WHY THE WAR ON IRAQ AND WHAT SHOULD CITIZENS DO ABOUT IT?
Harry Targ, Iraq Public Forum-January 19, 2006. Purdue University
At a critical juncture in the escalation of the Vietnam War, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 describing the fundamental connections between war overseas and poverty at home:
“Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken.”
I would like to speak tonight about what has motivated United States foreign policy in the 20th century, what Dr. King called “this madness,” and what motivates the policy today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and across the globe. . I would like to say some things about the impacts this policy has on Iraqis and other peoples who have been the target of our attention and also on the people of our own country. Finally, I would like to discuss short and long-term foreign policy alternatives, we, as citizens must embrace to challenge “this madness.”
First, according to historians such as William Appleman Williams, the United States has pursued dominant influence in the world ever since the 1890s. After conquering the North American continent and exterminating its inhabitants, American policy has been shaped by the pursuit of markets, invest opportunities, cheap labor, and vital natural resources, in short profit.
With the expansion of industrial capitalism, securing access to cheap oil became particularly important. From agreements with the ruling oligarchy in Saudi Arabia during World War 11, to the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran for nationalizing his countries oil, to the severing of relations with an radical Iraqi regime in 1958, to the wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, oil has figured prominently in U.S. policy.
And as historian Loren Baritz has argued, U.S. policymakers have defined these economically driven global and interventionist policies in moral terms. President Truman spoke of the threat of totalitarian communism to the free world in his famous Truman Doctrine speech of March 12,1947. One week earlier, in a less familiar speech at Baylor University, he asserted that economics and foreign policy were inextricably connected and that the United States was committed to creating a global market economy in the post-war world.. Thirty-five years later President Reagan, borrowing from our Puritan ancestors, that the United States was a “city on a hill.” We were destined by God to transform the world. President Clinton also mixed economics and morality repeatedly reiterating his commitment to create “market democracies” around the world.
The impacts of this century
long search for what Williams called, “the Open Door,” the drive to
economically penetrate the globe has meant pain, suffering, and waste for
peoples everywhere including the United States. U.S. marines invaded Central
American and the Caribbean some 25 times between 1900 and 1933. During the
fifty years since World War 2 the U.S. has threatened to use force or send
troops on at least 40 occasions, spent $3 trillion on the military,
participated in wars between 1945 and 1995 in which 10 million people died, and
lost at least 100,000 of its own soldiers killed in action with 10 times than
that t number becoming casualties.
It was in this historical context, that President Bush responded to the terrorist attack on 9/11 by launching a new global crusade, replacing communism with a “war on terrorism,” and justifying “preemptory” attacks on any country or people we would define as a possible threat to U.S. national security. The Pentagon defined an “arc of instability” running from the northern parts of South America through North Africa, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and East Asia. They said the United States had to develop small, mobile military bases all across the globe (Chalmers Johnson estimated some 700 bases existed in 60 countries) with new technologies that would make the U.S. fighting force more capable of quickly intervening in self-defined trouble spots. Successful operations in Afghanistan and Iraq would solidify the presence, power, and control of strategic resources and institutionalize this strategy of “last remaining superpower.”
The policies during the Clinton Administration differed in tactics but not in substance. It sought to increase the U.S. presence in the Gulf by starving the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Economic sanctions led to a 60 percent decline in the GDP of the country and the economic embargo cost the lives of about one million Iraqis, mostly children under the age of five. However, supporters of the lobby group, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), including Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, and other Bush policymakers, demanded that Clinton do more, make war on Iraq. As soon as 9/11 happened, these neo-conservatives launched a campaign to convince President Bush to make war on Iraq even though the latter had nothing to do with 9/11 and everyone, from the CIA, to the media, to UN inspectors, knew that Iraq, after a decade of US and British bombing, economic sanctions, and rigorous inspections had no weapons of mass destruction.
Secretary of State Colin Powell speaking before the United Nations claiming Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.
The war on Afghanistan began in October, 2001 and the war in Iraq in March 2003. The impacts (from 2001 to 2006 alone) are devastating:
-Experts estimate that the costs of the war in Iraq could exceed $700 billion; with operational costs per month topping $5.6 billion. 2006 DOD spending will approach $600 billion.
-210,000 of the National Guard’s 330,000 soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, with mobilizations averaging 460 days.
-Four supplemental spending bills for Iraq totaling $204.4 billion could have purchased any of the following: 46 billion uninsured people receiving health care; the salaries of 3.5 million elementary school teachers; 27 million places for Head Start children 1.8 million housing units, 24,000 new elementary schools; 39 million university scholarships, or 3.2 million port container inspectors. And what could this money have done to rebuild the Gulf Coast.
And for all the human suffering brought on by this needless war, the Iraqi adventure is a quagmire: resistance to U.S. occupation has grown enormously; foreign terrorists apparently are operating in the country who were not their before March, 2003; and ethnic tensions and violence have increased. The efficacy of international organizations has been undermined by the U.S. rejection of diplomacy. And the United States is hated all around the world. And despite the glowing reports about elections and construction projects, peace will not have a ghost of a chance of arriving in Iraq until the United States ends its military occupation.
What can we do about this “madness?” Citizens must increase their opposition to this war. They must demand that the United States begin a phased withdrawal, over a short time, of all U.S. troops from Iraq. This process should be done in conjunction with negotiations with sectors of the discernable Iraqi resistance, active diplomatic intervention of the Arab League or the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and UN peacekeepers. US phased withdrawal should involve moving troops from the center of Iraq to border areas, downsizing the U.S. embassy, establishing an economic reconstruction fund, hiring Iraqi construction firms to complete the rebuilding of the country, dismantling U.S. military bases, and making it clearer that Iraqis will gain control of their oil. This “Policy of Phased Withdrawal” will not guarantee immediate peace and tranquility. Nor will it necessarily reduce all tensions between Kurds, Shias, and Sunnis. What it will do is extricate the United States, the number one motivation and target of violence in the country.
And in the long run, Americans must pressure their leaders to embrace foreign and domestic policies that promote peace and justice. At the time of his assassination Dr. King was organizing a Poor People’s Campaign, a mass movement to end war, racism, and economic misery. That project still needs to be completed.
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And Twenty Years Since the Iraq War began: COSTS OF
THE U.S.-LED WAR IN IRAQ, 2003-2023
“March
19-20, 2023 marks 20 years since United States forces invaded
Iraq to oust dictator Saddam Hussein, under the false claim that his regime was
manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. The ensuing war, in which U.S.
ground presence peaked in 2007 with over 170,000 soldiers, caused massive
death, destruction, and political instability in Iraq. Among the consequences
was the increase of sectarian politics, widespread violence and the rise of the
Islamic State militant group with its terror attacks throughout the Middle
East. Though the U.S. government officially ended its Iraq war in 2011, the
repercussions of the invasion and occupation as well as subsequent and ongoing
military interventions have had an enormous human, social, economic, and
environmental toll. An estimated 300,000 people have died from direct war
violence in Iraq, while the reverberating effects of war continue to kill and
sicken hundreds of thousands more.” https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/2022/IraqWarCosts
