Now that Iraq has been dismantled as a sovereign state and is being re-occupied by the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” led by the U.S. President George Bush Jr., we are wondering the likely implications of this neo-policy of diktat bonapartism and hegemony in the international scene. While we cannot compare President George Bush with Adolf Hitler, that most abhorrent and repellent figure of the 20th century history, nevertheless we feel dismayed that the flagrant aggression against Iraq is creating a new unwholesome precedent in international diplomacy. Either we are reverting back to colonialism or imperialism has gained a heightened momentum and assumed a more suffocating state-gobbling dimension.
As we may recall it was first Afghanistan and that was followed by Iraq and Iran and Syria are hotly on the table of U.S. foreign policy strategists, advisers and analysts . The United States and British imperialist views remain that ‘the world is much safer’ and that the rule of international morality in international relations ‘allow them’ to blatantly meddle and interfere in the international affairs of other states and whenever their perceived interests are endangered that it become justifiable and indeed an exigent imperative for them to interfere without regards to the principle of sovereignty or the charter of the United Nations.
Unfortunately the British and American imperialists equally control and dominate the world information dissemination apparatus. The so-called ‘western press’ has successfully used their press to disorient and misinform the world on contemporary international issues and hence has succeeded in controlling the minds of the people. The tragedy of the situation is that we do not seem to realize the extent to which we have become enslaved in the so-called new world order. A slave who knows what a slave is, and knows that he or she is a slave is already half free. This is why it is vital that we must keep objectively informed and abreast of developments on the international scene.
The most significant event so far in the re-colonization of Iraq remains, of course, the apprehension of the country’s former president Saddam Hussein on Saturday, December 13, 2003. This was gleefully celebrated by American and British media as “the end of Saddam”.
However, we do not seem to comprehend the dialectics of former Iraq President Saddam Hussein’s relationship with U.S. leaders. This relationship witnessed different metamorphosis at different periods of time. It was the dialectical and contradictory nature of this relationship that determined or sealed the uneventful fate of Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime (which was tolerated) as well as the re-colonization or to put in mildly form the re-occupation of Iraq and currently the unfolding consequences of Lebanonization.
Saddam Hussein’s meteoric political career started in 1957 when he joined the Hez-Bul-Ba’ath (the Ba’ath Party) at the age of 20. The Ba’ath Party was an admixture of pan Arab revolutionary nationalist movement and socialism. Though Iraq to some extent was predominantly a Muslim nation, Al-Ba’ath Party was a secular party drawing fanatical followership from across the nation of Iraq. Indeed the Hez-Bul Ba’ath was founded in 1952 by Michel Aflag, a Christian of Syrian nationality with a philosophy built on freedom, Arab unity and socialism and a united Arab nation with an eternal destiny and mission. The party had a profound appeal to the youth and commanded considerable influence in several Arab countries including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and the Persian Gulf. In fact the brief merger of Syria and Egypt under the moribund United Arab Republic between February 1958 and September 1961 took place and endured for long under the Baathist influence. It was under this party that Saddam pursued and consummated his political career.
Most writers have vociferously posited that Saddam Hussein was “a creature of the west ” and some have argued that it was the former Soviet Union that formidably armed him to the hilt. We cannot say with certainty that both propositions do not command some modicum of veracity. However, the December 20th issue of the Economist magazine did say…”that the bloody coup that brought the Hez-Bul-Baath Iraq (Iraq Baathist Party) to power in 1963 may have had some help from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It is not inconceivable that he CIA may have given some help after all the Iraqi Hez-bul-Baath was not the only movement in the Third Word to have hosted the acrimonious rivalry and competition between the then two super powers (the U.S. and the Soviet Union). We know too well the fate of Patrice Lumumba of Congo in 1961, Jacob Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954, Salvador Allende of Chile in 1963 and the continued onslaught against Fidel Castro of Cuba spanning over forty-five years. But we do not wish to pursue this any further.
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It appears that as we have said previously in this column that Saddam Hussein being a master and dean of brinkmanship may have profiteered from the two super powers by playing one against the other.
We know that following the success of Islamic fundamental revolution in Iran, which overthrow the pro western regime of Muhammed Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran in 1979, there was some concerns among the West and the regimes in the region that if the puritanical Islamic regime of Iran brought by the Mullahs was not checkmated, the whole region maybe overwhelmed in a widespread conflagration of radical Islamic fundamentalism. The West found it convenient to use Iraq to checkmate Iran. Saddam was buoyed into starting a costly and expensive war that lasted for almost nine years and may have consumed over one million lives and four hundred billion dollars as the western armed manufacturers were literally fanning the embers of the war. The west came to see Saddam as a bulwark against the perceived threat represented by Ayatollah Khomeni against the Arab states and oil. It was reported that the French sold him aircrafts and missiles and the Americans fed him with vital battlefield intelligence.
Saddam has been accused of brutal tyranny and dictatorship and mass murder. He possessed chemical and biological weapons and indeed had used it on his people in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq. He was said to be pursuing nuclear capability and hence represented a greater danger to Iraq, Iraqi’s neighbour and the free world. However one of the questions that we have never found answer to remains: why did America not invade Iraq in the second half of the 1980’s when Saddam actually used chemical and biological weapons on thousands of his own people (the Kurds) and his neighbours (Iranians)? At least as it was last year, Iraq was not really threatening any of his neighbours. As for the argument that he was a brutal dictator, it is quite obvious that Saddam was not in that category or boat alone.
In fact since the end of the Second World War to the present day, most of the regimes in third world countries have perpetrated untold tyranny and suffering on their people and some have been supported and kept in power by American rulers. We readily remember Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Mobutu Sese Seko of former Zaire, Shah of Iran, etc.
As for the issue of weapons of mass destruction, the question must be asked under what rights or law are some states allowed to develop, retain and possess these unnecessary weapons of mass destruction while other states must be stopped? Our possession call for total ban and elimination of all weapons of thermo-nuclear conflagration for a safer world. Why would we not pursue the more just and equitable goal of universal disarmament and total elimination of all fissile material?
While Saddam has been accused of attempting to occupy and dominate the Middle East oil states of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait which would have given him the control of nearly one half of the oil markets, the irony of the matter which is equally the reality of the situation is that the Anglo-American imperialists subjugated and took over Iraq not for the advertised spurious reason of disarming Iraq or to institute democracy in Arab state (when Saudi Arabia and other oil rich Arab states are still wallowing in ancient aristocratic feudalistic and oligarchic one family tyranny) but to dominate and control the world’s oil reserve and for the superfluous reason of teaching the new world, especially some European leaders (who opposed the war) a lesson – that American rulers can realize their hegemonic strategic objectives and protect their strategic interests anywhere in the world either alone or with the assistance of rapidly constructed coalitions of the willing.
Finally we must posit that it would be tantamount to idiocy and lunacy if any one had expected Iraq to defeat Anglo-American imperialists in Gulf War II. Most people never expect the war to last beyond three days given the highly lethalized arsenal and advanced technology of the Coalition of the Willing. Yet Saddam was able to direct the war for 21 days despite intelligence report that he may have perished on day one when the leadership decapitation attack was unleashed with laser-guided missiles. Even after the war ended, no body expected him to survive within the country amidst massive manhunt and the fact that he was a hated fellow both among his own people and by his neighbours, yet Saddam survived in Iraq for more than eight months. We think that the war was also a lesson for third world countries that the imperialists could over run your country anytime and one of the third world leaders who took that lesson serious was Col. Muamur Ghaddafi of Libya who has demonstrated his readiness to improve relations with the west. Whether this was a form of submission and compromise out of fear or whether he truly wants a rapprochement to improve his country. We do not really know.
Clement Chigbo, The Bahama Journal
Mr. Chigbo is an international peace activist, Barrister at Law, former Solicitor and Advocate, Attorney at Law (pro hac vice) Turks and Caicos Island, Registered associate Supreme Court of the Bahamas, and currently senior lecturer in Law at Success Training College, Bahamas. E-mail clemsweiss@hotmail.com.)
