The 2003 Iraq War

1.  US-Iraq in the 1990’s
2.  Why the War?
3.  Post-War

I.  US-Iraq in the 1990’s

a)    economic sanctions had a real effect on Iraqi society, but not enough to bring Saddam Hussein down.  Certainly limited his military spending, but how much we do not know.

b)    Real suffering of Iraqi people, plus skillful Iraqi propaganda, plus self-interest of many states lead to international pressure on US to lift sanctions.  US responds first with oil-for-food, then with expansion of oil-for-food limits, then with 1284.  Problem is that, with limits on oil production off and oil prices relatively high, Iraqi regime does not feel the pressure to toe the line on the weapons element.

                   c) Saddam basically throws UNSCOM out in late 1998.  Since that time there have been no weapons inspections in Iraq.

                   d) Iraqi chronology of events:

‑ May 20, 1996:  An "oil‑for‑food" accord is finally concluded between the United Nations and Iraq after several rounds of negotiations. It allows Iraq to export two billion dollars of crude every six months to pay for food and medical imports.

‑ Sept 3‑4, 1996:  In retaliation for an Iraqi incursion into northern Iraq, the United States fires cruise missiles at southern Iraq.  Baghdad says six people are killed and 26 wounded. Washington and London enlarge the southern no‑fly zone to the 33rd parallel.

 ‑ Nov 25, 1996: Baghdad lifts its final objections to the launch of the oil‑for‑food deal and accepts the UN terms. The accord is launched on December 10 with a resumption of oil exports.

-Oct 29, 1997: President Saddam Hussein decides to expel US members  of UNSCOM and bar them from the country.

Jan. 1998:  Presidential sites crisis

Feb-March. 1998:  Annan Agreement; expansion of oil-for-food

Aug. 1998:  Iraq announces end of cooperation with UNSCOM on inspections

Oct. 1998:  Congress adopts Iraq Liberation Act

Oct-Nov. 1998:  UNSCOM monitoring closed down by Iraqis, US orders strike but pulls planes back in the air as Iraq agrees to return of UNSCOM

Dec. 1998:  US air strikes on Iraq after Butler report of Iraqi non-cooperation with UNSCOM (Desert Fox).

-Feb. 1999:  Assassination of Ayatollah Mohammad Sadiq Sadr and two of his sons on Feb. 19.  Reports of riots in Shi'i communities in Iraq Feb. 20-22; SAIRI says at least 200 dead, but no independent confirmation.  Sadr was choice of the regime to lead Iraqi Shi'is after death of Ayatollah Kho'ei, but had recently become much more independent.

-Dec. 1999:  UN votes new sanctions organization (UNSC 1258), France and Russia and China abstain.

-Jan. 2000:  Iraq agrees to allow IAEA inspectors into the country to examine Iraqi uranium holdings, after originally denying the inspectors visas.  Inspection required under NPT, to which Iraq is a signatory, not under UN resolutions.

-Feb. 2000:  Annan appoints Hans Blix to head UNMOVIC; Iraq's chief Humanitarian coordinator, Hans Von Sponeck, successor to Denis Halliday, resigns over the sanctions.

February 16, 2001:  US-British air strikes on five targets in and around Baghdad; speculation that this marks new Bush Administration escalation on Iraq.  Largest concerted air strikes in 2 years.

II.  Why the War?
 

1)  Did the Administration have this war planned before 9-11?

          -there is no evidence that there was a commitment to war before 9-11.  Some members of the Administration were clearly for a more aggressive policy toward Iraq before that date, but there is no evidence that Bush, Cheney or Rice were among them.  Powell certainly was not in favor, nor is there any indication that the Joint Chiefs were pushing for this.  The first policy produced by the Administration on Iraq was “smart sanctions.”  It did not go anywhere, but that was the first product on Iraq of the Bush Administration’s policy process.

          -there was clearly a debate going on in the Administration in this pre-9/11 period about Iraq.  There were numerous meetings of the deputies committee of the NSC between May and July 2001.  Bob Woodward reports that on August 1, 2001 the Deputies presented to the NSC an Iraq policy paper called “A Liberation Strategy,” but that strategy was not a war strategy.  It called for phased increases in economic and diplomatic pressure, carefully calibrated increases in existing military pressure (flights over the no-fly zones) and covert efforts to weaken Saddam’s regime and support the Iraqi opposition.  Work on Iraq basically stopped there for the rest of the summer as the President went to Texas, and no policy recommendation on Iraq was forwarded to him in that period.

          -Then 9/11 happens, and Bush, Cheney and Rice very quickly turn hawkish on Iraq.  Richard Clarke reports that the president pushed him immediately after the attacks to see if there was a link to Iraq.  Bob Woodward reports that at an NSC meeting on Sept. 17 President Bush told his advisors that he believed Iraq was involved somehow in 9/11.  In late September 2001 a preliminary order to the Pentagon was issued to prepare war plans for Iraq (before Afghanistan was done).  In November 2001 a more specific order came from the White House to the Pentagon calling for specific war plans to be prepared on Iraq.  Why the change?
 

2) This gets us to our second question, about WMD and terrorism links.  I want to argue that the Administration, having experienced the catastrophe of 9/11, was now completely focused on preventing any similar attack, particularly one which could involve WMD.  That was the focus of President Bush, VP Cheney and NSC director Rice, the key policy makers here.   

          -There was a real worry, particularly on Cheney’s part, about the possibility that a future 9/11 attack might be conducted with chemical or biological weapons.  Recall that just after the 9/11 attack, we had the anthrax scare, with a number of letters containing anthrax sent to Congressional offices and media offices, including of all places, the offices of the National Enquirer, where one person died. 

          -The fear that another 9/11 type attack might be made with weapons of mass destruction led to what has come to be called the Bush Doctrine, which the President formally announced in an address at West Point in June 2002.  The Bush Doctrine, in essence, said that the US would not allow hostile states with ties to terrorist groups to develop WMD.

          -Which brings us back to Iraq.  US intelligence agencies determined, in reporting done before 9/11, that Iraq had active chemical and biological weapons programs (Defense Sec. Cohen and the bag of sugar in 1998, during Desert Fox).  Those findings were stated more definitively after 9/11, but there really wasn’t much change in the intelligence communities.  Other intelligence services also reported that Iraq was continuing to develop chemical and biological weapons.  This turns out to have been wrong, of course, but it was widely believed both before and after 9/11.  Iraq clearly falls right into the Bush Doctrine – a hostile state with known ties to terrorist groups (though not al-Qaeda).

          -The Bush Administration had a good case to make about Iraqi chemical and biological weapons.  Of course, they did not particularly stress chemical and biological in the public case for war; they stressed Iraq’s nuclear program.  On this issue, they did not have such a good case.   There was much more division within the intelligence community on Iraqi nuclear weapons.  UNSCOM had reported that it had dismantled Iraq’s nuclear capacity.  Intelligence community before 9/11 basically did not see a major nuclear problem in Iraq.  After 9/11 there was much more emphasis, but not nearly the level of confidence as with chemical and biological.  (story about the aluminum tubes and the uranium from Niger – Energy rebutted the tubes but bought the uranium claim; CIA was the opposite).  Why did the Administration push the issue?  It polled well in public opinion.

          -The polling issue brings us to the putative Iraq-al-Qaeda link that the Administration emphasized so heavily in the lead-up to the war.  It is clear that Iraq had links to groups officially defined by the US as terrorist – Abu Nidal, other Palestinian groups, the Iranian opposition group MEK.  But there was no evidence pre-9/11 of any Iraqi link to al-Qaeda.  The Intelligence Community was very cautious about this issue, never coming to the conclusion that there were such links.  But advocates of the war in the Administration, in the Defense Department, went outside the IC structure and set up their own office to look for such links.  Surprise!  They found them.  These links – most notably, the Muhammad Atta meeting in Prague with Iraqi intelligence – turned out to be baseless. 

          -The Administration had a decent case on Iraqi chemical and biological, though it was incorrect.  They had much weaker cases on nuclear and the al-Qaeda link.  They emphasized these weaker elements because they were the issues that mobilized public opinion to support the war.

3) Was this a war for democracy?  The answer to this question, to some extent, is yes.

          -I think that the WMD issue was at the forefront of the Bush Administration’s decision to go to war against Saddam’s Iraq.  That decision was made very quickly – certainly by the January 2002 State of the Union address (the “axis of evil”), it was set.  Events in 2002, including the diplomacy at the UN, were simply a way to get to war.  But as the preparations for war continued, the Administration’s goals in Iraq and the region as a whole became more ambitious – to use the Iraq War as a lever to change the politics of the Middle East as a whole.

          -This much more ambitious goal emerged from the diagnosis of 9/11 that developed both inside and outside the Administration over time.  The thinking went something like this:  the 9/11 attack was so awful an event that it must have deep roots in Muslim societies.  Something so terrible could not have emerged from superficial political causes and been solely the responsibility of a fringe terrorist group.  In order to prevent future 9/11’s, the US would have to profoundly change the politics of the region.  Only a thorough-going reform of these societies would end the terrorist threat.  This thorough-going change would begin with unseating anti-American dictators and generating democratic reform in their countries.  Saddam was the easiest and most obvious place to start.  But democratic change would not stop in Iraq; it would ripple out to affect other countries in the region, America’s foes like Iran and Syria but also American allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well.  In this sense, the war in Iraq did become for the Administration a war for democracy in the Middle East.  It was part of the larger diagnosis that only fundamental social and political change in the Middle East could end the threat of future 9/11’s. 

-One can question this diagnosis about the origins of anti-American terrorism in the Middle East.  I do not think it is correct.  But it was not a diagnosis unique to the Bush Administration.  It is generally shared by the American political class as a whole.  John Kerry said the same things about democracy in the Middle East as President Bush did in the 2004 campaign.  It is a particularly American response – that democracy can solve all.  Unfortunately, it is wrong.
 

4) Was this a war for oil? 

          -Of course, oil is part of any American policy in the Persian Gulf region.  US policy in the area for the past 60 years has been centered on securing access to oil and denying control of oil to hostile powers.  The American public has been conditioned to view the Gulf as an area of vital importance because of oil.  The system of American military bases that made this war possible are in the Persian Gulf because of American interest in oil.

          -However, the more extreme argument – that control of Iraqi oil was the “real” reason for the war – is not supported by the evidence:

                   a) oil considerations are absent from all the accounts of the lead-up to the war.  Woodward reports one briefing for President Bush on oil in the lead-up to the war, and it emphasized that oil would remain under the control of the new Iraqi government.

                   b) Iraq is absent from Cheney’s National Energy Policy document prepared before 9/11:  no mention of Iraq, very little on the Gulf, emphasis on diversifying supplies.  We know how this Administration acts when it decides to go to war.  If oil had been the central element, we should have seen in the National Energy Policy document the beginning of a public relations strategy to emphasize the Iraqi threat to oil security. 

                   c) oil considerations were absent from Administration policy during the occupation – CPA did not privatize Iraqi oil in September 2003 decrees, when they could have; did not take Iraq out of OPEC; did not grant contracts to US oil companies.

          -Clearly, members of the Administration hoped for good oil results from the war.  They did not get them – price rises, chaos in Iraqi oil sector.  But just as clearly, oil was not the central driving force in the war decision.  It seemed, to Administration leaders, to be more of an afterthought.
 

III.  Post-War

Recognize that Iraqi policy has actually gone through three distinct periods since the collapse of the Ba’thist regime --

          a) immediate post-collapse period, dominated by ORHA (Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs) and Gen. Garner.  Everybody on 60 day contracts.  Belief that things would get back to normal relatively easily, with US having to deal with short-term crises.  Lasted as long as General Garner.  This can help explain the absolute unpreparedness of the U.S. forces for what they faced after the fall of the regime – looting, security collapse, breakdown of infrastructure, guerrilla war in certain parts of Iraq, etc.  Here the Administration was forewarned, and chose to ignore the advice.  Also chose to ignore pre-war planning in the State Department by Future of Iraq Project – 18^th month effort by officials and Iraqi-Americans and Iraqi exiles to prepare a transition.  Defense Department ignored the warnings and the previous planning, on advice of its Iraqi exiles.

          b) direct American control for a long time – the beginning of the CPA under Amb. Bremmer.  This was the period of the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and of the decree that no-one in the first three grades of the Ba’th Party could have an administrative position.  The belief here was that the US would be guiding a long-term transition, with the Iraqi Governing Council providing some advice.  Not much interest in international help.  With security situation continuing to be a problem (blowing up of UN headquarters and Ayatallah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim in August 2003; blowing up of ICRC in October 2003), and costs increasing (Bush asks for Congressional appropriation of $87 billion in September 2003, supplemental appropriations later – all told around $200 billion from war and aftermath), and perhaps with an eye toward the election in a year…

          c) starting in November 2003, the emphasis came to be on turning over power to an Iraqi government.  Problems here (particularly with Sistani) on how the transitional government would be selected (elections vs. regional caucuses) and on the interim basic law (minority vetoes, etc.).  But on June 30, 2004 “sovereignty” was turned over to an interim Iraqi government headed by Iyad Alawi.  Then there were constitutional assembly elections in January 2005, constitutional referendum in October 2005 and parliamentary elections in December 2005.

-of course, does not mean that the US will be getting out (collapse of Iraqi security forces in April 2004, continuing violence is a sign that cannot happen), but it does seem that there is less stomach in the Bush Adm. now for a long and transformative occupation of Iraq.

                   -escalation of communal (sectarian and ethnic) fighting from February 2006 bombing of Golden Mosque in Samarra

                   -big issues remain to be decided:  1) extent of autonomy for the Kurds and decentralization of authority more generally (Kirkuk); 2) related question of control over oil resources; 3) relationship of religion to the state; 4) how to split off most Sunnis from the resistance, give them a role that is not control.