The World was Safer without Saddam's Overthrow
By Ndzana Seme
If there is anybody happier today, it is Saddam Hussein. As Iraqis are being killed
daily by the hundreds along with young American soldiers, the lesson that is imposing
itself is that Iraq was safer under Saddam's dictatorial regime.
The world is it safer without Saddam Hussein? Absolutely not, since Saddam was never a threat at all for the
world. We now know that he had no weapons of mass destruction and was not backing Al-Qaeda, was
not planning to attack any American interests.
Instead, the world has become unsafe due to the occupation of Iraq.
Since February 2003, The African Independent warned about the dangers mass bombings of civilians in
Afghanistan and Iraq present for the world security. Killings of civilians - rightly called "martyrs" - swell the
ranks of terrorists that one was supposed to weaken and defeat.
It is hard to understand why a couple of writers in an insignificant newsroom, like hundreds of millions of
other individuals around the world, were able to foresee the dangers now unfolding in Iraq, but not the
White House's tenants in charge of protecting 385 million American people.
Removing the Monster? Fine, but what about the Monster's Creators?
The Reagan administration -- like many former republican administrations before it in Congo with Mobutu,
in Haiti with Duvalier, and in other countries with similar dictators - created the monster Saddam Hussein by
supplying him with the means of terror he utilized to terrorize Iranians and his own people.
History should sometimes refresh our minds so diverted by the less and less intelligible torrents of news the
rightwing-controlled mainstream media invade us with.
In 1952, the CIA helped to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran and installed the Shah
on the Peacock throne. For the following 26 years, the Shah ruled the nation with an iron hand, plundering
the oil revenues of his nation.
When the Shah was overthrown in the late '70s, the liberators led by Ayatollah Khomeini showed, for good
reasons, a bitter resentment toward the U.S. Majority of Americans never understood the capture of the
US embassy and American Citizens during the Iranian revolution, because of the Reagan administration's
obscurantist explanations.
During the chaotic moments after the Iranian revolution, Saddam Hussein -- who took power as President
of Iraq in 1979 -- tried to take advantage of an unstable situation. Believing that the revolutionary turmoil
would make Iran easy to take, Saddam launched a preemptive attack against his neighbor. In the ensuing
eight years of war, during which both sides used chemical weapons, more than 1 million Iraqis and Iranians
died.
In the early 1980s, still smoldering over the Iranian hostage crisis, the Ronald Reagan administration viewed
Saddam Hussein as a potential new Shah it could use in the region. The U.S. granted Iraq special trade
rights, including credits for agricultural and other products that U.S. officials knew would be used to
develop chemical and biological weapons. Reagan Administration officials Donald Rumsfeld and Dick
Cheney were dispatched to Baghdad to deliver the trade concessions in person to Saddam Hussein.
The monster was created, feared and hated by the Middle East's Arab and Muslim leaders and people,
notably when he used the American-supplied WMDs to gas Iranians and his own people, the Kurdish
opponents.
The Reagan Administration blunted UN criticism of that war crime.
Not only Reagan at al needed to have Saddam as an ally in their efforts to overthrow the Iranian revolution,
they most of all planned U.S. control over the Iraqi oil.
A study titled "Crude Vision: How Oil Interests Obscured US Government Focus on Chemical Weapons
Use by Saddam Hussein," which discloses the intimate links between the Bechtel Corporation and Bechtel
executives and U.S. policy towards Iraq showed that some key players in the push for America's war
against Iraq, including Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other former Reagan
administration officials Roger Robinson, Judge William B. Clark and Robert McFarlane, have been
intimately involved in issues relating to Iraqi oil as far back as the1980s, according to an article by Global
Policy.
This report traces an intense effort by Reagan officials in the mid-1980s to win Hussein's approval for a
$2-billion oil pipeline to be built by Bechtel, running from the Euphrates oilfields in southern Iraq westward
to Jordan and the Gulf of Aqaba.
For Private Grasping Interests, Ruling Rightwing Hardliners Get Thousands Americans and
Iraqis Killed
Other Americans who tried to oppose the war on Iraq were threatened, blackmailed, labeled "Them",
Anti-American, anti-patriots, terrorists, sympathizers of the French; until no evidence was found that
Saddam possessed any WMDs or was a threat.
Our newsroom was not less subject of such threats. Following is the text of an e-mail we received on April
2, 2003.
"To the Editors,
"Why are you not denouncing Saddam and his torture? Where is your outrage against your own
African Nations espousing slavery and worse?
"There are people--mostly Americans --who WILL stand up for those who cannot help themselves.
Do not think of the regime of Iraq as a government--think of it as the mafia. Would you help
criminals to hold a country hostage?
"We Americans will PROVE the truth to the world. If you choose to hide in lies and misinformation
and deny the truth you will ultimately pay the price by confusing your own minds. Just as a
computer will crash with misinformation-- so do human minds and systems.
"We KNOW the truth. We are not doing any of this for oil or for power. The entire United States,
except for a few misguided people, are behind this. We will not falter and will not shrink even if the
whole world stands with horrible criminals.
"You are quick to judge and chastize us. Where were you on 9/11? Where were you before the war
was inevitable? You did NOTHING and now decry us because after 12 years we are finally doing
what we should have done 12 years ago.
"Do you for one moment believe that if the situation were reversed that Saddam would be
exercising the great care and precision we are? Treating the POWS as we are? (He won't even allow
the red cross in to our Pows and dismembers and tortures them). Do you believe he could refrain
from bombing one of our churches? These "fighters" are ridiculous---using women and children as
"human sheilds" and trying to force us to kill innocents. You must be sick to support such horror. If
it were World War 11 you would be supporting Hitler I suppose? We had to rid the world of evil then
and it falls to us to do so now---since none of the rest of you have the nerve or will to act. We do!
"Shame on you and the lies you are buying into and propagating.
"A dedicated American Citizen."
Using lies and misrepresentation of intelligence, the Bush administration was able rally this kind of blind
support. This "dedicated American Citizen" would never believe that the war on Iraq is about control of a
couple of American companies over Iraq's oil and scarce resources.
Bush Ambitions in Iraq May Vanish
Iraqis are not taken by it and remember that "Like the United States, Britain promised to "liberate" Iraq, not
to "occupy" it" NPR's Mike Shuster reported. "Britain's experience in Iraq after World War I offers a
cautionary tale for the United States and its forces in the country. As with U.S. forces, British troops were
attacked by Iraqis not long after the occupation began. And British forces in Iraq were stretched too thin."
The U.S. liberators and apostles of democracy in Iraq, in contradiction with their dictatorial occupation,
once again lacked "foresight" (Nelson Mandela's word) by shutting down the Al Hawza newspaper on
March 28. The newspaper's owner, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, until recently known as a "non-violent
resistance" preacher, is now uniting all Iraqis, Sunni and Shiites, against a single enemy, the U.S. The new
resistance would make U.S. control over Iraq impossible.
Worst of all the occupation of Iraq, and the price of thousands of lives paid for, have ended up settling the
irreparable. An increasing number of Arabs and Muslims are candidates to martyrdom, killing an American
having become a pride in the Middle East and other places in the world. Yet Americans demand the
contrary from their administration after the 9/11.
An entire generation - 50 years at least - needs to pass before such anti-American sentiment fades away.
And this healing would be possible only if the U.S. totally changes from an administration promoting State
terrorism to the America of Peace Corps, charitable NGOs, Protestant Missionaries and generous Donors,
who use to stand for the poor and the helpless throughout the world.
The Bush administration is the only dangerous enemy of the American people.
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©2003 The African Independent, Inc. All rights to republication are reserved