I have honestly been wondering for the last 7 years now why George Bush decided to invade and occupy Iraq. After much consideration and looking at both mainstream and fringe conspiracy theories, here are my thoughts and conclusions.
-You need to learn Saddam Hussein's, Iraq's and the Bush's background. Then the reasons why Dubya invaded become not so much a mysterty - as an obvious repeating of history.
Here's the little known life story of Saddam Hussein (born 1937). In 1959 and then again in 1963 he participated in CIA supported coups against Iraq's government (which had itself overthrown the country's old monarchy in 1958 and had grown quite corrupt) the second of which succeded. He eventually became Vice President of Iraq in 1968 and was considered a bulwark against communism by the CIA in the 1960s and 1970s (along with many other brutal dictators now considered the US's greatest enemies). He oversaw many programs which modernised Iraq and by the 1980s had brought electricity to nearly every corner of the country and hugley increased its literacy rate, up till this point he was actually a pretty awesome guy.
Then in 1979 he finally went badass, he forced his boss to resign and executed hundreds of members of the government, giving positions of power to those loyal to him. He'd also pissed off the Soviets in 1978 by cracking down on local communists, so he was actually sorta friends with the west until the 1991 Gulf War pissed them off too. He also pissed off the Kurds by not giving them their independence and fighting a war to keep them Iraqi and never stopped pissing off the muslims because he was far too secular, under his rule women were actually given many rights in Iraq and it was the only arab country in the Middle East not run by Sharia law.
One group he hadn't pissed off was the French, who helped him start building a nuclear reactor before the Israelis bombed and destroyed it in 1981 (they were very pissed at him too).
Finally he pissed off his big eastern neighbors the Iranians. In 1979 the US backed Shah of Iran was overthrown in an Islamic revolution (quite similiar to the way US-backed dictators are being overthrown throughout the Arab world today) and Saddam saw his quite secular rule was threatened by the growing influence of the fundemantalist Shi'ite muslims (plus he and the new Iranian ayatollah went way back to the point where the two men absolutely couldn't stand each other). Skirmishes over border disputes between Iran and Iraq started a full 10 months before Saddam invaded the country in September 1980. He was supported and financed by not only the Arab states but also the US and Europe (the only country that didn't jump on the bandwagon was the USSR, which remained neutral).
Of note was that Iraq's new found 'allies' conveniently overlooked Saddam's use of chemical warfare against the Iranians and Kurds and his attempts to get nuclear weapons, a fact of history George Bush neglected to mention when he warned of WMD's in Iraq in 2002. In fact many of the chemical weapons Saddam used were supplied to Iraq by West German companies.
In 1988 Saddam launched the largest chemical warfare attack on civillians in history against thousands of Kurds in the north of the country to terrorize the population further. The US, it appears, was fully aware of the attack but to save its credibility (the US government couldn't, of course, be seen by the world to be supporting such acts of terror) blamed Iran for years afterwards. It was only in the late '90s that they reversed their position and were able to point to the attack as an example of 'Iraqi terrorism' to try and justify their invasion. Talk about an Orwellian government.
In 1988 the war, which claimed well over a million lives, finally ended and Saddam found that his country's pockets were desperately empty of cash. He'd borrowed so much money off his Arab neighbors and the US that rebuilding his country's smashed infrastructure would have taken many years, however he still had a powerful military left over from the decade of war with Iran and had a firm totalitarian grip on the country,so to him the solution must have semed obvious- invade Kuwait.
Kuwait refused to forget about the $30 billion Iraq owed them, plus they held about 10% of the world's oil reserves (about as much as Iraq) with only a tenth the population, and so it was not long before Saddam was gauging the US response to a possible invasion.
Ronald Reagan had given Iraq more than $40 billion in the 1980s, partly to fight Iran and partly as bribes for Saddam to not turn to the Soviets. This aid had made Iraq the 'third-largest recipient of US assistance' in the world at the time and convinced Saddam that the US would not sacrifice its close relationship with him for the sake of Kuwait, which also happened to be the most anti-Israel and Soviet friendly regime in the Middle East. Saddam promptly invaded and annexed the country.
The US (specifically President George Bush Snr.) took several days to make up its mind how to respond, there were many pros and cons to US retaliation. If the US stood by then the Gulf states (Saudi Arabia has been the US's bitch since the 1940s, oil makes you very attractive in the eyes of industrialised western nations) would get very nervous that Iraq was doing to them the very thing they'd bribed Saddam for 10 years to prevent Iran doing. The price of oil would also go up dramatically (Saddam needed to sell it at a higher price to pay of his country's debts and rebuild its ruined cities) and Britain, would you believe it, had billions of dollars invested in Kuwait that had just gone down the toilet.
Bush decided to 'liberate' Kuwait and before long had unleashed the most awesome can of whoop-arse anyone has ever unleashed on anyone else EVER and kicked the Iraqi's ass so hard that the country never really recovered. Saddam's stunning defeat after a decade of war and oppresion (either supported or ignored by the US, mind you) saw rebellions start all over Iraq which Saddam even more ruthlessly suppressed. Of note is that this 'liberation' of Kuwait saw the reinstating of its old monarchy, with women in Kuwait not getting the right to vote in democratic elections until 2006.
All throughout the 1990s the place was never really at peace, either Saddam was executing someone or the Americans and British were bombing someplace or the UN was knocking on the door demanding to inspect the Iraqi's weapons (Saddam often slammed the door in their face, something he probably regretted later when the US cited his lack of co-operation as a justification for war, it did make people wonder if Iraq really did have WMD's). All throughout the Bush's and Clinton's terms in office they were trying to come up with a way to overthrow Saddam without turning the whole region into a disaster area or upsetting their constituents and voters back home. You could compare Iraq in the 1990s to Libya today, lets hope that doesn't escalate into a ground invasion.
The sanctions against Iraq hadn't worked (Iraq was so reliant on oil exports that only humanitarian aid prevented the whole country from starving, think the Gaza strip today but worse and 20 times larger), the bombing was just embarrasing the US and hardening the Iraqi's resolve and the Muslim world was growing more extremist and anti-US by the day. At one point in the year 2000 Saddam did something a little crazy and ordered that Iraqi oil was to be sold in Euros instead of US dollars, unlike every other OPEC country since WW2 and much to the chagrin of the US government and a helluva lot of big oilmen.
Then along came 9/11.
Finally the US had, if not a real justification, than at least something they could sell to the fearful and bloodthirsty American public as a justification, for removing the ugly Iraqi blemish on American pride, credibility and honor (snort!). Bush decided to kill three birds with one stone by removing Saddam and neutralising the negative publicity the long-term standoff was causing (think how much credibility the Israeli's lose every year blockading and bombing the Gaza strip) as well as removing Saddam as a real menace (which he no doubt was, we can at least thank Bush for executing someone as ruthless as Saddam, even if he and his buddies got away scot free after having supported him for decades, and if Saddam was never really a threat to the western world) while exploiting the panic in the US caused by 9/11 and the 'War on Terror' to boost his own standing and that of the Republican party in general.
Bush's 'Axis of Evil' speech, the invasion of Afghanistan, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the sudden vilification of Muslims and Arabs (to this day in most American's minds they are the same thing) and the passing of the USA patriot act (all in late 2001 or 2002, the year between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq) are all examples of the Bush administration either exploiting the American populace's panic or an actual part of that panic (its kinda hard to tell). These however, turned into mere stepping stones to an oppurtunity Bush decided he couldn't miss to resolve the situation with Iraq.
He decided to lie (at worse; greatly exaggerate at best) and say that
- Iraq had or was developing WMD's
- Saddam planned to use them in acts of terror against the US
- Saddam had links to Al Qaeda and 9/11
- The Iraqi's, who'd endured a decade of US sanctions and bombings, would greet the Americans as liberators
After swallowing all this the US public, still reeling from 9/11, was thoroughly convinced that doing anything but invading Iraq would be a grevious error that could lead to another 9/11 or worse. 80-90% of the populace initially supported the war, but a few years and some tens of thousands of coalition casualties later, that number eventually dropped to about a third, as did Bush's approval ratings.
This sums up I think, the most likely reasoning behind the invasion. Its all about scapegoating, just as witches are still burned today in the Central African Republic whenever there's a bad harvest. Bush had a problem, the standoff with Iraq, and the means to solve it, the way the American people rallied around him as soon as he declared the War on Terror. All he needed to do was somehow connect them. However the problem was that everyone basically knew straight away that Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda has been responsible for 911 and that Saddam Hussein, despite how happy he may have felt when the news reached him, had no connection to the attacks whatsoever. In the end Bush decided to tell the world the aforementioned lies, all of which eventually became unstuck.
Think of it using a modern day example - the Israelis know that every Palestinian they kill in Gaza or the West Bank causes them to lose a hell of a lot of international support and further tarnishes their reputation, whether they're actually killing real insurgents that are trying to wipe out the state of Israel or shooting down innocent bystanders hardly matters. This was just the sort of quagmire the Americans had gotten themselves into when they decided to vilify and kick Saddam out of Kuwait without bothering to invade all the way to Baghdad. They needed a solution and after 911 they found one.
I'm going to make a prediction here, that the next time a suicide bomber kills 50 people in a busy Tel Aviv marketplace the Israelis will immediately do a George Bush and try and use the implications of the attack to their advantage. Its a greater priority to blame it on who they want to blame it on before they actually look into who did it. Be aware if this happens, it will probably be operation Cast Lead all over again, and this time the Israelis might try and stay for the long haul as the Americans so foolishly and disastrously did in Iraq. I also don't want to sound biased against Israel and America here, other countries and factions do much the same thing. Dictatorships especially can get away with it. In fact one of the best things about the democratic system is it usually prevents this kind of conspiracy from happening. Bush's invasion of Iraq though is just one colossal example that is all the more stark because it shouldn't be possible in a modern democracy. No wonder so many people, myself included, fear that fascism is becoming the norm in the US.
Was it a noble lie?
I'm not the kind of idealist who demands a perfect world. Whenever I encounter someone who claims to have strict 'principles' that they always abide by, I of course ask this old question. If you were in Anne Frank's house in 1942 and the Nazi's knocked on the door and asked if she was home, would you lie? Similiar questions can be matched up with other principles people claim to have, like never killing/torturing another human being. That doesn't mean by the way, that I approved of the Bush administration's use of torture. It didn't work (it DID NOT lead to the US getting Osama Bin Laden by the way, look it up) and thousands of often innocent people have been subjected to harsh treatment in places like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base since 2001. But that's a slightly different issue.
In this case, I don't think you can call it a noble lie. I think Bush partly made the decision based on what would benefit him and his party, not the country and the world as a whole. He considered looking tough on terror more important than actually trying to solve the problem. In a way you can't blame him, politicians acting this way has been an evident failing of American democracy for quite a while now, just look up 'mandatory minimums' and the state of America's prison and legal systems. He just took it further, its the deeply corrupt system that needs to be fixed. This is why I'm starting to become convinced America, someway, somehow, is going to endure a revolution against the corporate fascism that has been dragging it down for almost half a century now. Things will continue to get worse until that happens.
Other points worth mentioning-
-I hardlymentioned oil
Although Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was motivated by oil money, the US in 2003 was not in an economic state anything like Iraq in 1990 (though these days it almost is). Neither was George Bush more inclined to invade Iraq for oil simply because he was a 'Texas oilman,' a point I think many people make far too lightly. Looking at Iraqi oil production today (which is just beginning to recover now around 2010) most of the companies extracting it are either Iraqi or Chinese (although BP is there), making it unlikely that the original US plan was to invade the country and get rich off its oil, despite how simple and attractive an idea this is to swallow. It is likely a factor, especially considering the Iraqi shift to Euros in 2000, but had that not happened it would hardly have changed the dynamics of the situation too much.
-The military-industrial complex?
It is true that more civillian and defense department contractors operate in Iraq and Afghanistan than there are coalition soldiers. Several hundred thousand have been employed since the start of these two wars (although admittedly most of them have been Iraqi or Afghani). No doubt some companies have made billions from the wars (Blackwater Worldwide comes to mind, since it received several major contracts from the Pentagon that weren't offered to any other company. It's recently changed its name by the way, its new title is the far less provocative 'Xe'). In total US defense spending has just about doubled since Bush came to office in 2000 from $300 billion to $700 billion and much of that goes straight to large US armaments manufacturers and into the pockets of their CEOs. High level corruption and secrecy? Almost definitely. A conspiracy to drag the the US into unwinnable and costly wars to make profits? Perhaps, but only as a secondary considration at the most I think, not the primary one.
-Geopolitical grand strategy
Some have said that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are part of a larger, far more long-term plan. Afghanistan, they point out, is right smack-bang in the middle of Asia between Russia, China, India and Iran, four of the US's greatest potential rivals. Iraq also, is near Turkey, Russia and Iran and its occupation could be thought of as asserting US dominance of the Middle East. 'Defending' Saudi Arabia and ensuring the continued hegemony of Israel in the region are possible goals of the US. This vein of thought is stressed by some 'experts' like trends forecaster George Friedman. I think it may have some merit to it, but it does make the old line 'when something has occured either due to incompetence or conspiracy, go with incompetence every time' come to mind.
