The Double Standards of Invasions and Occupations
Press Action
Sunday, September 14, 2003
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand09152003/
By Mark Hand
When Iraq invaded its tiny neighbor, Kuwait, in 1990, the aggression was condemned by the world, including most of the Arab world. Iraq paid a steep price for its miscalculation of world reaction to the invasion. First, the United States led an effort to kick the Iraqi military out of the kingdom and then conducted a turkey shoot within Iraqi borders, slaughtering thousands of retreating Iraqi troops. The punishment didn’t end there. The United Nations applied indefinite economic and military sanctions on Iraq. The United States also decided to declare the majority of the country a no-fly zone for Iraqi aircraft. Iraqi financial assets were frozen around the world. Iraq was completely isolated, unable to function as a modern state and left to wither away.
Fast forward to 2003. Using a blueprint drawn up years ago, President Bush ordered the U.S. military to take over the impoverished nation of Iraq. It’s the exact same type of brazen invasion that Iraq had conducted 13 years earlier. The U.S. military easily overwhelmed Iraq’s rag-tag army and occupied Baghdad and the rest of the country, very similar to Iraq’s easy takeover and occupation of Kuwait City in the summer of 1990.
The two invasions were similar in the vulgar reasons given to justify the barbaric acts. Saddam spoke of reuniting Kuwait with Iraq. He also made references to Kuwait stealing Iraqi oil reserves. Bush spoke of ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and his apocalyptic fight against terrorism.
Drunk on power and impervious to sane thought, the two rulers conducted their respective acts of aggression against much weaker nations because they knew military victory would be a cakewalk. Easy military victories keep leaders popular among the masses. In both cases, Saddam and Bush had calculated the benefits of keeping their nations engaged in continuous warfare prior to their respective invasions and concluded that the benefits of the criminal acts outweighed the costs. War hides the warts of a leader. War distracts a nation’s attention away from the crimes committed elsewhere by the leader.
While there are parallels between the conduct of Saddam and Bush in their respective wars, there are stark differences in world reaction to the criminal acts. The world was not afraid to punish Saddam’s regime, while the U.S. government, as the world’s only mega-bully, can get off scot-free as it wages its own brand of international terrorism.
Normally, a country that invades another is viewed as a pariah. Occupations are normally seen as illegitimate that must be counteracted by various means. In the case of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, you would think the world community would have condemned the acts with all its might and ordered the United States to retreat from Iraq or else face dire consequences.
In fact, the opposite has occurred. The United Nations Security Council in August officially recognized the puppet governing council created by the United States.
Earlier this month, the Arab League also recognized the governing council. The league, dominated by the monarchies of the Persian Gulf region and Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Cairo, decided it was in its best interest to please Washington rather than stand up against Bush’s military juggernaut. The league welcomed “Iraqi Foreign Minister” Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who had been working with Washington for years to oust Saddam, to sit at the table with the other Arab ministers.
U.S. commentators applauded the Arab League’s decision to accept the Iraqi puppet governing council. William Safire, the quintessential U.S. establishment columnist for the New York Times, argued that no nation in the Middle East is democratic and therefore has no leg to stand on in denying the governing council a seat in the Arab League.
“Comes now the Arab League, that association of 22 monarchies, dictatorships and oligarchies, to cut through the leftist cacophony making obeisance to terrorism’s power,” Safire wrote. “This comes as a shock to a lot of diplomats. Previously, the league had refused to recognize the Governing Council in Baghdad, on the ludicrous grounds that it had not been democratically elected. After that pious excuse generated a global horselaugh at the world’s least democratic group, Arab leaders decided to become players by conferring provisional regional legitimacy on the coalition’s choice.”
The president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Abdullah Bin Hamad al-Attiyah, also has said that the oil cartel will invite the U.S. puppet council’s oil minister to its Sept. 24 meeting in Vienna if the United Nations recognizes the interim Iraqi government.
Where are the calls by the world community for the United States to end its occupation? Why haven’t deadlines been set for the United States to leave Iraq or else face sanctions? A diplomatic united front on the part of France, Germany, Russia and other countries against the U.S. occupation of Iraq certainly would have a great impact, even on a mega-bully as dominant and unapologetic as the U.S. government.
Safire recognized that the member states of the Arab League wanted to remain “players” in the geopolitical game controlled by the United States. But in order to remain “players” on the U.S. team, the Arab states were forced to accept the validity of outsiders invading and occupying their lands. Evidently, the political and business leaders of these countries have too much to lose by confronting the savage actions of the U.S. government. Too much political and economic capital is invested in the United States by countries around the world to risk a total collapse of relations with the Bush regime.
(Note: The image accompanying this article is a photo of a poster carried by a demonstrator at a peace rally held at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., in late March, immediately after the United States launched its invasion of Iraq.)