A Swinging Party

I just cracked a book this morning, Web of Deceit by Barry M. Lando. It’s a worthwhile investment if only for the timeline, 1914 to 2006, at the beginning. But I only got past page two before I realized that this guy and I would harmonize.

The book was written before Saddam’s untimely death. Lando says a competent defense lawyer would have little trouble implicating others in Saddam’s crimes:

Those leaders would include, but certainly not be limited to, American presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George Bush pere and fils; other world leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Jacques Chirac, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikahil Gorbachev, King Hussein of Jordan, and Prince Faud of Saudi Arabia; Israel’s Mencahem Begin; and many of the men and women who guided their foreign policy, ran their military, and oversaw their intelligence agencies. Outside the political sphere, the accused might include hundreds of American and foreign businessmen, leaders of agribusiness, oil tycoons, and arms merchants from across the globe who profited handsomely from doing business with Saddam Hussein while closing their eyes to what he was up to – or, in some cases, despite knowing full well.

I’m no stranger to any of this, and knew full well that in disposing of Saddam the US was going to have to isolate him, try him, convict him and kill him before anything important came out of the trial. How would they do this?

The Americans and their Iraqi allies handled the problem quietly. To avoid jurisdiction of any international court or group of independent jurists, they established their own special Iraqi tribunal. According to regulations of the tribunal, only Iraqi citizens could be charged or subpoenaed. This meant, for instance, that if Saddam’s attorneys sought to summon George H.W. Bush to ask why, in February 1991, he had first called for the Iraqi people too rise up against Saddam and then ordered American soldiers to refuse all aid to the rebels while enabling Saddam to crush them, that embarrassing line of questioning couldn’t be asked by the tribunal.

Indeed, Bush Sr.’s crime against the Iraqi people in 1991 was heinous, one of the most cynical and despicable I’ve seen in all my years of political awareness. He ought to be swinging from the gallows, shoelaces untied. But the trial of Saddam was victor’s justice, so the guilty walked free, still do, always will.

The same logic would apply to Saddam’s gassing or thousands of Kurds at Halabja in 1988. There is no way his attorneys could point out that Saddam’s chemical weapons were supplied primarily French, Belgian, and German firms, or that the US State Department refused even to meet with Kurdish leaders who had proof of the attacks, or that the US and its allies had steadfastly blocked international moves to condemn Saddam for his use of mustard and nerve gasses.

The gassing of Kurds in 1988 passed largely unnoticed in US circles that year. Saddam was a faithful ally; the event had no propaganda value. It was only in 1990, when Saddam broke the rules, that the US government and press dutifully trotted out the event. It became useful. Just as Bush Sr.’s complicity in the slaughter of Kurds in 1991 will never be allowed on the US stage of public opinion, so too will the gassing of Kurds always be held at center stage. It’s useful. It’s our self-justification.

Lando goes on – the trial was a farce. Saddam’s attorneys were not allowed to refer to historical deeds of foreign complicity in his crimes. History was verboten – no reference to the first slaughter of Kurds using chemical weapons, by the British in 1920 (see postscript below). No mention of CIA complicity in bringing the Baathists to power. The US has ruthlessly manipulated the Kurds, arming and training them and abandoning them in 1975, again in 1991. No speaky.

As Henry Kissinger noted, “One should not confuse undercover action with social work.”

Already I can tell that this book will be a useful reference. I’ve long been aware of heinous crimes perpetrated by Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton, but when the audience is American, the ears grow over with cauliflower. It’s not that Americans are not sympathetic to victims of cruelty. Thye are. But denial runs strong within us. From what I’ve seen, when the crimes are committed by Americans, they honestly cannot hear. I’ve mentioned time and again a painfully obvious fact, apparent to anyone taking the time to study recent history: American have killed more Iraqis than Saddam, even in his wettest of dreams, ever imagined.

Yet it is Saddam who swung. All the others walk free – George W. Bush probably has a box of Medals of Freedom to hand out later on.

That’s how it works, that’s how the world is. There is no justice for the true criminals. They walk among us as if they were innocent bystanders. Desk murderers, as someone once called them.

Postscript: The Brits never actually used chemical weapons on Iraqis. Churchill instructed the RAF “I think you should certainly proceed withe the experimental work on gas bombs, especially mustard gas, which will inflict punishment on recalcitrant natives without inflicting grave injury upon them.” But the weapons proved clumsy when dropped from the air, and they turned instead to phosphorus bombs, rockets, shrapnel and metal crowsfeet (effective at maiming livestock and laying waste to crops).