Re-Masking U.S. Foreign Policy

Observers preoccupied with delineating the differences between this Republican president and that Democratic one may uncover any number of small truths while missing the big ones. Identifying the big truths requires and appreciation for continuity rather than change. It’s not superficial distinctions that matter but subterranean similarities.

President Bush’s critics and his dwindling band of loyalists share this conviction: that the forty-third president has broken decisively with the past, setting the United States on a revolutionary new course. Yet this is poppycock. The truth is this: Bush and those around him have reaffirmed the preexisting fundamentals of U.S. policy, above all reaffirming the ideology of national security to which past administrations have long subscribed. Bush’s main achievement has been to articulate that ideology with such fervor and clarity as to unmask as never before its defects and utter perversity.
Andrew J. Bacevich, “The Limits of Power, pp73-74

There. He said it. I’ve tried to on occasion, and the best I can do is “Foreign policy does not change, one administration to another.” Bacevich gives us a better image – Bush merely “unmasked” our foreign policy. Obama is in the process of re-masking.

The U.S. is still in Iraq, and will use its militants to occupy that country until it ceases to be strategically important to do so. (Has anyone in the U.S. ever used the term “militants” to refer to our soldiers? That is what they are, after all.)

Iraq has long been a cause for concern in Washington – the Great Powers fought over its oil as early as World War I. But its status assumed new magnitude in 1973 when the Arab States inflicted an oil embargo on the U.S. as punishment for its support of Israel in a 1973 regional war. That was the first time Arabs had used oil ans a strategic weapon to influence U.S. foreign policy. It was chilling.

1979 saw the overthrow of the Shah, and a short-lived breath of freedom for Iranians. The “loss” of that country added new importance to Iraq. The U.S. fomented a war between Iraq and Iran, giving military aid to both sides, crippling each. That war ended in 1988 when the U.S. ’tilted’ towards Iraq, ignoring its gassing of native Kurds. The U.S. also shot down a civilian Iranian airliner to send a message to the Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran backed down.

The precipitating factor that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the weakening and eventual fall of the Soviet Union. The U.S. and the Soviets had an operating agreement, which George H.W. Bush called the “world order”, by which each respected each other’s satellites and fastidiously avoided direct conflict. Each used the other as the excuse for aggression in its own sphere of influence.

Iraq existed tenuously in the shadow of both the U.S. (with military presence in Israel, Turkey, Diego Garcia and Pakistan) and Soviets, directly north. Saddam Hussein, never anything more than an annoyance to U.S. policy makers, skillfully played Soviets against Americans, getting from one what he could not from the other. Washington officials were likely doing a slow boil.

The Soviet Union imploded, its weakness apparent years before the official fall. Its shadow receded, and Iraq was exposed. Using skillful manipulation based on his psychological profile, Saddam was enticed to invade Kuwait – the Emir of Kuwait appears to have deliberately provoked him by by engaging in slant-drilling in the Rumaila oil field, which straddles the border between the two countries. Kuwait was stealing Iraq’s oil. Saddam wisely sought guidance from the U.S. through Ambassador April Gillaspie on the wisdom of his planned invasion. She told him that it was an “Arab matter”.

Saddam invaded Kuwait, the trap was sprung. The U.S. had its casus belli, and launched a savage attack on Iraq.

It is vital to understand that the first “hot” Gulf War was waged as much against the people of Iraq as against the Republican Guard. The U.S. and its allies destroyed Iraq’s water, sewage and water-purification systems and its electrical grid. Nearly every bridge across the Tigris and Euphrates was demolished. They struck twenty-eight hospitals and destroyed thirty-eight schools. They hit all eight of Iraq’s large hydropower dams. They attacked grain silos and irrigation systems.

Farmlands near Basra were inundated with saltwater as a result of allied attacks. More than 95 per cent of Iraq’s poultry farms were destroyed, as were 3.3 million sheep and more than 2 million cows. The U.S. and its allies bombed textile plants, cement factories and oil refineries, pipelines and storage facilities, all of which contributed to an environmental and economic nightmare that continued nearly unabated over twelve years. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, The Thirteen Years’ War (Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia)

The U.S. could not follow up on that attack with military occupation – the “March to Baghdad”. There was a problem – Saddam still possessed a credible deterrent – chemical and (possibly) biological weapons. Occupation would be expensive to the U.S.

Over the next ten years, The U.S. (using the U.N. as a mask) enforced brutal sanctions against Iraq that starved its population. They took a particularly harsh toll on children , the aged and infirm. The sanctions, initiated by George H.W. Bush, were carried out with vigor by a new U.S. president, Bill Clinton, who also continued bombing the country, running thousands of sorties during his term in office. All the while, the U.N was at work removing Iraq’s chemical weaponry (supplied to it in the first place by the U.S. and other Western powers). The Iraqi nuclear program, never making it from the crib, was scuttled.

In 2003 there was confidence in Washington that the weapons had been successfully removed and that sanctions had debilitated the population to the point where they no longer had the will to resist. The U.S. finally, after twelve years of informal barbarism, invaded. But they underestimated the will of the Iraqis to resist, and the invasion turned out to be significantly more expensive than they expected. That was not their only miscalculation. But they prevailed.

Barack Obama is in office now, and is carrying forward the Carter/Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush policy impetus. Iraq is permanently occupied. There are hardened bases all over the country, a massive embassy and untold weaponry stored there. The U.S. is poised to attack any miscreants in the region.

Iran is the logical next target, but absorbing the lesson of Saddam, it has armed itself enough to create credible deterrent. It is also exploiting alliances with the renewed Russian republic, and the Chinese. It is too strong to attack directly – even though the U.S. would prevail, it might cost too much.

Carrying out a destabilization program initiated under George W. Bush, Obama has overseen the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to foment riots after a supposedly stolen election there. Since Bush himself came to office via theft, the touch of irony is delicious.

In the meantime, Obama is carrying forth with the Bush campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan to quell insurgencies and solidify U.S. military presence in that region. Though Osama bin Laden is probably long dead, Obama has not formally ‘killed’ him. The boogyman still lives and haunts us.

The Obama administration probably initiated the coup d’état in Honduras, though we won’t know for years. And, if he can bring down Hugo Chavez, he might well be rewarded with a second term. And if he can re-mask U.S. foreign policy, he will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents ever. Because it is the people who control U.S. foreign policy who will write that history.