Tag: Libyan Civil War

We cannot crusade against war without crusading implicitly against the State. And we cannot expect, or take measures to ensure, that this war is a war to end war, unless at the same time we take measures to end the State in its traditional form. The State is not the nation, and the State can be modified and even abolished in its present form, without harming the nation. – Randolph Bourne 1918

You might not have been taught this in your history class, but the United States has had its nose in Middle East affairs for over 70 years now. Specifically, there are a few dates that this relationship has in its timeline:

• 1957 – The Ba’ath Party is a small, underground Arab nationalist group that supports the creation of a pan-Arab state and at age 20, Saddam Hussein joins the party.
• 1959 – Saddam is selected by the Ba’ath Party to be part of seven-man hit squad to assassinate Iraqi leader Gen. Abdel Karim Kassem. The plot fails.  Saddam flees to Cairo and becomes caught up in Egypt’s own revolution under the charismatic Gamel Abdel Nasser, whose pan-Arabism Saddam finds appealing. Saddam also becomes a leader of the Ba’ath Party’s student cell in Cairo and reportedly regularly visits the U.S. embassy to meet with CIA agents interested in sparking Gen. Kassem’s overthrow.
• 1963 – Kassem is assassinated by members of the Ba’ath Party and the CIA helps the Ba’athists by providing lists of suspected communists for the party’s hit squads, who kill an estimated 800 people. Saddam returns home to Iraq and rejoins the party as an interrogator, torturer and killer. Nine months later, the army overthrows the Ba’ath Party and Saddam is jailed.
• 1968 -The Ba’ath Party seizes power in Iraq, this time under Ahmad Hassan Al Bakr, Saddam’s cousin. Bakr entrusts his 31-year-old relative Saddam with the most important job of all: running the state security apparatus to extinguish dissent both inside and outside the party. Within a year and a half, Saddam emerges as Bakr’s right hand man. CIA connections are intact.
• 1970s – As Saddam’s power and influence grows, it is clear that he has designs on the presidency himself, but he also knows that Bakr has powerful support from the army. Saddam begins to plot against the military establishment and to systematically remove Bakr’s closest colleagues.
• 1979 – Saddam stages a palace coup and President Bakr resigns for health reasons. Among Saddam’s first actions after assuming the presidency is purging the Ba’ath Party of any potential enemies.Several weeks into his presidency, Saddam calls a meeting of the Ba’ath Party leadership and insists it be videotaped. He announces there are traitors in their midst and reads out their names. One by one, the individuals are led out, never to be seen again. Tapes of the meeting are sent throughout the country, allowing Saddam to send a message to the Iraqi elite.
• 22SEP1980 – With U.S. encouragement, Hussein invaded Iran and during this costly eight-year war, the CIA built up Hussein’s forces with sophisticated arms, intelligence, training and financial backing. This cemented Hussein’s power at home, allowing him to crush the many internal rebellions that erupted from time to time, sometimes with poison gas. In one of the largest ground assaults since World War II, Saddam sends 200,000 troops across the Iranian border, initiating what would become a bloody eight-year conflict.
• 1981 – When Ronald Reagan becomes president, he endorses a policy aiming for a stalemate in the war so that neither side emerges from the war with any additional power. But in 1982, fearing Iraq might lose the war, the U.S. begins to help. Over the next six years, a string of CIA agents go to Baghdad. Hand-carrying the latest satellite intelligence about the Iranian front line, they pass the information to their Iraqi counterparts. The U.S. gives Iraq enough help to avoid defeat, but not enough to secure victory.
• 1986 -The Iran-Contra scheme is conceived by Reagan administration officials. Iran had been running out of military supplies in its war with Iraq and Reagan is advised that the U.S. could strike a deal in which secret arms sales to Iran could lead to the release of U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. Public exposure of the plan — which also involved illegally diverting the proceeds from the arms sales to the U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua — leads to the end of the U.S. policy. However, when Saddam learns of America’s actions, he vows never to trust the U.S. again.
• 1987 – U.S. supplied chemical weapons are used when Iraqi forces unleash a devastating gas attack in the town of Halabja, killing an estimated 5,000 Kurds.
• 1988 – Iraq-Iran War Ceasefire
• 02AUG1990 – (Sec. of State) James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to Iraq to emphasize that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. Apparently, Saddam Hussein took those words as a green light to invade Kuwait.
• 17JAN1991 – Gulf War I – one of the most egregious acts that the U.S. military committed against the Iraqis was to intentionally destroy civilian water and sewage treatment centers and electrical facilities.

• 1994 – Clinton sanctions on Iraq most effective when massive water and sewage issues plague a country, diseases such as cholera, measles, and typhoid had led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, and a skyrocketing infant mortality rate, with many more deaths by 2000.
• 30JAN2002 – US President Bush labels Iraq as part of the “Axis of Evil”
• 20MAR2003 – Based on a lie, that Iraq had WMDs, the US and their coalition partners invade Iraq. Why did we invade and occupy Iraq? We were told Iraq was strong and dangerous. We were told that sanctions were not working, and Saddam Hussein was not in compliance with the UN disarmament regime. We were told that Iraq was working on a viable chemical, biological and nuclear program, had many of these weapons already, and was also working with terrorists who targeted and would target the United States. It was suggested repeatedly in Presidential and Vice Presidential speeches, in statements by the Secretary of Defense and other administration mouthpieces that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the 9-11 attacks on the United States. While the Pentagon, CIA and State Department knew Iraq had no relationship with al Qaeda. Instead, we understood that they were competitors and adversaries on both governing and religious issues. Two things angered Osama bin Laden — US forces in Saudi Arabia, and a godless Ba-ath dictatorship in Iraq. We also knew that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11!

• 2007 – Iraq is a country that once had 26 million inhabitants, but two million have fled, two million more are internally homeless, and nearly a million have lost their lives since we invaded in 2003. The 80% who have homes remain huddled and fearful, often behind large walls that separate them from family and friend, in the name of ethnic purification, something that the U.S. military is actively pursuing because it tends to make for better statistics. Everyone in Iraq has been touched, and not in a good way, by our invasion and subsequent occupation.
• 2008 – Iraqi power vacuum and Syrian regime change appears on CIA vision statements prompting the birth of ISIS
• 2011 – ISIS grows during Arab Spring as CIA vision statements also talk about regime change in Libya
• 2014 – US and other coalition troops re-enter Iraq to ‘battle’ ISIS in Iraq
• 2020 – The US kills the Iranian general who was most effective against ISIS forces

Symptoms of codependency:

In its most basic terms, codependency occurs at one of the extremes of relationship dynamics – when two partners draw more from each other than from their own inner strength.
This is not a stable condition.
Codependency deepens as partner feedback tends to grow in importance and self-confidence steadily diminishes as a result.
The relationship becomes highly reactive and fraught, with mounting tensions. Invariably, one partner hits a limit and seeks a new source of sustenance.
This leaves the other feeling scorned, steeped in denial and blame, and ultimately with a vindictive urge to lash out in response.

Iraq, I ask you, are you there yet?

In Eric Margolis’ latest column he reminds us of what Osama bin Laden saw:

Before he was murdered, Osama bin Laden called this monster Baghdad embassy and its twin in Kabul, `crusader fortresses.’ That is indeed their role, and to serve as the nerve center for all Mideast operations by the US. Iraq enjoys some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Where the profit from Iraq’s mammoth oil exports go remains a closely guarded secret.

He goes on to talk about Iraq’s ‘rich’ history and experience going back 100 years even with the British when they were the imperialists of the day:

Imperial Britain ruled Iraq … using the RAF to smash all opposition to the British-installed puppet ruler in Baghdad. In the 1920’s Churchill even authorized the RAF to use poison gas against rebellious Iraqi Kurds (as well as Afghan Pashtun tribes).

True to form, the US abuses Iraq in a similar way:

Washington has imposed an air exclusivity zone there. Real control of flat, largely barren Iraq comes from the air. US war planes based there and in Qatar can blast anything that moves in Mesopotamia.

It is for the following reason that the US will not be quick to exit Iraq:

Iraq has become the central military base and inexhaustible oil reservoir for the US that was envisaged by the Bush administration and its neocons. That is a major step in the total US domination of the Mideast and its energy resources.

Iraq, have you hit your limit yet? To what degree will you go to remove the US from what should be your sovereign nation with the consent of the governed?

-SF1