A Justifiable If Not Just War — страница 3

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(Amery, 82). Although it is a matter of historical record that many individuals in the Congress, the government, and the national security agencies were concerned about this policy, it does appear that the Bush Administration was continuing the policy Bush had himself lobbied for as Vice President in the Reagan Administration: that Iraq could play an influential and useful role in the region in the future (Amery, 84). By the time of the Gulf War, Iraq had become America’s third largest trading partner in the Middle East, after Israel and Saudi Arabia, and was the buyer of substantial amounts of American military hardware; often through a variety of covert or third-party channels (Ridgeway, 14). Therefore, despite the attempts of the Bush Administration to revise the historical

record after the fact ( “Our position then was what it is now – such a seizure is a violation of international law and unacceptable to this administration” (Amery, 83)), the US government clearly bears some of the fault for Hussein’s misreading of the international situation. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2 1990, driving the Emir of Kuwait into exile in Saudi Arabia, the reaction in the West was quick and decisive. That same day, President Bush signed an executive order banning trade with Iraq and, along with Britain, France and the Soviet Union (Iraq’s main arms supplier) froze Iraq’s and Kuwait’s assets in the United States. In the military realm, he dispatched an aircraft carrier battle group to the Persian gulf, while on the diplomatic front he

engineered a unanimous United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning the invasion and demanding an immediate withdrawal of Iraqi forces (Ridgeway, 59). It is difficult to assess, in light of the historical record noted above, why the Bush Administration made what appears to be such a sudden about-face on the subject of Iraq. Within a matter of days the United States had gone from what was previously a somewhat diplomatic relationship with Iraq to the point where the Bush administration was drawing parallels between Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler. Clearly, Hussein could by no means be compared, in power or significance, to the Nazi dictator whose ambitions plunged Europe and much of the world into the Second World War (Hiro, 192). Many sources on the American side later

cited Bush’s personal intervention as being the driving force behind the American response to the invasion. In the words of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, Bush was the “spark plug and fuel” for Desert Shield and Desert Storm (Yetiv, 63). Indeed, Powell worried privately how Bush personalized the conflict with Hussein and commented on: “how much it affected Bush’s ad hoc policymaking, characterized by an occasional lack of consultation with others and extreme vitriol against Saddam. Even Secretary Baker expressed concern to aides that the White House was speeding toward an armed confrontation with Saddam.” (Yetiv, 64) Bush’s justification for Operation Desert Shield, and later Desert Storm was primarily, as he announced to the public on

August 3 1990, that the “integrity of Saudi Arabia” was one of America’s “vital interests” (Ridgeway, 60). However, it is clear from both the diplomatic record prior to the invasion, and from historical accounts of the time, that Hussein had no intention of attacking Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the military realities of the region were such that he could have invaded the Kingdom in the wake of his occupation of Kuwait, and there would have been little the United States could have done – with no significant military forces in the region at the time – to stop him (Hiro, 120-21). That he did not suggests that he had no wider interest than invading Kuwait. The Bush Administration and the United States, however, clearly did have wider interests. It appears clear that the

United States had no real moral justification for the war. Contrary to popular belief, Bush’s main military advisers at the time, Generals Powell and Schwarzkopf, argued against the use of military force (Yetiv, 65). However, Bush was thinking beyond the issues of Kuwait’s territorial integrity, or even the threat to America’s oil supplies from the region which was, incidentally, a highly exaggerated threat given the fact that Iraq, bankrupt in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, had publicly stated its wish to sell as much oil to the West as it could pump (Carpenter, 42). Instead, it seems clear President Bush was thinking of historical precedents such as Chamberlain’s failed policy of “appeasement” of Hitler, to which Bush referred repeatedly during the crisis. Indeed,