2004 Year in Review

The Stuff of History III - Win One for Daddy

Article Three in a Series

The idea that the present Iraqi conflict was instituted to complete the job begun in 1991 is absurd and patently offensive to any clear-thinking person, critic and proponent alike. When coalition forces halted the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam remained in power because the allies did not force a march on Baghdad to unseat the dictator. President Bush the Elder observed the mandates of the operation which were to drive the Iraqis from Kuwait and restore the status quo ante. Many observers, nevertheless, saw this failure to take Baghdad as a chink in the American armor – the lack of a will to fight and to suffer casualties. In his memoirs, Bush the Elder states that he never seriously considered a march on Baghdad, and that he adhered strictly to the United Nations (UN) objectives.

To consider that Bush the Younger conspired over the years to somehow win the presidency and mobilize the United States armed forces - along with the British – to win one ‘for daddy’ (as one of my readers suggested), is egregious in the extreme, and is worthy of no further comment.

What is true, however, is during the 12-year hiatus between conflicts, the Iraqis were guilty of numerous violations of the UN sanctions on strategic goods under Resolution 687. They traded contraband across borders with Syria, Jordan, and Iran. They pumped oil through pipelines across Syria to the Persian Gulf and sold it on the black market, for example, in flagrant violation of UN sanctions. Conservative estimates of smuggling during the life of the sanctions ranged from $1.5 to $3 billion per year.

The UN has investigations underway presently to determine what countries and what individuals profited from this illegal trade in oil, as well as in other areas of Iraq’s economic life. Pre-war knowledge has already implicated the French and Germans among those who bypassed the sanctions to deal directly with Saddam’s government. Too, the French and German governments were pressing the Security Council to drop sanctions altogether in the months prior to the war, in an effort to legitimize their business and governmental connections with the Iraqi regime.

To refresh our memories, sanctions, as redefined under Resolution 687, sought to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction: The four banned categories were nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, and missile delivery systems. They also sought return of prisoners of war and property taken during the Gulf War. In addition, they established the principle of compensation for war damages, they insisted Iraq’s international debts be honored, and they demanded Iraq refrain from terrorism.

Iraq was in violation of sanctions as early as July 1991. "Iraq's violations of Resolution 687 regarding its nuclear program underscore the need to maintain the sanctions regime against Iraq," John R. Bolton, assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs told members of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations and the Europe and Middle East Subcommittee. The State Department official said that food and medicine were exempted from the sanctions regime and that the Bush [the Elder] administration has evidence that Saddam Hussein has diverted food aid destined for hungry Iraqi children.

The United Nations voted to allow Iraq to sell a limited, verifiable amount of oil on the open market as a humanitarian gesture, primarily to help alleviate the suffering and hardship of the Iraqi people (Resolution 986 - 1995). This Oil-for-Food program was designed to purchase essential commodities – food and medicine, for example – to ease the blunt health effects of the sanctions on the average Iraqi civilian. However, in gross violation of the agreement, Saddam, his sons, and his cronies diverted billions of these oil dollars over the years to their own use, in the form of lavish living, maintaining the armies, building aristocratic palaces, and establishing foreign bank accounts.

During the interval between the two wars, the Security Council passed a series of resolutions* citing Iraq with failure to adhere to the terms of previous resolutions, culminating in Security Council Resolution 1441 (November 2002), which recognized “the threat Iraq's noncompliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security.”

Furthermore, Resolution 441 recalled that prior resolutions of the Security Council “authorized Member States to use all necessary means to uphold and implement … all relevant resolutions.” It was under these terms that the United States and Great Britain pushed for aggressive action by member states to bring Iraq into compliance with the resolutions. If Iraq refused to be forthcoming in its dealings with the resolutions, then the Security Council should use whatever force necessary to bring the Saddam government to heel.

Here is where the Security Council failed to carry through on its threats. France and Russia were against using military power to force Iraqi compliance, while the United States and Great Britain felt the Security Council had to make a stand in order to maintain any sense of credibility among the member nations. France found a convenient ally in Germany. In the end the United States and Great Britain were obliged to form a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ to confront Iraqi transgressions against UN mandates.

Renewed arms inspections in early 2003 proved Saddam was not serious in complying with relevant UN resolutions; he continued to play a cat-and-mouse game with inspectors under the leadership of Hans Blix. By March 2003, a discouraged Blix felt “sadness that more than three months of work carried out in Iraq have not brought the assurances needed about the absence of weapons of mass destruction or other proscribed items in Iraq.”

While weapons of mass destruction were one central component in the decision of the United States, Great Britain, and sixteen other nations to engage militarily with a recalcitrant Saddam, it was the general overall violations of “all relevant resolutions” that prompted the Coalition to respond forcefully and decisively against the Iraqi regime.

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* Resolutions 686 (1991) of 2 March 1991, 687 (1991) of 3 April 1991, 688 (1991) of 5 April 1991, 707 (1991) of 15 August 1991, 715 (1991) of 11 October 1991, 986 (1995) of 14 April 1995, and 1284 (1999) of 17 December 1999, 1382 (2001) of 29 November, and all the relevant statements of its President

by William Driver, Guest Columnist
February 22, 2004