targeting the upcoming NATO summit in Istanbul (as well as other targets). The police seized guns, explosives, bomb-making booklets and 4,000 compact discs featuring training instructions from Osama bin Laden. According to U.S. intelligence agencies, Ansar al-Islam is a militant group from Kurdish northern Iraq that’s allied to al-Qaeda, and responsible for attacks on U.S. troops stationed in Iraq.
These recent incidents disproves the notion that a secular Arab dictator couldn’t possibly assist fundementalist radical groups like al-Qaeda.
Saddam’s ties to Muslim radicals have been documented most notably by Stephen F. Hayes (The Weekly Standard), former-National Security Advisor Laurie Milroy, former-CIA Director James Woolsey, journalist Christopher Hitchens and others. Additional information about Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda and other radicals are found at:
http://www.hereticalideas.com/archives/000097.html
http://www.hereticalideas.com/archives/000106.html
http://www.techcentralstation.com/092503F.html
http://slate.msn.com/id/2099664/ —in which Christopher Hitchens also describes how Saddam’s regime was hardly secular, and reminds us of the Hitler-Stalin pact. I would add to that the US-Soviet alliance to defeat Hitler, as another example of groups with disparate interests suspending their differences in order to unit against a common enemy. Without a doubt, the U.S. was the greatest enemy of al-Qaeda and Hussein.
The secret transfers of arms and technologies from state to rogue state to jihadist group have been going on for some time. Iraq participated in such transactions. Given Saddam’s ambition and antipathy to the US, these activities were likely to escalate to the transfer of WMD assets, affording Saddam tremendous deterence protection for his hedgemonic ambitions in the region, especially his longtime desire to destroy our greatest asset and ally, Israel.
Ossama Bin Ladden’s most prominent recruiting blurb throughout the 1990s was that the US was a safe target for terrorism because it didn’t have the resolve and courage to topple Saddam in the Gulf War. Islamists actually believed that Saddam had won that war. They know that Saddam continuously fired missiles at US planes enforcing the “no-fly zone”—with impunity. And up until our response to 9-11, Bin Ladden was aware that the US had not left an invasion force on the ground for greater than 4 days since 1974. So he justifiably felt that he could attack the US with impunity.
Not only has Bush dispelled that notion, he also moved the battlefield back to where it belongs—in the Middle East. With the US liberation of Iraq, Islamist militants are now distressed that a major Mideast power is not only gone as a safe haven, but may also be irretrievably “lost” to a constitutional republic.
Mr. Jose Ramos-Horta, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1996, and East Timor’s Senior Minister for Foreign Affairs And Cooperation, made the case for war in Iraq in an opinionjournal.com Op-Ed piece titled, “Sometimes, a War Saves People”, and published on May 13, 2004. In this excerpt, he underscores the wider role of the Iraq war in denying Jihadist elements support and sanctuary:
“Saddam’s overthrow offers a chance to build a new Iraq that is peaceful, tolerant and prosperous. That’s why the stakes are so high, and why extremists from across the Muslim world are fighting to prevent it. They know that a free Iraq would fatally undermine their goal of purging all Western influence from the Muslim world, overthrowing the secular regimes in the region, and imposing Stone Age rule. They know that forcing Western countries to withdraw from Iraq would be a major step toward that goal, imperiling the existence of moderate regimes—from the Middle East to the Magreb and Southeast Asia.”
“If those regimes were to fall, hundreds of thousands of Muslims who today denounce the ‘evils’ of Western imperialism would flock to Europe, the U.S., Canada and Australia, seeking refuge. As in Iran, Muslims might have to experience the reality of rule by ayatollahs before they realize how foolish they were not to oppose these religious zealots more vigorously.”
[http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005071]
With Saddam gone, another thing that ended was one of several repressive regimes that deflected popular internal grievances towards anti-Americanism, which in turn enabled radical clerics to convert to veritable vilification.
This dynamic is outlined by Angelo M. Codevilla, Professor of International Relations at Boston University and a senior editor of The American Spectator. In May 2004, he wrote:
“…the Wahabis attract all rulers of Muslim peoples who live un-Muslim lives because, just as medieval Christian heretics supported their hierarchs’ outrageous lives, they buy secular support by selling religious legitimacy. Hence Wahabi support for outrageously corrupt Saudis. The glaring case is Iraq’s Saddam Hussein—an atheist, theologically speaking the personification of everything Wahabism lives to destroy—who persecuted Islam to the limit of his power, but who nevertheless managed to make himself the leader of an Islam increasingly redefined as violent anti-Westernism. The Wahabis held their nose and supported him too.”
[http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6564]
It was not restricted to Saddam. For example, Egypt under Hosni Mubarak has long been a hotbed of US vilification, despite receiving $50 billion of US aid since 1975, and nutritional coarse grains that kept 75% of Egytians from starving. Yet only 25% of them—according to a recent poll—were even aware that this aid came from the U.S. Some experts believe that the essential element that triggered the insurrection in Fallujah is the local adherence to Wahhabism—or “Salafism”, as their apologists call it—and the claim that it was because Coalition forces began meddling in their business was just a pretext to begin their war against the West. Whether secular or religious, arab thugocracies are the breeding grounds for future anti-U.S. terrorists.
Thus, the link between Saddam’s regime and militant fundamentalists was clear. While radical Muslim groups like al-Qaeda represented a direct existential threat (aimed at our very existence), Iraq under Saddam was a strategic threat (a means by which the existential threat could be carried out).
Legitimacy
Even before Saddam revealed an intent to ride upon the ascendancy of Jihadism, it was Saddam’s horrific resume of mass murders and two wars of aggression that led Bill Clinton and many nations in the U.N. to conclude by 1998—well before 9-11—that ‘regime change’ was the only remaining option to disarm Iraq and bring more stability to the Mideast. Thus, as George W. Bush assumed office in January 2001, our government was already committed to a policy to topple Saddam Hussein. The attacks that occurred on our soil 30 weeks later, with the realization that Saddam’s courting of militant Islamists may succeed, prompted the new administration to not wait around for more dots to connect: The Baathist regime under Saddam or his progeny was expected to remain a problem, and probably become more emboldened if, as expected, the U.S. and U.N. had relented. After 9-11, President Bush had no alternative but to take preemptive action to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Whether or not preemption was justified, some nevertheless felt that military force must be “legitimized” under the aegis of U.N. approval. For example, Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Jack Reed (D-RI), Robert Byrd (D-WV), and others voted against Bush’s Iraq war resolution and instead supported a resolution that would have required U.N. approval—apparently in total ignorance of that fact that the only wars the U.N. ever pre-approved was Gulf War I and the Korean war (by accident of the USSR walking out of the Security Council). The U.N. didn’t even approve of our invasion of Afghanistan (although NATO nations did). And yet that fact didn’t stop these Senators from supporting the war against the Taliban.
By that historical record, it was and is foolish to confuse the interests of the U.N. with that of the U.S., and even perhaps the interests of populations being annihilated, or threatened. If it is the default baseline mandate of a deliberative body to resist warfare, then it’s rank stupidity to seek its approval when it’s self-evident that force of arms is the only option. Whether as aggressive or defensive, or to perpetrate or prevent genocide (etc.), most wars have been unilaterally declared. The instrument that has enabled Israel to survive for half a century was military deterrence, and not the U.N.
Indeed, the U.N.’s record on Israel is a good benchmark to gauge the U.N.’s legitimacy. Historian Victor Davis Hanson stated:
“Since 1967, almost fifty percent of all the U.N. resolutions have been condemning Israel. When there's fifty million people have been killed all around the globe in Africa and Asia, up in former Soviet Union, they never said a word. And why was that? Because the U.N. has been basically ideological—far more ideological than we are and they have a preexisting deductive idea that Westernism as it's symbolized by the United States and Israel are the causes of most of the great sins of the world. So they concentrate on these two powers, United States and Israel and they will not apply the same standard of behavior to the Russians or—we talk about occupied land, they'll pass hundreds of resolutions about Palestine and not one about Cyprus, about Tibet, about the Sakhalin Islands. So when we in America look at this, we see that it's ideologically driven and a lot of people die where they adjudicate in New York.”
[Episode #828, PBS series, “Uncommon Knowlwdge”, filmed November 24, 2003]
For every invasion, there’s a defense—through military force. That’s also ‘war’. The U.N. refused to intercede militarily in Rwanda’s tribal conflict, and as a consequence, a million innocent civilians were slaughtered because there WASN’T a war. The U.N. failed to act, and the few U.N. troops left in Rwanda could do nothing except helplessly stand by while thousands of defenseless residents were murdered.
By contrast, “war” was able to save Muslim lives in Yugoslavia and Somalia, both without “U.N. legitimacy”. Nor did President Clinton wait for U.N. approval when he interceded in Haiti. Despite several armed “interventions”, President Clinton escaped vilification. So, why was there such vehement political opposition to toppling Saddam—the most repressive totalitarian regime since Stalinist Russia? Is it because President Bush is a conservative?
Anti-American coalitions deride President Bush for unabashedly insisting that U.S. sovereignty trumps the vetoes of despotic regimes (members in good standing in the U.N.), yet remained silent when the French unilaterally invaded the Ivory Coast during the run up to the Iraq War. France asserted it’s colonialist interests without seeking U.N. “legitimacy”, at the same time they were lecturing the U.S. in multilateralism, and after Bush wasted months trying to persuade the U.N. to enforce its resolutions on Iraq.
The Left and anti-American coalitions are angry that it was an inarticulate, conservative “cowboy” who finally did what was necessary regarding Saddam—and further, daring enough to bet that liberating this pivotal Mideast nation may present a shining example of what is possible, and embolden dispirited progressive Muslims to fight for consentual governance throughout that region. By implementing President Clinton’s policy of ‘regime change’, Bush snatched from the Left their perennial dictum of denying refuge to tyranny, and made it his own.
Making The Soil Right
Are insurgents in Iraq attacking Coalition troops in suicide fashion (by some press accounts), or blowing themselves up in crowded streets because they’re unemployed, or because their favorite newspaper was shut down? Or is it because they’ve been indoctrinated with the fanaticism of Wahhabism, that is so antithetical to Western culture?
The increasing ease by which individuals not affiliated with a sovereign state are able to obtain highly lethal weapons and to deploy them without warning has led to a new policy of engagement against threats to national security. ‘Preemption’ has replaced ‘containment and deterence’, particularly with an enemy sworn to our destruction, even at the expense of their own lives.
As most conflicts the U.S. has engaged in throughout its history, Afghanistan and Iraq were elective wars: Our survival didn’t rest upon invasion. We toppled the Taliban regime because it provided safe haven for our enemy. It was partly punative, but mostly to preempt future attacks. Iraq was different. It was more, and it was a bigger gamble. Putting aside the humanitarian reasons, the threat of WMD, the violations of U.N. mandates, and the costly and untenable containment regime, Iraq was to be a beachhead to transform the mideast itself.
With cultural traditions still tied to the 11th century, Afghanistan will never become a first-rate power, and consequently will not be pivotal in the war on terrorism. But Iraq may. Iraq has water, the second largest oil reserves, and the 10th largest gas reserves. It has a rudimentary—but educated—middle-class. It could become the next “Germany” of the Middle East. Much like Iraq, there were “bad seeds” resisting our occupation force in Germany well into 1948. But we didn’t have to hunt down all of those Nazi holdouts, because most of them withered and died on the vine after we helped to reform Germany’s civic society.
Similarly, helping to liberalize Arab culture will push their societal norms in a direction that will marginalize Islamic fundamentalism. Thus, the transformation of a society, and the affect it has on those attitudes and beliefs that ultimately thrive in that culture, is where the war on terrorism should begin.
The following vignette from the history of microbiology contains a parallel to the debate about the relationship between terrorist groups and failed, rogue states:
Louis Pasteur conceded on his deathbed that bacteria are not primarily the cause of disease. In the end, he finally agreed with his critics that it was the feeding ground—the morbid matter within the body and upon which these micro-organisms feed—that determines the strain and pathogenicity of the germ (i.e.: whether the bacteria are helpful or harmful to the host). Renowned medical authority, Hans Selye, M.D., wrote in The Stress of Life (p. 205):
“Let me point out here parenthetically that Pasteur was sharply criticized by many of his enemies for failing to recognize the importance of the terrain. [i.e.: health of the cells and blood] They say he was too one-sidedly preoccupied with the apparent cause of disease: the microbe itself. There were, in fact, many debates about this between Pasteur and his great contemporary, Claude Bernard; the former insisted on the importance of the disease-producer, the latter on that of the body’s own equilibrium. [...] Pasteur [...] on his deathbed said to Professor A. Renon, who looked after him: ‘Bernard avait raison. Le germe n’est rien, c’est le terrain qui est tout.’ (Bernard was right. The microbe is nothing, the soil is everything.)”
Senator John Kerry seems to favor going after the “microbes” exclusively: He said that the war against terrorism is “primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation.” His solution for “conditioning the soil” in Iraq appears to favor the old shortsighted, anti-democratic strategy of propping up a “strongman” to keep a lid on political discord: In early April of 2004, Kerry said, “I have always said from Day 1 that the goal here in my judgment is a stable Iraq, not whether or not there’s a full democracy—I can’t tell what it’s going to be—but a stable Iraq.” Perhaps he feels we should return to the conflicted policy of arresting terrorists, while supporting repressive regimes that bribe terrorists to leave them alone and attack the West instead? That used to be the prescription for stability, but no longer.
By contrast, the President believes that this is a war, and not solely a terrorist hunt. Soon after 9-11, Bush put failed regimes on notice. He realized that the 20 year-old policy of waiting for an attack, hunting down the ‘perps’ and trying them in criminal court had failed to prevent the attacks on 9-11. September 11th taught him that while autocratic rule may yield regional stability for a period of time, in the long run it plants the seeds of resentment among the repressed. Into the void of political opposition flows religious fanaticism, where it gains a foothold THERE, and ultimately strikes at the doorstep of the autocrat’s sponsors, HERE.
In an address to the National Endowment for Democracy November, 2003, President Bush said, “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export.”
To get rid of roaches in your kitchen, do you spray insecticide on the dirty dishes in the sink, or do you clean the dishes? In the microbial world, the former method is known as antisepsis, and the latter, asepsis. Those who have understood the difference have benefited from that understanding. Because what we have learned about microbes is that the expression of any gene (virus) or bacterium is determined by its environment. Solely killing the germs, or the terrorists, does not succeed on its own. By fostering the spread of liberalism in the Mideast, we condition the “soil” there so that it cannot support the growth of radical fundamentalism.
Time will tell whether or not the U.S. can transform Iraq on the cheap, and with a velvet glove, compared to how it was done with Germany and Japan. Yet in the final analysis, we can only supply the Iraqis with the blueprints for this enormous undertaking. What they do with it is up to them. But the necessary first step in that direction was ‘regime change’. Tranformation of the Mideast would have been impossible while Saddam Hussein and his sons remained in power for another 30+ years. Saddam’s penchant for regional domination, and the poisons emanating from that society were too great.
Thus, much like Pasteur’s eventual realization of the ultimate origin of infectious disease, President Bush understood that “the soil is everything”.
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