Saddam and the Memory Hole
It's no secret that a great many Americans tend to have a very short memory span when it comes to current events and politics. If something drops out of news coverage for more than a week, it's almost like it never happened. The hubbub dies down and another hobgoblin is birthed to draw our attention from usually more important matters. More often than not, new issues are brought up to bury unfinished and unresolved ones.
When most people are told something by the news, they digest it in separate, seemingly unconnected bite sized pieces. I take a somewhat different approach. When I hear something, I compare it to what I remember from previous words and actions concerning the item at hand. I try to connect the dots rather than assume that "things just happen". Nothing "just happens", but we aren't supposed to think about that.
I remember when Saddam started to pop back into the news shortly after we um...dealt with Afghanistan . Osama bin Laden had proved elusive despite the fact that he had to bring a dialysis machine wherever he went. Just a couple of weeks before, Bush was repeatedly emphasizing that Osama was the most dangerous man in the world and had to be caught, dead or alive, at any and all costs. Saddam Hussein couldn't have been further from the American psyche.
In fact, in early 2001, several months before 9/11, both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice had publicly mentioned that Saddam was incapable of producing weapons of mass destruction, his ability to manufacture pretty much anything that could harm us was destroyed, and he couldn't even pose a threat to his neighboring countries. This was a leaf in the wind, mentioned almost in passing. Osama was the one to look out for.
No one was worried at all about Saddam. Hadn't we been bombing the crap out of Iraq ever since the Gulf War? Hadn't we basically destroyed the entire infrastructure of Iraq with bombs and sanctions (causing the death and suffering of millions of civilians in the process, by denying them the very basics in food, water, and medicine)? Wasn't Saddam history?
Suddenly, his face began to appear in the news, almost as if he was a threat. I remember seeing this and saying out loud "Oh my god. Don't tell me they're going to bring him up again!" I was hoping to god that our government wouldn't try to make him Public Enemy #1 again, and was trying to figure out how they could feasibly do so...yet I had this sinking feeling that they would figure out a way to do it.
They began to make hints that he was dangerous, and possibly connected with Osama and the 9/11 attacks. "Oh please!" I thought, "Who's going to buy that? Osama and Saddam hate each other!"
People bought it. I shook my head in amazement at the gullibility of the American people as I've done many times before and many times since.
Osama's face was seen less and less on the news and Saddam's face was appearing more frequently. I couldn't believe that they were trying to blame anything recent, especially 9/11, on Saddam Hussein, who was so obviously powerless. Well, maybe not against his own people, but certainly against us.
The news started talking about how terrible Saddam was and in order to fight terrorism we had to do something about him. Now, I thought that although people were pretty gullible, there's no way in hell they'd buy the idea that we had any need to go to war with Iraq again. I "misunderestimated" them.
We started hearing about how he gassed his own people. Of course, it wasn't mentioned that this happened back before the Gulf War, and that Saddam was our ally at the time. It wasn't mentioned that we supplied the gas. It wasn't mentioned that Donald Rumsfeld was over there glad-handing Saddam himself shortly afterward.
This was before Saddam got a real taste of power and before he decided to get a bit uppity and stop falling in lockstep with the wishes of Rumsfeld and Co. Plus there was this whole business about the oil. We'd wanted to build a pipeline through Afghanistan to transport Iraqi oil, and there was a lot of resistance to that (which we took care of after 9/11), plus, Saddam didn't want to part with the oil exclusively to America, or as cheaply as we wanted. You can look these things up for yourself, as it was all mainstream news in the late 80's and early 90's. Being issues that are older than a week, they've fallen into the memory hole.
Now, Bush wasn't going to make such a naked oil grab, was he? Well, not quite naked, but scantily clad perhaps.
Very soon, Osama went from the guy who had to be caught at any cost to literally "not a priority" according to Bush. At the same time Saddam was being played up to be the most dangerous man in the world, even though he'd never attacked us, was making no threats to, and was still being battered by weekly bombing runs that had been going on for a decade.
The anti-Saddam fervor that was evident during the Gulf War had suddenly resurfaced, generated by the constant barrage of his face on the news and the repeated idea that he was somehow dangerous and, contrary to the statements made in early 2001, had massive stockpiles of weapons.
How he was suddenly sitting on such a massive stockpile seemed to defy any attempt at logic.
To paraphrase the comedian Bill Hicks:
"Iraq? Incredible weapons!"
"Well, how do you know?"
"Oh...uh...heh...we looked at the receipt!"
As Bush pushed the case for war, many other nations stated that they could not support or endorse the invasion of a country that posed no threat to other nations. To attack first would be against UN resolutions, which, like it or not, we agreed to. It would be an act of war against a sovereign nation and most certainly against the Geneva Convention. Plus, if any nation is a threat, it is up to the UN to work together to combat it. Since there was no threat, there was nothing to combat. To act alone would make us a rogue nation.
Bush kept pushing anyway, and as war was imminent, massive protests broke out across the globe. Millions were protesting. Britain, Australia and Brazil had the largest protests in the history of those nations. Of course, most of this was severely downplayed by the media, if it was mentioned at all.
Most of the world was begging Bush not to be so rash and senseless. Besides, we've all pitched in to try to find these supposed stockpiles, and nothing has turned up. If there were such massive stockpiles, surely something would have surfaced. You can't just go to war without proof of imminent danger.
Another thing that seemed to go down the memory hole was all the images from the Gulf War of the precision and power of our air-based attacks, and how easily we vanquished Iraq and left it in shambles back in the 90's. Of course, we weren't trying to stick around either.
Remember the images on the news of the crosshair with bombs dropping with amazing precision? Remember how we used very few ground troops and just kept hammering them from the sky? Remember how our casualties were less than 200? Well, only if you don't count the victims of Gulf War Syndrome, which brings up the number quite handsomely.
So, exactly how was it that Saddam became so powerful? How did he suddenly become such a threat that if we didn't take him out right now we were all doomed? How did he manage to build such a vast arsenal without our knowledge?
It soon became self evident that he wasn't very powerful, at least against us. He wasn't a threat to us, and there was no arsenal of WMD's. A new story had to be created.
"Uh...he's bad! He used chemical weapons on his own people, remember? He's got to be stopped!"
Ah...so now we were the protector of the Iraqi people. Who cares if the reasons used to actually get us into war were completely fabricated...Saddam's bad!
It didn't seem to matter that there were several other countries with ruthless dictators of their own who not only had WMD's, but also had been making noises about using them on us. Somehow, Iraq was a special gem whose people were more deserving of liberty and democracy than all the other countries in the world that suffer under dictatorial regimes.
If we had never attacked Iraq, they would be in the same unfortunate situation as many other countries living under the boot of a dictator, and we still would have no right to invade.
What makes Iraq so special?
Let's really break it down.
The reasons for attacking Iraq have been:
They are a threat. Wrong.
They have stockpiles of WMD's. Wrong.
Saddam used chemical weapons on his own people. In the 80's, and we approved at the time. Even if we hadn't, it's still too late for that to be a current reason.
We need to save the people of Iraq from Saddam. Not good enough. Many countries have terrible dictators.
Saddam has ties to other terrorist groups. This is both vague and tenuous at best. It still isn't enough to justify an invasion.
Why are their people more deserving of freedom and liberation than those in China, Korea, Burma, Liberia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and several countries in Africa? What incentive is there for continuing combat in Iraq after it has been determined that they are not a threat? What does Iraq have that the others don't?
Could it be...oil? Nah. Perhaps it was a bit of an issue during the Gulf War. Perhaps they have vast amounts of this very coveted resource that we love so much and for which we seem to have an endless need. Perhaps certain individuals could stand to make billions from the profits of this oil (cough...Cheney, Bush, Bush Sr., Saudi Arabia...cough). Perhaps construction had finally begun for the pipeline through Afghanistan that we've so badly wanted for years. Perhaps we had dropped thousands of leaflets in Iraq urging them to not sabotage the oil facilities. Nah...oil is a non-issue.
This is to make the world safer, right? This is to make a more hopeful future, right? This is in the name of freedom and democracy, right? This was necessary, right? We had to do this, didn't we?
Did we? Or has history and fact truly slipped down the memory hole, to be replaced with vague optimism and the idea that, although we now have many more enemies and much less friends than we had four years ago, we are somehow safer?
I don't buy it.
- Omnithought