Myth and Reality in Iraq

Will the dogs of war be unleashed in Iraq? The Iraq debate has been obscured by many odd myths. So, as the dogs of war growl and paw the ground, let’s take a look at myth and reality, starting with the background of sanctions.

Myth: Sanctions cruelly oppress Iraq. Children starve and die for lack of medicines.

Reality: Iraq does not lack money for food or drugs. Under sanctions, Saddam built himself some 50 new palaces. These grand complexes make European palaces look like back country cottages. They can cover several square miles and contain hundreds of buildings, waterfalls, artificial lakes, and immense statuary.

Billions of dollars flow into Iraq under the food-for-oil program. Much has been diverted to Saddam’s megalomaniac building projects and his immensely rich elite, funding fleets of Mercedes, Rolls Royces, BMWs, and so on.

Saddam could export more oil-for-food, but doesn’t. He likes the wailing crowds of what Lenin once called ’useful idiots’ who pump up anti-US sentiment based on the misery of the Iraqi people. So, Saddam starves his people.

Myth: An Iraqi attack is war on children. That’s according to a Canadian Member of Parliament visiting Baghdad to chat with members of Saddam’s criminal elite.

Reality: George Bush does not spend every waking hour thinking of ways to kill Iraqi children, as another Canadian MP claimed. US planners spend every effort to minimize civilian casualties.

The winners of a US attack will be the people of Iraq, liberated from a leader who gases his own people, represses them brutally, and starves them for propaganda purposes.

A similar claim was made about the war in Afghanistan that it was an attack on the people of Afghanistan. Apparently, it was better to see women shot before bloodthirsty crowds in sports stadiums under the Taliban than to have the US liberate the nation. Afghanis cheered US troops.

Similarly, many, who now claim the US is anti-Muslim, opposed US action to halt genocide against Muslims in Bosnian and Kosovo. Such critics have no shame. If they had had their way, genocide would have swept across the Balkans, women would still be brutalized in Afghanistan, and the world would continue to suffer from terrorist attacks launched from Afghan terror camps.

Myth: Saddam is cooperating with arms inspectors.

Reality: Cooperation means leading inspectors to prohibited weapons. That’s what South Africa and several former Soviet states did when they eliminated nuclear programs. UN inspectors and US officials, relying on previously classified material, have vividly described Iraq’s non-cooperation.

Saddam continues to hide weapons he is known to have chemical munitions, scuds, and hundreds of tonnes of chemicals for biological and chemical agents such as anthrax, botulinum toxin, clostridium perfrigens, VX, tabun, and sarin.

Myth: The United States armed Iraq and therefore has no right to attack it.

Reality: This is like arguing that Britain had no right to declare war on Nazi Germany in 1939 because Britain appeased and sold arms to the Nazis earlier in the decade.

Saddam was the power behind the throne in Iraq under the Ba’th regime. In 1979, he took over as president. The Ba’th regime was unusually progressive for the Middle East. It advanced education and the status of women. Only later did Saddam’s truly evil nature show itself.

In 1980, hostility between Iraq and Iran flared into war. In Iran, officially sanctioned thugs beat up women on the streets. Show trials were underway. Iran sponsored terrorism at home and abroad. A bloodbath loomed if Iran’s radical Shiite clerics conquered Iraq and took their vengeance out on religious minorities. Under these circumstances, support for an apparently liberal Iraq made some sense.

Myth: The United States is attacking Iraq for the oil.

Reality: A US-led coalition liberated Kuwait after the last gulf war and hardly expropriated Kuwaiti oil. A war on Iraq is likely to increase oil prices and weaken the US economy. The US will also have to pay for the cost of war.

Besides if the US was so evil that it’s leaders spend time trying to figure out how to kill children, why wouldn’t the United States attack the much easier target of Saudi Arabia -- or Alberta, for that matter -- if oil was the key motivation.

Myth: The United States is attacking Iraq because it’s Muslim and leaving North Korea alone because it isn’t.

Curiously, this argument is typically made by the same people who opposed US action to save Muslims in the Balkans and US action to liberate Afghanistan Muslims from a brutal regime. North Korea, unlike Iraq, has not used its weapons to invade neighbours since the end of the Korean War. North Korea could also level the capital of South Korea in minutes with an artillery barrage and would also likely use its nuclear weapons. This is, if anything, a reason to make sure Iraq disarms before it too is able to hold the world hostage.

The myths about Iraq are easy to puncture. But, the failure of arguments against war does not make the argument for war. That’s still being made.