Iraq has paid for America's war with millions dead

Culture  

Iraq has paid for America's war with millions dead 20 years after the war began, we have a terrible result 

 Of: 

Jan Guillou 

Published: Today 05.00  

This is a cultural article that is part of Aftonbladet's opinion journalism. 

Tony Blair, then Prime Minister of Great Britain, together with George W Bush, then US President. Photo: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE / AP  

CULTURE 

It could very well have been the case that Iraq would be a more beautiful and happier country today, even richer. If dried dates were still the country's most important export product.  

The "objective", or perhaps rather "realpolitik" reason why today's Iraq is, on the contrary, the Middle East's most destroyed, tormented, poisoned and decimated by genocide country thus rests on a geological coincidence: 25 percent (the figures vary) of the world's oil resources.  

That is the one grim conclusion one must land 20 years after Iraq War II ("Operation Iraqi Freedom").  

The second, for my part more personal conclusion, is that no pharaoh, king, caliph, dictator, president or other ruler in the Middle East's many-thousand-year history has created as great a disaster for his own kingdom as Saddam Hussein. In considerable competition.  

Nevertheless, he had brilliant prospects. A bit into the 1970s, the situation looked bright for Iraq. They had long since thrown out the British colonial power and nationalized their oil resources and used the huge export earnings to build the Arab world's most advanced education system, free education from preschool to university. Students and teachers from all over the Arab world made the pilgrimage to Iraq.   

They bet deliberately and in good time on a future without the finite oil, invested seemingly unprofitably a lot in building up industry and agriculture, gathered in the barns during these fat years for the lean years in an admittedly distant future without oil income.  

At the pass in 1975, one could discern the Arab world's first functioning welfare state. Then I was there together with Marina Stagh to write a book about this wonderful country. The book culminated in the conclusion that "only a comprehensive war can prevent Iraq from becoming a major power in the region". Because that's how it looked.  

Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan Al Bakr was an old man who didn't make much of a fuss, apparently devoting himself mostly to the more decorative duties that came with the office. The real power seemed to lie elsewhere. Probably among the legions of technocrats, I guessed. It was wrong. Power was already in the hands of the unknown vice-president Saddam Hussein, a long-shot who began his career as a revolutionary troublemaker and petty assassin in the nationalist Baath Party that was now in power. 

No one could have guessed at the time that this Saddam Hussein, apart from giving bombastic speeches, would exchange the welfare and construction policy for war. Perhaps not even himself when he succeeded Al Bakr as president in 1978. 

Two years later, the United States had gained a new mortal enemy in the region in the theocratic dictatorship of Iran. The American embassy in Tehran was occupied and the staff were taken hostage. An American liberation attempt failed. 

Exactly how much the United States, now under President Ronald Reagan, encouraged Saddam Hussein to go to war with Iran, we do not know. But military support was offered in the form of chemical weapons and satellite reconnaissance against the Iranian troops, and Saddam Hussein expected a glorious and easy victory in a matter of weeks. 

A Saddam Hussein statue is toppled in Baghdad in 2003. Photo: TEL / AP 

 

But that wasn't the point. What Saddam Hussein did not know was that Israel, to a corresponding degree, and of course in agreement with the United States, would back Iran in the war. The idea was that the two regimes hateful to Israel and the US would fight without winning until they bled to death. So it happened. 

After eight years of devastating war with upwards of a million casualties, peace was made and Iran and Iraq both declared victory, retreating with deep wounds and no thought of winning any war of revenge. But this was the beginning of Iraq's downfall and the country's 40-year hell under Saddam Hussein. 

We do not know exactly how Saddam Hussein subsequently got the less than brilliant idea to start a new war fairly immediately after the disastrous war against Iran to incorporate Kuwait into Iraq. Rather, we do not know to what extent the US gave him the impression that it supported the project. Saddam Hussein himself, however, seems to have floated in that delusion. Then we arrive at 1990 and the beginning of the definitive downfall of Iraq. The "victory" in the quick war against Kuwait led to disaster.

The United States, now under President George Bush I, pushed through both martial law and an extensive sanctions program at the UN. The war itself, "Operation Desert Storm", was over in 100 hours. As one American general put it: "Saddam was kind enough to line up his entire defense in a confined space and hand us a driver." 

The Iraqi military was annihilated. But the war was not over there. American and British attack aircraft subsequently rampaged freely (“no-fly zone”) in Iraqi airspace, knocking out all electricity and water supplies and all sewage treatment plants. In this way, the entire Iraqi society was paralyzed by extensive disease epidemics (the sewage treatment plants!) and famine. Spare parts for bombed treatment plants were not allowed to be imported, the UN sanctions policy stopped that.  

British Prime Minister Tony Blair embarrassed himself forever when he said he "knew" that Iraq could mobilize weapons of mass destruction "within half an hour" which would then threaten the existence of all of Europe  

The idea was that these devastating measures would convince the Iraqi people of the disadvantages of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and the advantages of democracy, that is, market economy and privatization of the oil industry. 

This biological and economic warfare went on for 13 (!) years and caused, among other things, the death of 576,000 children, according to the UN's conservative calculations.  

"Yes, it was worth it" was the cynical response of the then US ambassador to the UN, later Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright when she was asked to comment on the mass death of Iraqi children caused by prolonged biological warfare.  

After the terrorist attack on New York on September 11, 2001, the United States, or more formally NATO, NATO, as the United States invoked Article 5 of the NATO Mutual Assistance Treaty, found itself in a frustratingly protracted war in Afghanistan, the "War on Terror." That war produced no concrete results, above all no quick victories. The regime in Washington, now underGeorge Bush II, soon lost patience. War in Afghanistan was not enough and even if the terrorists of September 11 were Saudis, they could not willingly go to war against the ally Saudi Arabia. But the US demanded revenge, which Bush II also promised very firmly. What to do? 

In 2002, US Vice President Dick Cheney launched the astonishing hypothesis that a shattered Iraq threatened the whole world with secret "weapons of mass destruction", so the US must go to war again to "finish the job".  

This time it was not possible to get the UN on board. But Britain's Tony Blair, Denmark, Poland and the Swedish People's Party leader Jan Björklund (Göran Persson, however, said no to Swedish war efforts). Brief but intense international debate followed. British Prime Minister Tony Blair shamed himself forever when he said he "knew" that Iraq could mobilize weapons of mass destruction "within half an hour" which would then threaten the existence of all of Europe. So nuclear weapons?  

At home in Sweden, the extremely bomb-liberal former People's Party leader Per Ahlmark lashed out at UN weapons inspectors, especially former party comrade Hans Blix, because they did not find evidence of "weapons of mass destruction" during their inspections in Iraq. According to Ahlmark, the explanation that Hans Blix was known as "easily tricked and weak" was also a cheater in general. Ahlmark himself "knew", however, that Iraq had large stocks of both chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction and almost certainly nuclear weapons. 

Demonstration at Sergels Torg in Stockholm, against the invasion of Iraq, on March 20, 2003

These not only unreasonable but also obvious lies were perceived by a wide world opinion as pretexts for war which of course was about oil and not about saving Europe from Saddam Hussein. Peace demonstrations were held around the world with millions of participants. For the last time in our time, as it stands now. 

 

If the rise of IS became the US's most counterproductive effort in the "War on Terror" the wars in Iraq   became the US's most counterproductive effort for democracy 

 

Because the war in 2003 could not be stopped with peace demonstrations, moreover the determination in the circle around George Bush II was too great. As an additional argument, the gang in the White House had now added that Iraq was the center of Islamist terrorism and Baghdad was thus the most logical target in the "War on Terror". The USA with its coalition of the "willing" of course won another brilliant victory against the disarmed and defenseless Iraq. And this time the country was occupied, but without a single "weapon of mass destruction" being found.  

 

The stated idea now was that democracy would be introduced by decree from the newly appointed American governor, or viceroy or whatever he should be called, Paul Brenner. Democracy meant that all state Iraqi assets, including the oil industry, would be privatized and offered on the free market, that is, to American companies. But also that all civil servants, teachers and officers belonging to the ruling Baath party (450,000 men) would be dismissed or murdered by specially established death squads according to the Latin American model.  

 

To the alleged surprise of the US occupying power, the Iraqi population did not greet these democratic reforms with jubilation. Even when Saddam Hussein was captured and the Americans had him hanged, confidence in democracy did not rise. On the contrary, the resistance grew and with it the reprisals of the occupying power, executed with a private army of 146,000 men that could kill freely because it was not subject to any martial law. 

 

As a further measure of democracy, the occupying power established secret concentration camps for suspects. The largest detention facility, Camp Bucca outside Umm Qasr in southern Iraq, held at most 26,000 terrorist suspects, who were either said to have shown Islamist leanings or were fired Iraqi army officers.  

 

Camp Bucca consequently became a university for IS where the inmates managed the teaching themselves. The American jailers didn't understand Arabic and didn't have a clue what was going on. This is how today's most hideous and vengeful terrorist movement, IS, was created right under the nose of the occupying power. It became America's most counterproductive contribution to the war on terror.  

 

The Iraqis have had to pay for the American warfare with a completely shattered country and millions of dead, not "hundreds of thousands" as it is usually stated in the morning press, as a result of the chemical warfare of the USA and Great Britain, large parts of the country are still poisoned. Consequently, both child mortality and cancer rates are extremely high. Water purification and electricity still do not work, despite the fact that the purely military occupation of the United States ended 13 years ago and was replaced by a corrupt and cooperative obedience regime.  

 

If the rise of IS became the US's most counterproductive effort in the "War on Terror" the wars in Iraq became the US's most counterproductive effort for democracy 

 

But neither the US nor the UK politicians responsible for the genocide in Iraq need fear a UN war crimes tribunal. As little as Vladimir Putin, although for partly different reasons. Which makes sense.