The following article was originally posted in January of 2007 on another forum. I wanted to repost it here because it covers aspects of US foreign policy that are unknown to most Americans.
The title of this diary post, Blowback, was chosen because the term blowback was used in a CIA memo discussing the possibility that the overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mossadegh in Operation Ajax might come back to haunt the US someday. Indeed it did.
Mossadegh’s mistake was that he tried to nationalize the Iranian oil industry. His counterpart in Iraq, Qassim, made the same mistake in Iraq, in addition to being too friendly with the Soviets during the Cold War.
Another motivation for reposting this at this time is because the “chickens come home to roost” argument reemerged in the words of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. His words seem far less controversial once one learns the history of American involvement in the affairs of other countries. The Iran and Iran stories are only a small part of this history.
[Note: I’ve changed the spelling of “Qassim” in quoted passages to arrive at a common spelling]
Saddam Hussein: “Thanks for the Memories”
It’s difficult to find serious discussion on the topic of Saddam Hussein that isn’t influenced by the administration’s PR campaign to justify the war in Iraq. There is a seemingly endless supply of commentators willing to echo condemnations of Hussein’s despotism, which, although based in truth, also fails to appreciate that he was brought into power to serve US interests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_hussein
“-In 1958, a year after Saddam had joined the Ba’ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba’athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted United States-backed plot to assassinate Qassim.” — (from Wikipedia)
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/10/205859.shtml
“-Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party “as its instrument.”
“-According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim.”
Installing despots, especially during the cold war, was and still is a favorite technique for promoting US interests. Typically, fear of communism or Soviet influence is the proffered justification, as it was in the case of Iraq, but this excuse also provides cover for promoting the interests of big business rather than the interests of the citizens of the US, which this euphemistic trope of “promoting US interests” implies.
“-Concerned about Qassim’s growing ties to Communists, the CIA gave assistance to the Ba’ath Party and other regime opponents.” – (Wikipedia)
Although Qassim’s regime was considered as a positive development by Washington because he was seen as a counterweight to Egypt’s Nassar, he eventually outlived his usefulness.
http://readthese.blogspot.com/2003_12_15_readthese_archive.html
“-From 1958 to 1960, despite Qassim’s harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington’s Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt” – (Roger Morris OpED)
Qassim’s buying of arms from the Soviets, appointment of communists in his own government, and threats to nationalize the Iraqi oil industry, led to CIA efforts to depose him and the cultivation of Saddam as an asset by the CIA.
The 1963 coup that overthrew Qassim, led by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif, also accomplished other goals for the CIA.
“-Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq’s educated elite — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.”
It wasn’t long after the 1963 coup that yet another coup, in 1968, which again was with the aid of the CIA, put Saddam near the leadership of Iraq.
“-In 1968, after yet another coup, the Baathist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr seized control, bringing to the threshold of power his kinsman, Saddam Hussein. Again, this coup, amid more factional violence, came with C.I.A. backing. Serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in the late 1960’s, I often heard C.I.A. officers — including Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a ranking C.I.A. official for the Near East and Africa at the time — speak openly about their close relations with the Iraqi Baathists.”
It’s helpful to understand the history of Iraq. The partitioning of former Ottoman territories by Britain and France, after the loss by the Central powers in World War I, led to the first Faisal.
“-The British saw in Faisal a leader who possessed sufficient nationalist and Islamic credentials to have broad appeal, but who also was vulnerable enough to remain dependent on their support.”
“-[Anglo-Iraqi treaty of 1922] The twenty-year treaty, which was ratified in October 1922, stated that the king would heed British advice on all matters affecting British interests and on fiscal policy as long as Iraq had a balance of payments deficit with Britain, and that British officials would be appointed to specified posts in eighteen departments to act as advisers and inspectors. A subsequent financial agreement, which significantly increased the financial burden on Iraq, required Iraq to pay half the cost of supporting British resident officials, among other expenses.” – (Wikipdia)
Needless to say, British military bases were part of the deal. The Hashemite dynasty that ended in 1958 led to Qassim, whose withdrawal from the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact led to the CIA’s use of Saddam Hussein as an asset.
Saddam’s botched 1959 assassination attempt on Qassim led to his later exile in Egypt, were he was supported and trained by CIA. In 1963, the Ba’athists were finally successful in assassinating Qassim.
Saddam formally became the head of Iraq around the time of the Iranian revolution in 1979, and the US once again used him to pursue its interests, by equipping him with chemical weapons and providing him with intelligence in his later war with Iran. Curiously, his gassing of the Kurds, which was condemned by the US in the later 2003 war, merely reprised Winston Churchill’s gassing of the Kurds earlier in the century.
“-Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used ‘against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment’. He dismissed objections as ‘unreasonable’. ‘I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes _ [to] spread a lively terror _’ In today’s terms, “the Arab” needed to be shocked and awed. A good gassing might well do the job.” – (Jonathan Glancey)
For many years, Saddam had been useful to western interests. Considering this, and his close connections to the CIA, it’s hard not wonder why in his meeting with Ambassador April Glaspie she appeared to indicate the US had no interest in the dispute.
“-‘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 ’60s. 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 via Klibi [Chadli Klibi, Secretary General of the Arab League ] or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly.’-” – [transcript of Glaspie’s conversation with Saddam]
Did Saddam misread the US position as tacit support? Was the US position tacit support, just as it had been for his war with Iran? Or, as many have wondered, had Saddam finally become a liability, and, as with previous depots supported by western powers, a liability that was going to be dispensed with in the usual fashion?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Glaspie