Picture by The Unapologetic Mexican. Crossposted to Ruins of Empire.
And so ends the year 2006 with another Saddam diary. Saddam death brings no satisfaction to me or to many in Iraq. His death does brings us full circle. From the days when the U.S. funneled billions to finance Saddam's cruel war against his foreign and domestic enemies to today's blood soak streets of Baghdad . I could write entire books about it but I think this example (by way of Juan Cole's excellent blog) should suffice:
' The new American alliance might have been a public relations debacle if Iran succeeded in its 1984 attempt to have Iraq directly condemned at the United Nations for use of chemical weapons. As far as possible, Shultz wanted to weasel out of joining such a U.N. condemnation of Iraq. He wrote in a cable that the U.S. delegation to the U.N. "should work to develop general Western position in support of a motion to take ‘no decision’ on Iranian draft resolution on use of chemical weapons by Iraq. If such a motion gets reasonable and broad support and sponsorship, USDEL should vote in favor. Failing Western support for ‘no decision,’ USDEL should abstain." Shultz in the first instance wanted to protect Hussein from condemnation by a motion of "no decision," and hoped to get U.S. allies aboard. If that ploy failed and Iraq were to be castigated, he ordered that the U.S. just abstain from the vote. Despite its treaty obligations in this regard, the U.S. was not even to so much as vote for a U.N. resolution on the subject!
Shultz also wanted to throw up smokescreens to take the edge off the Iranian motion, arguing that the U.N. Human Rights Commission was "an inappropriate forum" for consideration of chemical weapons, and stressing that loss of life owing to Iraq’s use of chemicals was "only a part" of the carnage that ensued from a deplorable war. A more lukewarm approach to chemical weapons use by a rogue regime (which referred to the weapons as an "insecticide" for enemy "insects") could not be imagined. In the end, the U.N. resolution condemned the use of chemical weapons but did not name Iraq directly as a perpetrator. '
Iraq was and is a strange place. At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union battle for control of the world in such places as Central America, Southwest Africa and in Afghanistan. But in Iraq both sides put their differences aside and pumped Saddam's regime full of weapons and cash. WMD technology came from France (nuclear), Germany (chemical) and the U.S. (biological). France and Russia equiped Iraq's air force with the lattes fighter jets. Even Canada go into the act, by way of South Africa providing the apartheid regime with her most powerful weapon, Gerald Bull, the best artillery engineer of the 20th century. Bull tried to fulfill his dream of a supergunwith Iraqi oil revenues, but died at the hands of a western intelligence service (Mossad, CIA, MI6, take your pick).
As long as Saddam kept the oil flowing and killed Iranians, the U.S. not only ignored his monstrosities, but payed for them. What mattered was that Iran was contained. That is until the Cold War was over. Even then Saddam was not on Washington's shit list. It took the poorly planed and executed invasion of Kuwait to do that. He went from been a useful Cold War proxy to Hitler's third cousin, twice removed. It would take 12 years and an the underachieving scion of the Bush/Preston clan to take Saddam down once and for all.
Today we are faced with a war that grinds on with out an end in sight. Today we come full circle in Iraq. And for the record that is a somewhat younger Donald Rumsfeld in that pic, which brings me to this quote by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf:
he is neither a
strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a
tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that he's a
great military man-I want you to know that."
-General H. Norman Schwarzkopf 1991
The sad part is that this quote fits both men all too well.