War and Propaganda
Oil and Arab History: US and UK Middle Eastern Policies
Abstract
© 2003 Freely distribute
Contents Updated: Thursday, 10 April 2003, Friday, 2 October 2009
Arab History
Avi Shlaim, professor of international relations at Oxford Uniersity, notes that Blair and Bush seemed unaware of the crucial role Arab history played in shaping popular attitudes to the conflict in Iraq. Iraqis are a proud and patriotic people with a long collective memory, in which Britain and America are not remembered kindly.
Blair emphasised the morality of war to depose an evil dictator, but, over the past century, Britain rarely occupied the high moral ground in relation to Iraq. The US has even less of a claim on the trust and goodwill of the Iraqi people after its calamitous failure to support the popular insurrection it encouraged against Saddam and his henchmen in March 1991.
After World War I, the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Turkish empire were set up as artificial countries to serve Western commercial and strategic interests. Iraq was two Ottoman provinces—Basra and Baghdad. Later, the oil bearing province of Mosul was added, dashing hopes of Kurdish independence. Shlaim says the logic behind the enterprise was summed up by one observer:
Iraq was created by Churchill, who had the mad idea of joining two widely separated oilwells, Kirkuk and Mosul, by uniting three widely separated peoples—the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shias.
The British, still acting as an imperial power, picked Faisal, a Hashemite prince from Arabia and one of the leaders of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks, to rule over this unlikely country. His local rival was deported. A plebiscite organised by the British found that an unlikely 96 per cent of the people voted for Faisal as king! The 1921 settlement built violent and arbitrary methods into the structure of Iraqi politics, and introduced anti British sentiment.
It’s All About Oil
The policy of the US concerning the Arab countries has not changed essentially since the Six Day War in 1966. Washington may have posed as unbiased, and interested only in a just peace, but they no longer even bother pretending that they are interested in anything only than oil and Israel.
The United States entered the Middle East arena shortly after World War II. Admiral Arthur W Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Eisenhower Administration, explained that “the importance of the Middle East to the free world could hardly be overestimated, militarily and economically”. It was its “huge oil reserves”, the loss of which would be “disastrous”. Not only that but it was a strategically central location for military interventions in Asia, Africa and Europe.
After the July 1952 revolution in Egypt against the British backed monarchy, the US began to make overtures to the new Egyptian leaders. But the Egyptian regime had no intention of casting off British interference to substitute US interference for it, and announced a policy of neutrality, refusing to join any Western led military blocs. As punishment, Washington reneged on its promise to give Egypt help in building the Aswan High Dam.
Meanwhile, the French, British and Israeli invasion of Suez happened in 1956, and the Egyptians asked the US for $14,000 of the $40 million the US had in Egyptian funds in its control. The need was for medical supplies and food aid for those injured in the war. The US refused to return any of the money it had kept. Then Egypt faced famine, and Washington would not supply Cairo with wheat, even though it had a vast surplus. The Egyptians turned to the USSR, who supplied the aid. This is how the US consistently alienates potential friends even if not allies, forcing them into the camp of their enemies. Come back, Dale Carnegie!
Admittedly, the US later repented and did supply wheat to the Egyptians, but not long after, in 1966, the US again stopped all shipments of wheat and other foodstuffs to the United Arab Republic, proving again to Arabs that American governments could not be trusted. It is not hard to see why Johnny Foreigner dislikes and distrusts the US, but US citizens have the illusion that their governments feed the poor of the world willy nilly in the face of foreign ingratitude. If they spent what they spend on armaments on sincere economic assistance, they would not have an enemy in the world, but they would have a lot of impoverished arms dealers and aerospace billionaires. These men are too powerful, and they are why the US, supposedly the good guys have started almost every significant war in the last half century.
With the proclamation of the Dulles-Eisenhower doctrine on 5 January 1957, the US declared that it would fill the void created by the debacle of the British and French at Suez. The withdrawal of the old style colonial powers left a vacuum, Dulles declared, and the US had to fill it. It was a frank announcement of US neocolonialism. From the outset, the US favoured the right wing totalitarian regimes and kingdoms against the newly born democratic Arab republics. Whatever it claims, spreading democracy has never been part of the US overseas policy. Why should we now think it is? Lebanon’s President Shamoun, Iraq’s US puppet, Nun es-Said, and Jordan’s kingdom were freely supported against the republics of Egypt and Syria.
In the autumn of 1957, the US tried to intervene against Syria. On 14 July 1958, as a result of its folly over Suez, the British puppet Iraqi royal family was deposed in Baghdad in a bloody military coup. At the same time, the United States disgraced itself not only in the eyes of the Arabs but of the entire world by landing its soldiers in Lebanon to prop up Shamoun and check the freedom movement spreading from the 14 July overthrow in Iraq. But then, at the beginning of the 1960s, the US government decided that its Arab puppets were not reliable for US neocolonial policies in the Middle East. Washington began to back Israel more and more. At a time when McCarthyite anticommunist hysteria had been boiling over in the US itself, the US set itself against the Arab states that had turned to the USSR for assistance, more in desperation after being rebutted by the US, than for any deeply held ideological reasons. These were, of course, Egypt and Syria.
US Openly Supports Israel
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After the Six Day War, in 1967, the US discarded its cover of supporting Israel via Germany, and openly proclaimed itself Israel’s patron, stinting no funds to provide it with military, economic, and financial aid. In 1971, David Nes, former US Chargé d’Affaires in Cairo, in an article in the New York Times, wrote that US economic aid to Israel from 1948 to 1969 amounted to $1,300 million and that private remittances added up to $2,500 million. In those 21 years, Israel had $3,800 million from the US. In 1970, the sum was $800 million. In 1972, it was around $1,500 million. Since then the sum has continued to rise astronomically. So far as the US is concerned, Israel is a state of America in Asia, and proof is that US citizens are allowed to serve in the Israeli armed forces. US military intelligence is shared with Israel, and has been used in Israeli attacks on their neighbours. No reasonable US citizen could imagine that Arab countries should trust the US with this historical background favouring Israel.
Saddam
In 1980, Saddam attacked Iran. During the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War, Britain and its Western allies favoured Iraq. The Scott inquiry of 1996 documented the Thatcher Government’s duplicitous record in selling arms to Iraq and in providing military credits. A billion pounds of UK taxpayers’ money was thrown away in propping up Saddam’s regime and doing favours to arms firms.
Saddam was clearly a monster in human form, but Britain turned a blind eye to the savage brutality of his regime. Britain also knew Saddam had chemical and biological weapons because Western companies sold him all the ingredients necessary. Saddam was known to be gassing Iranian troops in their thousands in the Iran-Iraq War. Failure to subject Iraq to international sanctions allowed him to press ahead with the development of weapons of mass destruction.
If ever there was a time for humanitarian intervention in Iraq, it was 1988. In March 1988, Saddam turned on his own people, killing up to 5000 Kurds with poison gas in Halabja. Attacking unarmed civilians with chemical weapons was unprecedented. Yet no Western government even suggested intervention. Neither was an arms embargo imposed on Iraq.
In 1990, Britain belatedly turned against Saddam only because he invaded Kuwait. He said Kuwait was an artifcial creation of British imperialism, but all Iraq’borders were just as arbitrary as the border with Kuwait, so that border could be changed by force the entire post World War I territorial settlement might unravel.
The main purpose of the Anglo-American intervention against Iraq was not to lay the foundation for the “New World Order” but to restore the old order. The fact that the UN explicitly authorised the use of force in Resolution 678 made this an exercise in collective security and gave it legitimacy in the eyes of the world, including most Arab states.
On 28 February 1991, Bush senior gave the order to cease fire. Britain was informed of this decision but not consulted. The declared aims of Operation Desert Storm had been achieved—the Iraqi army had been ejected from Kuwait and the Kuwaiti government was restored. But Saddam kept his deadly grip on power.
After the ceasefire Bush encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up only to betray them when they did so. When the moment of truth arrived Bush recoiled from pursuing his policy to its logical conclusion. His advisers told him Kurdish and Shia victories in their bids for freedom may lead to the dismemberment of Iraq.
Behind this theory lay the pessimistic view that Iraq was not suited for democracy and that Sunni minority rule was the only formula capable of keeping it in one piece. Once again, the Iraqis were the victims of cruel geopolitics.
To topple Saddam, the allies had to continue their march to Baghdad. It would have been sufficient to disarm the Republican Guard units as they retreated from Kuwait through the Basra loop. This was not done. They were allowed to retain their arms, to regroup and to use helicopters to ensure the survival of Saddam and his regime. The Kurds in the North were crushed and fled to the mountains. The Shias in the South were crushed and fled to the marshes.
In calling for Saddam’s overthrow, Bush senior evidently had in mind a military coup, a reshuffling of Sunni gangsters in Baghdad, rather than establishing a freer and more democratic political order. As a result of his moral cowardice, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Saddam stayed in power and continued to torment his people, while Kuwait remained a feudal fiefdom.
A quick, decisive war was followed by a messy peace. Few wars in history had achieved their immediate aims so fully and swiftly, yet left behind so much unfinished business. The war’s aftermath was a reminder that military force, when used to tackle complex political problems, is merely a blunt instrument.
The war also demonstrated that Americans are better at sharp, short bursts of military intervention than at sustained political engagement aimed at fostering democracy in the Middle East.
Consequences
This inglorious history of Western involvement in Iraq goes a long way to explaining why the Iraqi people are not playing their part in the script for the liberation of their country. This is why Blair was so anxious to persuade ordinary Iraqis that this time Britain is determined to overthrow Saddam. His appeal was directed particularly at the Shia Muslims who make up 60 per cent of Iraq’s 24 million people. “This time we will not let you down”, he pledged solemnly. But it is naive to expect mere words to erase the bitter legacy of the past.
Given their own experience of oppression by Saddam and betrayal by the Western powers, it is only natural that ordinary Iraqis prefer to let the two sides fight it out among themselves.
Bush Jr fought a war in Iraq because the Iraqi dictator would not obey resolutions of the security council twelve years old, but a just settlement of the Middle East conflict of 1966 on the basis of the Security Council resolution of 22 November 1967 is still being flouted by the Israeli government, almost forty years later. Again, if US citizens can find justice and equity in this double standard of US foreign policy, then they really deserve to be ruled by unelected dictators of their own, like George Bush.
The perpetrators of the 9/11 atrocity were not Iraqis but mainly Saudi Arabians, citizens of a country the US imagines it is on friendly terms with. It is friendly with its ruling dynasty but US governments seem incapable of seeing that by backing odious regimes, they alienate the people who live under them. All Arabs have been offended and resent their treatment by the US in the decades since World War II.
Pretending that they are taking out a dictator to defend the poor Iraqi people by bombing their homes and market places was a crazy and doomed ploy. It can only work in Iraq if that country gets after the war the preferential treatment hitherto reserved for Israel. No one believes for a second that it will. It will be bled by the cowboy oil gang from Texas of its only important asset.
