Part 40: A one-way bombardment called Gulf War
By B. J. Sabri
Online
Journal Contributing Writer
Dec 31, 2005, 00:40
"U.S.
Economy: It has always been said that the war is good for the economy, and in terms of dollars and cents that is usually
the case. But much of the new uncertainty in the outlook stems from the
situation in Iraq. The risks still evident there are one of the factors putting
up oil and gasoline prices. Iraq is also depressing
consumer confidence . . . etc." --James C. Cooper & Kathleen
Madigan, War Jitters Won't Wipe Out This
Recovery, BusinessWeeK, June 7, 2004, page 33. [Italics added]
Just four months before he
obliterated Iraq in a one-way bombardment called Gulf War (Iraq did not shoot a
single bullet on American soil), George H. W. Bush postulated how the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait provided the opportunity for the creation of a new world;
meaning a unipolar world ruled by the United States. In his address to a joint
session of Congress (September 11, 1990), Bush senior, described the coming
birth of that world with these words: "The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as
grave as it is, also offers a rare
opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these
troubled times, our fifth objective -- a
new world order. . . . )
By logic of a system aiming
at world domination, the U.S. bombardment of Iraq meant three things: a demonstration
of American power at the "epicenter" and master of the new order; a
celebration in blood and destruction for the birth of the same; and a message
for those who dare to oppose it. It also announced the new regulations of the "epicenter":
(1) the self-arrogation of the right to interfere in any part of the world to
suit its imperialist interests, and (2) the method with which it would resolve
regional disputes inside its periphery after the expected demise of the USSR: unilateral war.
But, considering the
history of a power that has been thriving on pretexts and wars, it is not
difficult to speculate as to why Bush senior called the invasion of Iraq, "crisis,"
and then elevated it to, a "rare opportunity" for new "world
order." Although, technically, a crisis is a predicament requiring a
resolution, in the imperialist lexicon it means an opportunity for intervention.
Since George H. Bush used
the term, "crisis" in the context of opportunity, how did
progressives use that term in the context of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and
how is this relevant to the occupation of Iraq? To discuss this topic, I
selected Noam Chomsky. Chomsky, an outstanding political thinker and a lucid
critic of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, but equivocal in other regions, also
employed the word "crisis" to describe the aftermath of the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait. Though, in contrast with Bush, he cogently demystified it
by noting:
The
crisis began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait a year ago. There was some
fighting; leaving hundreds killed according to Human Rights groups. That hardly
qualifies as war. Rather, in terms of crime against peace and humanity, it
falls roughly into the category of the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus,
Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1978, and the U.S. invasion of Panama. In these
terms, it falls well short of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and cannot
remotely be compared to the near-genocidal Indonesian invasion and annexation
of East Timor, to mention only two cases of aggression that are still in
progress with continuing atrocities, and with the crucial support of those who
most passionately professed their outrage over Iraq's aggression. [1]
As for the notion
of a "rare opportunity for a new world order," this needs no
explanation -- a USSR in a dissolution phase was no longer in any material
position to contest U.S. objectives for war and dominance in Iraq. Thus, for
his new order to be born, George H. W. Bush, a stolid war criminal in the
American tradition of extermination, devastated Iraq and murdered a great
number of its military personnel and civilian population with jingoistic
enthusiasm and imperialist vengeance. (I shall discuss Iraq's fatalities in
parts 41 and 42.)
Still, considering
that Iraq refused not to withdraw its forces before negotiation, and
considering that the U.S. rejected all of Iraq and Saudi Arabia's proposals for
a settlement, let us assume for a moment that war was the only means to evict
Iraq from Kuwait. The imposing question remains, Why the massive destruction of Iraq before liberating Kuwait? In other
words, if the purpose of U.S.-U.N. resolutions was to restore the sovereignty
of Kuwait, and since the United States could have easily defeated and dislodged
the Iraqi occupation force stationed there, why then destroy Iraq? What was the
purpose?
You may ask, "Why am I talking about a war that
happened 15 years ago, while new realties -- invasion, occupation, and
resistance -- should have priority?" That may be; but before addressing
that, we have to remember one thing: dialectically, without the Gulf War and subsequent U.S.-U.N. resolutions
that imposed further sanctions on Iraq, and tied their lifting to Iraq's
compliance with an open-end disarmament process totally controlled by the United
States, that invasion would have never occurred despite dramatic changes
worldwide.
Conclusively, while the Gulf War was the cornerstone for the
future invasion of Iraq, its aftermath transformed Iraq from a sovereign state
into a hostage in the hands of the United States, and by implication, Israel
and U.S. Zionists. For all practical reasons, the fate of Iraq has passed from
the UN, which authorized war against it, to the United States that made of it
an exclusive American issue.
Moreover, while the war ended with Iraq's surrender, it did
not end with a peace pact but with a ceasefire agreement. Did the UN sign it?
No. General Norman Schwarzkopf signed it on behalf of the United States; i.e.,
it was an American-Iraqi agreement. Since then and up to the invasion, the U.S.
used the alibis that Iraq violated the terms of the agreement to launch a war
of attrition lasting 13 years.
Reevaluating the objectives of the Gulf war in relation to
the neocon strategy to conquer Iraq years later is, therefore, a prerequisite
to understanding the multiple purposes of the ongoing occupation, its failure,
and, yes, its "success" in destroying the ageless civilizations of
Iraq, the imperialist deformation of its social fabric, society, economy,
culture, and national character.
The need for reevaluation could never be more important. Take
U.S. propaganda as an example. How many writers disputed Bush and Powell's
statements that Iraq, 13 years after that war was still an aggressive state,
despite the fact that Iraq, besieged by sanctions and deprived of necessities,
could not move a finger against any one in the region? Not only that, but
before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, all propaganda themes that accompanied the
pre-Gulf War period, returned intact, but with new additions: Iraq was cheating
on U.N. resolutions, and the baseless accusation of Iraq's involvement in the
unresolved event of 9/11.
As you can see, the arguments
on the Iraqi question from the Gulf War until present form one logical
sequence. To see how this sequence works, let us go back to Noam Chomsky. In 1991,
Chomsky explained the origins of the Gulf War as follows: "It is plain
enough that Washington has little impact on developments and no idea what to do
as the Soviet system lurches from one crisis to another. The response to Saddam
Hussein's aggression, in contrast, was an operation throughout, with Britain
loyally in tow, reflecting the U.S.
insistence upon sole authority in the crucial energy-producing regions of the
Middle East." [1] [Italics added]
Surprisingly, Chomsky's essay was not without
inconsistencies. Aside from not addressing (at least, in passing) the regional
conditions that preceded the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, he started from the
invasion as an act, but avoided a crucial argument whose treatment could have
persuaded the skeptics on his firm anti-imperialist stance, and, of course,
analytical neutrality in dissecting U.S. imperialistic decisions.
I am pointedly alluding to the fact that Chomsky's early
years as a Zionist settler living in a kibbutz in occupied Palestine (now
Israel), did not allow him to include Israel, U.S. Zionism, and their role in
the war as an important factor. He just mentioned the "U.S. insistence upon sole authority in the
crucial . . . etc." In
essence, he excluded a plethora of irrefutable evidence that firmly point to
the "Gulf War" as Israel's war by its American proxy. It is
reasonable, therefore, to conclude that Chomsky's attitude toward the Iraqi
question is not objective and possibly mired by ulterior motives.
Second, it is not clear why Chomsky patronized the USSR and
gave the U.S. the higher ground as in his phrase, "the U.S. did not know
what to do . . . etc.," and why did he refer to the Soviet Union as the "Soviet
system," but referred to the American system by calling on its capital --
Washington. As a master linguist, he should have juxtaposed countries,
capitals, or systems. This raises the question whether Chomsky thinks that the
United States is not a system but a natural order.
Third, he sanctioned the U.S. imperialist hold on the
Middle-Eastern Arab nations by calling them abstractly, "crucial energy-producing regions of the
Middle East." But in writing so, Professor Chomsky reduced the lives of
the Arabs to nothing more than a crucial
tool to satisfy American oil consumption and imperialist whims.
Fourth, it is also not clear why Chomsky call the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait, "aggression," and why did he qualify it as, "Saddam
Hussein's aggression?" In my reading of Chomsky, and unless I was
inattentive, I have never come across him referring to the Israeli invasion of
Lebanon, as, "Menachem Begin's aggression." It was always: the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Did Chomsky imply there is a distinction between
aggression and invasion depending on who is the felon?
Let us clear the ground. Of course, an invasion is a form of aggression, but aggression,
definitively, is not an invasion. In fact, there is a solid distinction
between aggression and invasion. Aggression presupposes and is always
indicative of the innocence of the invaded party who committed no provocation
to warrant either aggression, or invasion. But aggression denotes an incursion
on an adversary. Examples include the Israeli attack against the Iraqi nuclear
reactor of Osiraq in 1981, and Reagan's attack against Libya in 1987.
Protracted aggression could also evolve into an invasion or the occupation of a
whole state or a part of its territory; an example is the Israeli invasion of
the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West
Bank.
Invasion in the modern use, on the other hand, is a
calculated move in response to disputes mostly among adjacent states. Strength
but not size is the only factor that determines who initiates the invasion. But
in no case, is the size of a country an indication of its innocence or lack of
aggression (Israel is tiny, but it had invaded four adjacent states, and its
aggressiveness is boundless.) Examples of invasion include the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan, the Iraqi invasions of Iran and Kuwait, and the American
invasions of Panama and Iraq -- both countries are not adjacent to the U.S.,
thus indicating the global imperialist nature of both invasions.
Since he chose to
write, "Saddam Hussein's aggression," Chomsky insinuated the perfidy
of Saddam Hussein (thus his demonization), as opposed to the innocence of the
Emir of Kuwait. Although I firmly opposed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as a way
to resolve outstanding matters between the two countries, I also firmly believe
that no one has the right to claim the innocence of Kuwait without knowing
historical facts. Kuwait (an Iraqi territory severed by Britain in 1921), was
always aware of Iraq's claim over it, has been constantly involved in
anti-Iraqi activities since the 1960s, that is, even before the advent of
Saddam Hussein coming to power.
By branding Iraq as an aggressor, Chomsky overlooked Kuwait's
intransigence toward Iraq, pre-invasion disputes, Kuwaiti financing of Kurdish
militia to harass the Iraqi central government, and Kuwait's close work with
the CIA to overthrow the Iraqi regime. He only aimed at declaring Iraq as the sole culpable party for that invasion by
calling it "aggressor." This is fine, except we need to establish
culpability after investigating the case. To issue a judgment solely based on
the reputation assigned by the United States to Saddam Hussein, while
dismissing Iraq as a country and people, was a basic U.S. strategy. The
similarity between U.S. policy and Chomsky's conclusion appears striking . . .
To delve inside the argument of Iraq's devastation, however,
and to give you a wider picture on how imperialist propaganda finds its way
(either by choice -- scholars of history should search the archives before
putting forward opinions -- or by limitations imposed by the writer on the
breadth of investigation) to progressive writers, I have to add one more thing.
In the same essay, Chomsky made two more statements: one was right, and the other was pure disinformation.
You recall that
Chomsky stated, "There was some fighting; leaving hundreds killed
according to Human Rights groups." This statement is most likely correct.
According to several sources, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had possibly cost
the lives of about 380 Kuwaitis and over 120 Iraqis. In addition, Chomsky
correctly qualified the body count with the phrase, "according to,"
which, to a certain extent, is an acceptable approximation of probable
statistics in the absence of official data.
Oddly, in the following sentence, Chomsky hastily abandoned
his caution and embraced U.S. and Israeli propaganda on Kuwaiti fatalities
without modifying an iota. In effect, he became a posteriori, an apologist and a voluntary mouthpiece for U.S.
imperialism, as when he stated, "During the subsequent months, Iraq was
responsible for terrible crimes against Kuwait, with several thousand killed
and many tortured. But that is not war, rather state terrorism, of the kind
familiar among U.S. clients." The salient aspect of this statement is that
Chomsky did not specify the nature of these "terrible" crimes, and
his statement of "several thousand" killed and "many"
tortured, sounded, decidedly, unrealistic considering that immediately after
the invasion, there had not been any resistance against the occupation, hence no
reprisals by the occupiers.
To inform the reader, not even a few weeks into the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait, an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, Alabaman Zionist, named Jean
P. Sasson, published a small propaganda booklet detailing flagrantly false
accounts on Iraq's atrocities in Kuwait and the thousands of Kuwaitis that
Iraqis killed. She called her mound of lies, "The Rape of Kuwait: the True Story of Iraqi Atrocities against a
Civilian Population." Sasson's Zionist propaganda blitzkrieg baptized
under the adjective, "true story," inundated media and cluttered the
mouths of all talking heads of the United States. Of course, I did not hear
that Sasson has ever written any book about the Zionist rape of Palestine,
Sharon's ordered massacres of Sabra and Shatila, the American rape of Iraq, or
Abu Ghraib prison atrocities.)
By force of similar words and concepts, I submit that Chomsky's long phrase, "Iraq
was responsible for terrible crimes against Kuwait," echoes Sasson's subtitle, "The True
Story of Iraqi Atrocities against a Civilian Population." Consequently, it
seems that we have a problem: Chomsky,
as Sasson, talked about the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, but without corroborating
or providing the sources as to where he obtained all the information on those "terrible
crimes" and those "several thousand" killed and "many"
tortured.
Further note, in my
research of the Gulf War, the only sources that provided disinformation on
Iraqi atrocities, incubators, and the Kuwaitis that Iraq abducted and took to
Iraq were Zionist-controlled U.S. media to increase the disposition of the
American public for war. (Before the invasion of
Iraq, Chomsky wrote another masterpiece of imperialist literature, so
convoluted, so arcane, so insidious, that after publishing it, Znet hurried to reclassify
it, as "a satire." I shall discuss that article in the upcoming
parts.)
Did Chomsky report facts or "Necessary Illusions"
just to write an essay? Beyond that, Chomsky, made the matter worse, as when
he, to reinforce his reports of those "several thousands killed . . . etc.,"
added, "But that is not war . . . etc."
Implication: Chomsky decided to attribute those "several
thousand" killed by Iraq to state terrorism. Arguably, while state
terrorism could be the right definition to describe aggression, the concept
presented by Chomsky is sternly equivocal: while it provides hearsay as proof
that the Iraqi invaders killed all those Kuwaitis, it decidedly, but obliquely,
implied that Iraq is a terrorist state. A denomination so much cherished and used
by U.S. ruling circles, it made the propaganda war that preceded U.S. wars
against Iraq up to its invasion flow easier, and transformed the bombardment of
the Iraqi population into an inaudible rumble inside American homes.
One may rebut that this is an article about Chomsky, and
that I put him unnecessarily on trial because of drifting semantics. Two
points: (1) semantics is not the shell but the core of thought, and (2) by
addressing the political thought of Chomsky in relation to the Iraqi question, I
am attempting to point out a structural "crisis" within the
anti-imperialist camp.
To sum up, it is unsettling to see
countless writers of all progressive persuasions compete to highlight the
excesses of the Saddam's regime without addressing the historical conditions of
Iraq or verifying claims. Inevitably, this contributes, indirectly or directly,
to the amplification of the ideological wave to invade Iraq and a latent
justification for the same. . . . After the invasion, most of the progressive
crowd ran to denounce the empire, the cloths of the emperor, and the
machinations of the coterie . . .
Having established the general debate on the Gulf War, was
the bombardment of Iraq really an inaudible rumble?
Weapons Used
In his outstanding essay, "The Myth of Surgical Bombing in the Gulf War"
(which first appeared in "War Crimes,"
edited by Ramsey Clark and others), Paul walker gives an
exhaustive account of the weapons the United States used against the Iraqi
people:
- Some
88,500 tons of bombs have been dropped in over 109,000 sorties flown by a
total of 2,800 fixed-wing aircraft.
- The
total number of bombs dropped by allied forces in the war comes to about
250,000, of these only 22,000 were the so-called "smart bombs"
or guided bombs. About 10,000 of these guided bombs were laser-guided and
about 10,000 were guided anti-tank bombs. The remaining 2,000 were
radiation-guided bombs directed at communication and radar installations.
- 2,095
HARM missiles
- 217
Walleye missiles
- 5,276
guided anti-tank missiles
- 44,922 cluster bombs and rockets
- 136,755
conventional bombs
- 4,077
guided bombs
Were these all the weapons the U.S. used to destroy Iraq as a nation?
What was the strategy behind the bombing? Was the targeting of Iraq's
infrastructures accidental? Did U.S. military planners predict the aftermath of
bombardment? To answer these and other questions, I shall quote more of Paul
Walker's article, bringing in other authors and sources, and discuss Iraq's
casualties, fatalities, health conditions, and related matters.
Notes
(1) City Lights
Books, War After War,
1992; Noam Chomsky/Essay: The Gulf War in Retrospect, Page 13
B. J. Sabri is an
Iraqi-American antiwar activist. Email: bjsabri@yahoo.com
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