“I am in complete agreement with your sentiments as expressed in today’s blog. However, I think in listing the ” two fundamental reasons for war against Iraq” you have neglected a third. By any reasonable definition, the US has been at war with Iraq since 1991 at a significant cost in both blood and treasure. Iraq’s misbehavior not only offended our morals, but the stability of the world system of interdependent nation states. Iraq uniquely in post-war times invaded a sovereign state, absorbing it by illegal annexation accompanied by significant rape, murder, and pillage. The matter of Kuwait was unresolved, as indicated by the Chairman of every Security Council meeting leading up to our invasion. Like its unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, this action had not only caused untold death and destruction in the region, but produced worldwide recessions of incalculable cost. The Persian Gulf region has been recognized as an area of vital US interests since FDR. Presidents of both parties since the end of WWII have reinforced this fact. Jimmy Carter made it official policy in his State of the Union speech in 1980; Bush 41 went to war in 1991 in part because of this policy. Bill Clinton and nearly the entire US Congress made “regime change” a logical extension of it.
We also have a less concrete, but no less important, interest in maintaining the credibility of the Security Council. As its leading member, our own credibility is inextricably linked to it. No genocidal fascist dictatorship should be allowed to take us into a war in an area of vital national interest and be seen to get away with it. What may be called our “realpolitik” interests in invading Iraq are not as sexy as WMD’s and morality, but are crucial. They constitute the principal difference between Vietnam and Iraq; without being able to demonstrate that they exist, we have no business committing our troops to war. I have already come to the conclusion that a Kerry presidency would be more likely to finish the job in Iraq successfully, for a variety of reasons. My principal concern about his victory is that future presidents may take the lesson that any use of force is political suicide, even when the case is so obviously justified as with Iraq.”
THE WRONG ENEMY: “I have been a regular reader of your blog for the last six months. Before I proceed, it’s best to give a brief ID. I’m Bangladeshi and Muslim, educated in the Uni of London O- and A-level system back home, have a graduate degree from the US and now studying for another degree at Oxford Uni. I’ve been an ardent Anglophile for as long as I can remember and grew up on Dickens, Tennyson, Owen, Maugham, Greene. It’s a stunning thing to think sometimes that I am in the uni where my favorite writers studied – Greene, TE Lawrence, Penelope Lively. I’m as Westernized a Muslim as you’ll find from my neck of the woods, and a deeply concerned citizen of the Muslim world.
But I was against the Iraq war from the start. Let me tell you something, Andrew. Iraq was never the problem. I don’t know why the right bought into the Bush logic for a war against IRAQ. The problem with the Muslim world lies in one place above all others – the Saud dynasty in Saudi Arabia and its worldwide network of radical theocratic scholars. Why the right pushed for an irrelevant war against an irrelevant dictator is beyond me. If you guys had pushed for a democracy and freedom in the heart of the Middle East, you could NOT have made a better case for that than the two staunchest, most undemocratic of American friends – Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
I am from Bangladesh, and I have as much first-hand experience as anybody else of what these people are doing to us. The Bengalis have always been a highly tolerant nation – Bengali Muslims share many cultural traditions with our fellow Bengalis who are Hindu in religion but the same ethnicity and who speak the same language. Two of my dearest friends are a Hindu girl and a Christian guy. Many many of us have this same broadly tolerant mindset.
But over the last 20 years, the Saudis have established a galaxy of madrassas all over the Muslim world, and also in Bangladesh. In 20 years, the whole political discourse has changed from one of tolerance, and a debate between the market vs the state, into something far more insidious. The tone is now one of who can claim Islam more loudly. The would-be theocrats are trained, taught and financed by the Saudis, by the Egyptians, by the Yemenis. Their pockets are deep enough to survive even minimal electoral support. But because of the zealotry and organization of this vocal minority, their influence on national politics has been deeply corrupting. But even so, the VAST majority of Bengalis have no time for their bullshit. No one wants to live in an Iran or a Saudi, NO ONE.
Andrew, if you and your right-wing co-religionists had spent a fraction of your energy in campaigning against the Sauds and Mubarak, you’d have done all of the world an immense favour. I don’t know why Bush pushed for Iraq. Maybe it was revenge for his dad. Maybe it was the neocons’ greed for oil security. Maybe it was their desire to safeguard Israel for future generations. I don’t know. Maybe it was a combination of all three. But I honestly cannot bring myself to believe that, as their PRINCIPAL motive, they wanted to set up an exemplary democracy in the heart of the Middle East. That may have been an incidental by-product. But it never was, could never be the major issue at hand. If democracy and freedom was the primary factor, there were candidates closer to home to work on.
The Iraq war and its sordid mismanagement has messed up the prospects for real change in the Middle East for God knows how long. I know that as a developed country, the US is addicted to Saudi oil and wants to avoid upsetting those sick scumbags. But nonetheless I am urging you, begging you, those of you who have influence in the policy circles of Washington to shift attention to the real destabilizers among us. The Sauds, the Mubaraks.
For once, forget about stability. Even a popular Islamist government in Saudi or Iraq or Egypt will have to barter with the West, will have to sell its natural resources for its own coffers. So please push for real democracy, not for more client states. And please please make sure that your clients don’t become so repressive, so devoid of political expression that all the suppressed voices export their terror to far-flung places, Bangladesh or Indonesia or Pakistan or Philippines. These people are destroying us.
Naipaul wrote about the Saudi influence in Pakistan, in Indonesia as long ago as 1979. All that shit is now coming to pass. Please stop the Saudis. Please free Egypt.”
The Dish 