WHATEVER
HAPPENED TO APRIL GLASPIE?
Eight
days before the outbreak of the Gulf war, Saddam summoned
April
Glaspie, then the American ambassador to Iraq, and launched
into a tirade. He railed about the pernicious role of the
British in the region, reminded her that without Iraq the
Iranians would not be stopped from taking over the whole
region by anything short of nuclear weapons, and complained
about the "economic aggression" of Kuwait and the United
Arab Emirates in agitating for lower oil prices. He made
it all too clear that he intended to use force to stop what
he claimed were Kuwaiti incursions onto Iraqi territory
in the so-called Neutral Zone. Glaspie replied that the
Americans, too, had experience with "the colonialists,"
which indeed seems odd given that the US and these very
"colonialists" would be jointly bombing the hell out of
Iraq is a little over a week's time. As for the price of
oil, Ms. Glaspie opined that "We have many Americans who
would like to see the price go above $25 because they come
from oil-producing states." At a time when the US secretary
of state was none other than James Baker, a Texan who virtually
personifies Big Oil, the implications of what the US Ambassador
was telling Saddam were inescapable. Glaspie went
on to say:
"I
think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I
admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country.
I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion
is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your
country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts,
like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the
American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction
we had during this period was that we should express no
opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated
with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen
to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this
problem using any suitable methods . . ."
YELLOW
AND GREEN
If
that was a diplomatic yellow light in response to Saddam's
stated intent to use force, then the President's message
to Saddam was a green light for the invasion. As
Elaine Sciolino has pointed out in an
interview with CSPAN, Dubya's daddy didn't even mention
the tens of thousands of Iraqi troops poised to strike at
Kuwait, and never raised the issue of Kuwaiti sovereignty
or declared his intent to defend it. "It was a very, very
weak memo," says Sciolino,
a reporter for the New York Times and author of The
Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Power and the War
in the Gulf, "and it is much more dramatic than
even April Glaspie's transcript which has gotten so much
attention. So that Saddam didn't really think that there
was going to be a huge hue and cry when he invaded Kuwait."
Saddam thought what Glaspie and her superiors wanted him
to think, and the rest is history.
THE
SURVIVOR
"This
will not stand," the First Bush declared, and soon expanded
the war aims of the US from simply defending Kuwait to invading
Iraq. But a decade later Saddam Hussein is still standing,
and to the Arab "street" – the teeming, resentful Arab
masses, seething with anger at the US for its Israel-centric
policy in the Middle East – he is standing considerably
taller. After ten years of sanctions, and nearly continuous
bombing, the Americans and their British allies haven't
managed to land a bomb directly on their taunting antagonist,
nor have they managed to starve him and his people out of
existence – although this isn't because they didn't
make a mighty effort.
NO
CLEAN SHEETS
The
barbarism of the sanctions is underscored by an aside in
Ron
McKay's excellent piece in the Scottish Sunday Herald
on what "depleted"
uranium is doing to Basra. Describing the hospitals
of Basra, McKay writes: "The patients lie on sheetless beds
because detergents are banned on the grounds that they can
be put to dual use – a crude bomb manufactured from
a box of Persil, presumably."
LAUNDRY
DETERGENT – WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION
In
the perfervid imagination of our deranged rulers, detergent
is a weapon of mass destruction, it has a "dual
use" and must be embargoed lest Saddam unleashes the
lethal potential of Tide.
The real purpose of such restrictions is to completely dehumanize
and defeat the Iraqi people. Imagine life with no clean
sheets! But in ten years they have not succeeded: politically,
Saddam's position is more secure than ever, and it turns
out that his reported ill health was merely wishful thinking
on the part of the Iraqi opposition in exile. What US and
Britain have been able to do is inflict a lot of suffering.
The hospitals of Basra, McKay reports, "are full of young
people suffering from horrendous tumors, most of them not
even born when the Gulf war ended." While the
fingernails and hair of children who played in the "depleted"
uranium-soaked fields of Kosovo fall out, and more
fall sick and die, the US and the Brits refuse to acknowledge
their own documented
worst fears
about the new weaponry and its effects. What else do
we need to know before we realize that we are being ruled
by moral and mental degenerates, who somehow believe that
the concept of war crimes cannot apply to them.
CONTINUITY
The
"depleted" uranium controversy reminds us how the course
of US foreign policy generally stays unchanged in its essentials
from one administration to the next. It was the First Bush
who pissed radioactive poison on Iraq, and the Great Pants-dropper
soon followed up by similarly defecating all over the former
Yugoslavia. Is the Second Bush even now unzipping, getting
ready to unleash yet another load of irradiated
waste products on Iraq from a safe height?
GOING
AFTER IRAQ
The
very
first words out of Colin Powell's mouth, after it was
formally announced that he would be Secretary of state-designate,
were that he intended to "re-energize" the sanctions against
Iraq, and he strongly implied that Saddam's overthrow was
a hope we should do more than wish for. The selection of
Donald
Rumsfeld as the new defense secretary, with the ultra-hawkish
Paul Wolfowitz ensconced as his deputy, ensures that
US policy in the region will become even more militant and
irrational: both Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz signed
a letter urging the Congress to pass legislation arming
the divided,
disoriented, and largely antidemocratic
Iraqi opposition, and the Clinton administration, in
one of its final acts, authorized
the release of $12 million to organize a revolution
from within Iraq. The plan, which doesn't provide the Iraqi
"revolutionaries" with any arms, is apparently for the Iraqi
National Council to set up distribution points for goods
embargoed elsewhere, and thus set up "liberated" zones controlled
by the opposition that could be expanded outward.
EMBRACING
CLINTONISM
This
foreign policy bequest to the incoming administration is
received with open arms by Bush advisors such as Richard
Perle, an ultra-hawk who opines that Team Bush (II)
will embrace this Clintonian initiative. "It's not a question
of blocking them in or forcing them into a situation they
would object to," he said. "My guess is they will wish to
support the opposition." As to whether this means backing
up the "liberated zones" with military force once Saddam
attacks them remains to be seen. But here again we see the
essential continuity of American foreign policy as hegemonistic,
aggressive, and relentlessly focused on the oil-rich Middle
East. This hasn't changed in ten years, or twenty, but there
is reason to hope that it can and will change as we enter
the real new millennium.
CONSERVATIVES
VERSUS THE "NEW WORLD ORDER"
When
the First Bush got up on his high horse and proclaimed the
advent of "a
New World Order," his thin patrician lips forming the
syllables of this ominous phrase so as to give it an almost
lascivious lilt, a great many conservatives were naturally
repulsed. The phrase offended the stern republican (small-r)
sensibilities of traditional conservatives, who largely
advised abstention from the temptations of empire, which
they associated with an advanced state of decadence. "There
are plenty of things worth fighting for," said Pat Buchanan,
"but lowering the price of gas by ten cents a barrel is
not one of them." A decade before the attack on the USS
Cole, Buchanan asked:
"How
is such a war to end? After destroying Iraq's military and
regime and driving its army out of Kuwait, who keeps them
out? Of the answer is US troops, will not those troops become
targets of the same terrorists who picked off our Marines
in Lebanon?"
THE
BOOMERANG EFFECT
The
fight for a foreign policy that puts the interests of America
and Americans first has engaged
the conservative imagination ever since the end of the
cold war and the discovery – or rediscovery –
that the main enemy is in Washington D.C. (yes, no matter
which party is in power). The Gulf war, and the Bushian
rhetoric accompanying it, heightened their hostility to
internationalism. The Kosovo disaster only confirmed the
sneaking suspicion that government intervention abroad has
the same effect abroad as it does at home – only in
the case of the US Marines in Lebanon, the USS Cole, and
the victims of the bombings at US bases in Saudi Arabia,
the boomerang effect was spectacularly and immediately fatal.
It was, after all, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives
that gave Clinton the most trouble over the Kosovo war,
and GOP congressional leaders are calling for the US to
withdraw from the Balkans. The logic of their position will
eventually force them to call for US withdrawal from the
Arabian peninsula. Events in the Middle East are fast rendering
our traditional policy of unconditional support to the House
of Saud irrelevant. The sidelining of King Faisal, and the
rise of the heir apparent, Crown
Prince Abdullah, will force the US to confront the issue
the fuels the popularity of Osama bin Laden as an Arab folk
hero: the continued presence of foreign troops on Saudi
soil, which is a religious and political affront to the
great majority of Saudi citizens. Their new king will reflect
the sentiments of his people, or else risk the loss of legitimacy
– and the potential end of the House of Saud, which
could wind up in the same dustbin of history wherein resides
the Iranian
Shah and his fellow
Pahlavis.
GEOPOLITICAL
CHESS
As
a prelude to the expected fireworks in the Middle East,
Afghanistan may become the latest battleground in the Bushian
attempt to seize the oil fields of the Middle East. The
US has been making
noises about a joint Russian-American drive to drive
the Taliban from
power, but Putin is no fool and Moscow, preoccupied with
Chechnya, is unlikely to get drawn back to that particular
briar patch. Putin is furthermore very much concerned about
American incursions into the Caucasus, which is one reason
for his
recent visit to Azerbaijan, the first visit by a Russian
leader to the region in recent memory. The elaborate game
of geopolitical chess being played at the top of the world
is going into high gear, now that an administration that
is not only beholden to Big Oil but actually is Big
Oil has taken over the direction of US foreign policy. Afghanistan
is one door to the oil-rich Caucasus, so is pro-Western
Georgia
(which now wants
to join NATO!) and Iraq is another: which door Dubya
chooses is a matter of military and political opportunity,
as well as chance, but whichever one he walks though will
involve a major military operation. Remember, these are
the people who are formally committed to the so-called Powell
Doctrine, which, in essence, is the principle that US
military force is not to be considered or applied lightly:
once the decision to intervention has been made, it must
be carried out with "overwhelming force."
SMALL
MERCIES
When
I consider the kind of change we can expect from the new
administration, I am struck by this theme of continuity
that underlies US foreign policy, particularly in the Middle
East,. Instead of the slow death by "depleted" uranium poisoning
and the effects of the embargo, Iraqis can look forward
to a quick death in a hail of cluster bombs. This is a particularly
obscure example of God's mercy, but surely Team Bush (II)
can recruit some Republican theologian into elaborating
on it at great length.
