“What underlies your certainty? What is the basis of your disbelief?”
Saddam and the heart of darkness
Part two
By John Wojdylo
Earlier in the same article in the Australian, Richard Butler had warned against the consequences of American exceptionalism:
“This hinted at another problem deriving from the notion of US exceptionalism and the Bush doctrine, namely the growing phenomenon of inconsistency in international relations. How is it, for example, that Iraq’s WMD are so despicable but no mention is now made of those of India, Pakistan and Israel, let alone the US and other permanent members of the Security Council, who are overwhelmingly the main owners of WMD? Why is it that Iraq’s non-compliance with the UN Security Council’s resolutions is so alarming, when Israel’s long-standing non compliance is not? The point here is that the answers to these questions are best sought within a framework of law not simply the raw exercise of power.” [The Australian, 16/9]
Butler is wrong here. The reason why a case can be made against Iraq in particular is hinted at in what he said in 1999:
“Iraq constituted one of the most conspicuous cases in modern times of rejection of the world’s assertion that no one should have weapons of mass destruction.”
Arms Control Today: What are the broader ramifications of UNSCOM’s removal from Iraq for arms control?
Richard Butler: The Security Council-mandated effort to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction is the major test case for the world’s attempt to prevent the spread of those weapons. Since the current crisis started last year on August 3 when Iraq decided to stop all of our disarmament work, I have said many times-to the Security Council, in public lectures, in private conversations and to the media-that the issue of Saddam Hussein is far bigger and larger than his own attachment to weapons of mass destruction.
In the last month or so, that view has strengthened. When I was dealing directly with Iraq, I felt strongly about the deceit we were faced with and about the attacks that were made upon us by Iraq and its supporters, many of which rested on falsehoods that were very damaging. That made me feel strongly about getting the job done with Iraq, but I also felt very definitely that Iraq was a paradigm case for something the world has been trying to do since the mid-’60s when the modern attempt to restrain the spread of weapons of mass destruction began-the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT], the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention and so on.
ACT: What made Iraq the paradigm case for arms control?
Butler: The Iraq case had three elements. First, above all else, there was cheating from within the arms control regimes. The biggest nightmare of parties to these treaties is that a treaty partner will sign up but cheat. Iraq is a party to NPT and a party to the Biological Weapons Convention. It hasn’t ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, but after the 1925 [Geneva] Protocol no state was supposed to use chemical weapons.
Secondly, it was given the highest form of command in international law – namely Security Council resolutions, which are binding on all states under Article 25 of the UN Charter – to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction.
And finally, Iraq constituted one of the most conspicuous cases in modern times of rejection of the world’s assertion that no one should have weapons of mass destruction-something of indisputable importance…
That’s why I argued for the last year that it was essential to win the case against Iraq and its weapons because of what was at stake in the larger sense: the authority of the Council, the willingness of the Council to enforce the regimes of non-proliferation, the viability of those regimes, the moral standard that they represented. Those things are truly important. If Iraq succeeds in facing down the Security Council, what will be at issue is not that one rogue state will have gotten away with its wicked ways, but something far larger than that…
Put that alongside the other developments in the world and I see a confluence of events that suddenly relegates arms control to a secondary or even tertiary position in the thinking of those who run this world.
***
In September 2002, there’s even a stronger case that there is no inconsistency in WMD policy with regards Iraq. The reason is already clear, without recourse to a “framework of law”: Iraq’s WMD are despicable because Saddam Hussein has used them in the past against his opponents: Kurds and Iranians. And his deputy prime minister, the smiling and amiable Tariq Aziz, has said that the “biological weapons are for the Jews and for the Kurds” [to Richard Butler himself].
But most importantly – and this possibly explains the present urgency of the Americans – three weeks ago, Saddam threatened to use weapons of mass destruction again by explicitly threatening to “totally annihilate” a sovereign nation: Qatar.
Saddam Hussein has made his intention to fulfil his ambition – a pan-Arab state in the middle East – clear. None of India, Pakistan or Israel have threatened to use their WMD to “totally annihilate” their enemy, as Saddam Hussein did against Qatar. However flawed, these countries certainly still keep to at least a thread of international law – I believe much more than just a thread. But more important than keeping to a thread of international law, they keep to threads (great chunks, I believe) of self-imposed limits.
Saddam Hussein, beyond any doubt in his dreams, and more and more in his explicit threats, does not.
Butler here seems to be thinking of a neat and tidy notion of law and order – an ideal that is certainly realized in Australia’s richest suburbs – where everything basically runs smoothly and deviations from the law are fairly easily dealt with. But in a chaotic world full of imperfections – e.g. any suburb in any Eastern European city – although the ideal informs implementation of the law, one is often forced to target the most urgent cases first (without necessarily losing sight of the less urgent ones).
The nature of international treaties – e.g. the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty – is often tenuous, just as the notion of international law is; these are, nonetheless, invaluable normative influences in a chaotic world.
The Qatar incident – unreported in Australia, yet possibly pivotal – occurred in Baghdad at the end of August. Here is the article from Der Spiegel [Saddam Droht Katar mit Zerstoerung, 11/9 spiegel ].
According to the Cairo newspaper, Al-Gumhuria, a loud argument broke out between Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the Qatari Foreign Minister, Sheik Hamad Bin Jazim al-Thani. The dictator from Baghdad threatened the foreign minister, saying that he would completely annihilate Qatar.
The encounter at the end of August began brotherly enough. The newspaper report, citing Iraqi sources, said that at the meeting between the Iraqi president and al-Thani, the Qatari foreign minister had at first urged Saddam Hussein to allow UN weapons inspectors back into the country. Otherwise “hell will be unleashed.” “At the American military base al-Udeid in Qatar,” said al-Thani, “I have seen weapons that I have never laid eyes on before.” Hussein listened to this calmly.
Al-Thani continued, saying that “these weapons would be used against Iraq in the event of an American attack.” Saddam jumped up in rage. He shouted at the foreign minister. According to the Cairo newspaper, he asked his guest whether Qatar was prepared to be an agent of the USA and, on the side of the enemy, strike against the Arab nation. Should the small Gulf emirate “allow the US army to attack Iraq from al-Udeid”, he would “completely annihilate” the country.
The foreign minister drove straight to the airport after the meeting. There, Al-Thani said to journalists: “I have determined that Iraq wants to cooperate, but I have a few doubts.”
After the Qatari’s visit, referring to the Qatari’s urging him to allow weapons inspectors into the country, Hussein explained that he had told the foreign minister that “Iraq has already fulfilled its UN obligations.”
The American reaction to Hussein’s threats is not yet clear.
Three weeks later, the American reaction seems clearer.
The blue-sky dream reaction to Hussein’s threat is to treat it as the ravings of a harmless (to the West) megalomaniac lunatic. But then, on what basis do you discount the reality of his threat to totally annihilate a country?
Coupled with his self-declared pan-Arab ambitions, and his continual referral to the “Arab nation” as some homogeneous entity (in the excerpts in this Webdiary piece, these recall the myths of “das deutsche Volk” and “Blut und Boden”), it seems utterly foolhardy nonchalantly to claim that he has neither the capability nor the intention of carrying out his threat.
Does this not make disarmament even more urgent? As Rumsfeld said, disarmament is the objective, not UN weapons inspections. How is he to be disarmed when he always plays to win with UN inspection teams? (And all indications are that so far, he has won.)
Finally, it is known that Saddam Hussein takes frequent showers (up to five per day). Sounds like a case of hypochondriac disorder. But every person summoned to his presence must shower – to wash off radioactive powder, a means of assassination first used by the KGB – and disinfect their hands. Each of the officers, in his underwear, was searched and passed through a metal detector. Each was instructed to wash his hands in a disinfecting permanganate solution. [Mark Bowden]
The people who meet Saddam Hussein most often are those who make his power base function, who are responsible for making Saddam Hussein powerful, in whichever way he commands them to. If there were no biological weapons in Iraq, then Saddam Hussein would be unconcerned about their hygiene when meeting them.
* * *
The core issue is: What do you believe Saddam Hussein’s ambitions are? And how close is he to realizing them?
If you believe Saddam Hussein’s ambitions are great, then the recent American call to action against him starts to seem understandable. The moral situation is then like Hitler in 1938: Do we “bomb Hitler” and accept responsibility for possibly many, many innocent deaths – but thereby avert a Holocaust?
There are any number of horrific scenarios. In the best out of a range of possible outcomes of their belligerence, the Americans are hoping that by applying pressure on him and his inner circle, somebody will take the opportunity to assassinate him. (Saddam doesn’t have many friends left.)
But if it comes to a ground war in Baghdad, Saddam may well use bioweapons, as he threatened to do in the 1991 Gulf War if the Allies entered Baghdad. The Allies – the Americans, naturally – threatened to nuke Baghdad if he did. It could happen this time.
But perversely, the Americans would then be vindicated. The world would now have its “smoking gun”. Even more perversely, the Americans will be blamed for the catastrophe.
By going to war, if Saddam Hussein turns out to be dangerous, at a potentially horrendous cost in lives, the Americans would regain their honour; and if he is not dangerous, it’s very likely that Saddam’s troops will desert en masse (many defectors have said this), and the Allies would have a relatively easy victory.
Would the region explode? It may be that Saddam’s neighbours (apart from Syria) are more afraid of him than of their own people rising up in sympathy. Given his continued vigorous pursuit of his nuclear program – which would give him the symbol of power he really needs – I suspect that Saddam thinks more than an infidel invasion is needed to rouse the Arab masses – ie a show of nuclear weapons, made in Iraq.
What is the moral alternative? Are we morally bound not to take the risk in stopping him now? Must we wait for Saddam Hussein to achieve his ambition? This would give him the power to threaten us with unleashing the Holocaust unless we submit to his will.
This is our choice.
(Or, we may reject the concept of alternative altogether, and hope that Saddam is amassing WMD merely for his private collection.)
Absolute compassion – whereby any form of killing is forbidden – backs us into a corner. Absolute respect for human life means we must submit to his will, whatever the cost. Many of the anti-war voices we are hearing are in fact people yearning for an absolute. They elide at all costs the horror of the choice. In fact, the horror of responsibility, of having killed.
In the case of Saddam Hussein, I believe the cost of waiting is much greater than is generally being reckoned with. For perhaps he’s not even interested in bargaining for our submission. Just the fact of his obsession with weapons of mass destruction may be telling us something. What are Saddam Hussein’s ambitions? Mark Bowden again:
Saddam sees the prophet less as the bearer of divine revelation than as a political precursor – a great leader who unified the Arab peoples and inspired a flowering of Arab power and culture. The concocted link of bloodlines to Muhammad is symbolized by a 600-page hand-lettered copy of the Koran that was written with Saddam’s own blood, which he donated a pint at a time over three years. It is now on display in a Baghdad museum.
“If Saddam has a religion, it is a belief in the superiority of Arab history and culture, a tradition that he is convinced will rise up again and rattle the world. His imperial view of the grandeur that was Arabia is romantic, replete with fanciful visions of great palaces and wise and powerful sultans and caliphs…
“Even as Saddam rhapsodizes over the rich history of Arabia, he concedes the Western world’s clear superiority in two things. The first is weapons technology – hence his tireless efforts to import advanced military hardware and to develop weapons of mass destruction. The second is the art of acquiring and holding power. He has become a student of one of the most tyrannical leaders in history: Joseph Stalin.”
Said Aburish’s biography, ‘Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge’ (2000), tells of a meeting in 1979 between Saddam and the Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman. It was an early-morning meeting, and Saddam received Othman in a small office in one of his palaces. It looked to Othman as if Saddam had slept in the office the night before. There was a small cot in the corner, and the President received him wearing a bathrobe.
Next to the bed, Othman recalled, were “over twelve pairs of expensive shoes. And the rest of the office was nothing but a small library of books about one man, Stalin. One could say he went to bed with the Russian dictator.”
It was noon. Saddam was wearing a military uniform. Staying seated behind his desk, Saddam did not approach al-Bazzaz or even offer to shake his hand.
“How are you?” the President asked.
“Fine,” al-Bazzaz replied. “I am here to listen to your instructions.”
Saddam complained about an Egyptian comedy show that had been airing on one of the TV channels: “It is silly, and we shouldn’t show it to our people.” Al-Bazzaz made a note. Then Saddam brought up something else. It was the practice for poems and songs written in praise of him to be aired daily on TV. In recent weeks al-Bazzaz had urged his producers to be more selective. Most of the work was amateurish – ridiculous doggerel written by unskilled poets. His staff was happy to oblige. Paeans to the President were still aired every day, but not as many since al-Bazzaz had changed the policy.
“I understand,” Saddam said, “that you are not allowing some of the songs that carry my name to be broadcast.”
Al-Bazzaz was stunned, and suddenly frightened. “Mr. President,” he said, “we still broadcast the songs, but I have stopped some of them because they are so poorly written. They are rubbish.”
“Look,” Saddam said, abruptly stern, “you are not a judge, Saad.”
“Yes. I am not a judge.”
“How can you prevent people from expressing their feelings toward me?”
Al-Bazzaz feared that he was going to be taken away and shot. He felt the blood drain from his face, and his heart pounded heavily. The editor said nothing. The pencil shook in his hand. Saddam had not even raised his voice.
“No, no, no. You are not the judge of these things,” Saddam reiterated.
Al-Bazzaz kept repeating, “Yes, sir,” and frantically wrote down every word the President said. Saddam then talked about the movement for more freedoms in the press and the arts. “There will be no loosening of controls,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, fine. Now it is all clear to you?”
“Yes, sir.”
With that Saddam dismissed al-Bazzaz. The editor had sweated through his shirt and sport coat. He was driven back to the Cabinet Building, and then drove himself back to the office, where he immediately rescinded his earlier policy. That evening a full broadcast of the poems and songs dedicated to Saddam resumed…
In the Koran, Allah says, ‘If you thank me, I will give you more.’ In the early nineties Saddam was on TV, presenting awards to military officers, and he said, ‘If you thank me, I will give you more.’ He no longer believes he is a normal person. Dialogue with him is impossible because of this. [Saad al-Bazzaz, in Mark Bowden’s essay]…
I will now tell you my opinion,” Saddam said calmly, confidently. “Iran will never interfere. Our forces will put up more of a fight than you think. They can dig bunkers and withstand America’s aerial attacks. They will fight for a long time, and there will be many casualties on both sides. Only we are willing to accept casualties; the Americans are not. The American people are weak. They would not accept the losses of large numbers of their soldiers.”
***
What does Saddam want? By all accounts, he is not interested in money. Saddam told his official biographer that he isn’t interested in what people think of him today, only in what they will think of him in five hundred years…
In a speech this past January 17, the eleventh anniversary of the start of the Gulf War, Saddam explained, “The Americans have not yet established a civilization, in the deep and comprehensive sense we give to civilization. What they have established is a metropolis of force … Some people, perhaps including Arabs and plenty of Muslims and more than these in the wide world … considered the ascent of the U.S. to the summit as the last scene in the world picture, after which there will be no more summits and no one will try to ascend and sit comfortably there. They considered it the end of the world as they hoped for, or as their scared souls suggested it to them.”
Arabia, which Saddam sees as the wellspring of civilization, will one day own that summit again. When that day comes, whether in his lifetime or a century or even five centuries hence, his name will rank with those of the great men in history…
Major Sabah Khalifa Khodada, a career officer in the Iraqi army, was summoned from his duties as assistant to the commander of a terrorist training camp on January 1, 1996, for an important meeting. It was nighttime. He drove to his command center at Alswayra, southwest of Baghdad, where he and some other military officers were told to strip to their underwear. They removed their clothing, watches, and rings, and handed over their wallets. The clothing was then laundered, sterilized, and x-rayed. Each of the officers, in his underwear, was searched and passed through a metal detector. Each was instructed to wash his hands in a disinfecting permanganate solution.
They then dressed, and were transported in buses with blackened windows, so that they could not see where they were going. They were driven for a half hour or more, and then were searched again as they filed off. They had arrived at an official-looking building, Khodada did not know where. … When Saddam appeared, they all rose. He stood before his chair and smiled at them. Wearing his military uniform, decorated with medals and gold epaulets, he looked fit, impressive, and self-assured. When he sat, everyone sat. Saddam did not reach for his tea, so the others in the room didn’t touch theirs. He told Khodada and the others that they were the best men in the nation, the most trusted and able. That was why they had been selected to meet with him, and to work at the terrorist camps where warriors were being trained to strike back at America. The United States, he said, because of its reckless treatment of Arab nations and the Arab people, was a necessary target for revenge and destruction. American aggression must be stopped in order for Iraq to rebuild and to resume leadership of the Arab world. Saddam talked for almost two hours. Khodada could sense the great hatred in him, the anger over what America had done to his ambitions and to Iraq. Saddam blamed the United States for all the poverty, backwardness, and suffering in his country…
Perhaps he will fail in the struggle during his lifetime, but he is convinced that his courage and vision will fire a legend that will burn brightly in a future Arab-centered world.
***
***
What is the nature of our disbelief?
Do we react because of substance, or because of hype? Are we living in a blue-sky dream, where the terrifying reality – the horror of the choice before us, and the responsibility either way – is pushed out of our consciousness? Is inability to face reality leading us to a disastrous decision?
If we don’t act soon, when we are relatively powerful, we may be condemning our civilization to oblivion. But if we act now, many, many people may die.
Sean Richardson writes in Don’t Believe the Hype, “It is a very sad indictment on our current crop of representatives that we should probably ASSUME that the government will lie without shame if it suits them”. But this is self-defeating: if you distrust every word the government says, how is it supposed to convince you with the evidence that you demand to see? Barrier. A recipe for disbelief and inaction, even when presented with material that you ought to assimilate immediately and build into your planning or worldview.
Sean mentions another form of disbelief: “Daniel Pipes was surprised to find an audience of professional military officers questioning the need to go to war with Iraq after his presentation at the Australian Defence Force Academy.” This is part of a normal debate in Australia – we’re so far away from the rest of the world, why should our sons and daughters die for other countries’ problems?
The same debate (at least in some quarters) was had at various times about our participation in each of the world wars and the Vietnam War. The answer depends on what you believe the connectedness between nations is, the threat a nuclear-armed Hitler poses, on the connectedness of freedom. If Hitler had won World War Two, would we still be living in a land of the free? How much of a threat to freedom is Saddam Hussein? These sorts of questions.
The course of history can turn on seemingly fortuitous happenings. Or just one blow can sometimes have great repercussions. History is about power, not law. Law comes later. Our ability to implement institutions of justice, human rights, civilization in our image depends on us holding power. (A recent defamation case – Joe Gutnick versus an American Internet publisher – is a banal illustration of this. The American publisher can laugh at the outcome in Australia because it cannot possibly affect him. Australian law is powerless in the US, apart from extradition treaties etc.)
The fact that we are able to read Webdiary as a forum of free speech is contingent on Australian forefathers (and mothers) having stamped their influence on this part of the world, through asserting power. The shadows of our ancestors permeate our lives in making the freedoms we take for granted possible. Most of us have not had to make the sacrifices that they did; and if it wasn’t for Saddam Hussein, perhaps we would never have had to.
We all have power – in every personal aspect – and have a duty to use it, and learn to use it, responsibly.
History turns on singular events and decisions. If Hitler had held off invading the Soviet Union in 1941 and instead massively reinforced Rommel’s troops in North Africa, then he could have captured the oil fields in the Middle East. More important than being “good for business”, it would have won him the war. He would have gained political control over much of the world, and probably even conquered a lot more of it. The Holocaust would have been extended to Australia, as I’m pretty confident enough willing collaborators would have been found here. (This would be an interesting hypothetical to write.)
What if Saddam Hussein’s ambition is to establish a pan-Arab dominion in the Middle East? What if he intends to do that by amassing nuclear weapons, which are the most effective symbol of power? When he is powerful enough, and has proven his power, Arabs will bury their animosity towards him and take him as their leader. The new Saladin is undoubtedly how he sees himself even now. So if you believe that Saddam’s ambitions are great, and he is capable and willing to realize them, then the risk that an imminent war against Iraq would incite Arabs to rise against their governments is worth taking, especially since relatively few Arabs support him just at the moment.
Does he intend to extend his terror to the entire Middle East and Caspian Sea area? I think not – I think he wants to facilitate the fall of the West and be remembered for 500 years because of it. At 66 years of age, he knows he is too old to reign over an empire.
These questions should be investigated further. Maybe his regime would not survive his death – but then how do you feel about Islamists gaining control of Middle East and Caspian Sea oil? How would that affect Australia?
Another aspect of the disbelief question: do we judge the words people say by our image of the person who said them, or do we look for the substance of what they say? Do we compare the words to evidence we’ve been at pains to build up? Do we dismiss words just because we imagine “him and his kind” saying them with liturgical fervour?
But even words spoken by the proverbial idiot can have a wider truth. Or are also spoken by people who know a lot more about the situation than you or I or the idiot. Sometimes village idiots get lumped with a role much bigger than them, and try to fulfil it despite their inadequacies. Is this what we are seeing?
Why should you believe British Prime Minister when he presents the long-awaited “new evidence”? There are always a thousand reasons for disbelieving evidence – ever higher levels of burden of proof, theories to the contrary that get bigger and bigger. Does your disbelief follow a pattern? How many times have you disbelieved something that turned out to be true?
One step in a solution for testing the words you hear: find out who said it first. For instance, the Bush-muppet – and Bert and Ernie in Australia – say “regime change is the only way.” The Muppet Show gets tons of flak often just because it’s the Muppets that said it. That’s the worst reason for disbelief. This time I believe Australia’s Bert and Ernie are right.
The Muppets get flak for repeating what serious people have said. Dig around, find credible sources, according to whatever your definition of “credible” is. Here’s an excerpt from the Washington Post, July 31, 2002:
Iraq’s shopping list contains no ‘smoking guns,’ according to experts on Iraq’s past nuclear weapons program. Most, if not all, of the listed items have multiple industrial uses apart from uranium enrichment, the sources said. But one person with intimate knowledge of Iraq’s earlier attempts to build a bomb said he believes the real evidence of Iraq’s nuclear efforts will not show up on official shipping manifests. Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear scientist who defected to the West in 1994, said a decade of trade sanctions has taught Hussein to become much better at getting what he needs through a combination of smuggling, bribery and improvisation.
“Any watch list you have becomes meaningless,’ said Hamza, who describes Iraq’s prewar nuclear program in an autobiography titled Saddam’s Bombmaker. ‘Iraq is increasingly able to manufacture what it needs locally.’
Hamza contends that Iraq will eventually acquire a nuclear bomb if Hussein is allowed to remain in power long enough.
‘No one who has ever gone this route has backed away because of political pressure alone,’ Hamza said. ‘The only way to stop him is by changing the regime.”
The point is, every Iraqi defector is saying the same thing. Even if you believe American government reports are full of lies, read what independent witnesses are saying. But don’t believe just one. Put what Ritter is saying side by side with what Butler said about Ritter, what the UNSCOM reports have said, and what Iraqi defectors are saying.
Richard Butler to Arms Control Today (1999):
“UNSCOM was particularly hurt by Scott Ritter’s carrying on. We can argue about what influenced the decisionmakers – there are different versions. But when you claim to be in the room when you weren’t, when you claim to be part of the conversation when you weren’t, when you claim that conversations took place that never did – the false assertion that I met [Secretary of State Madeleine] Albright in Bahrain in March 1998, for example-when you make those kinds of claims that are factually so wrong, that’s very different from having a more honest argument about what went into certain decisions.
“I don’t know why he’s behaved that way. Some say he’s not just dishonest, but he’s actually delusionary, that he actually thinks he was there. You know there was one inspection that he implied he was on, and it was canned by the Iraqis, and there was a big fuss. He wasn’t ever on that inspection. He wasn’t in country then. It’s just wrong, but Ritter got to a point where he thought he was UNSCOM, that everything that happened there was him. And if you look at his interviews, you hear that coming through. He actually said on public television, thumping his fist on the table, “I was UNSCOM! I was it!” So, his claim late in 1998 that I somehow sold the store to the CIA is dramatically untrue. And on the contrary, as I said, I actually scaled down the extent to which we were using member states’ intelligence input to do our work because I was concerned about what it could do to our reputation. I was concerned about protecting the independence of multilateral disarmament activities.”
In categorical contradiction to Ritter’s recent well-publicized claims, UNSCOM itself concluded that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction. “In a report to the U.N. Security Council in 1999, UNSCOM concluded that Iraq had concealed nearly 160 bombs and more than two dozen missile warheads filled with anthrax or other pathogens.” [Washington Post July 31, 2002]
Ritter is in effect denying the conclusions of the UNSCOM team he worked for. I’d believe UNSCOM before I believe Ritter – but I may end up believing neither. Why should I believe Ritter, when he seems to have forgotten basic details of his work seemingly just so he can run his campaign? And that’s what it is, a campaign.
Go for primary sources, or near enough, anything to get behind the sensationalist facades projected by the media. Compare them.
A huge problem in the way the debate is being conducted in Australia is that nobody quotes primary sources. Everybody says “the Yanks say this” and “Shrub said that”. The fact is, serious people said it first. It creates hubris, a barrier that divides people into camps of simplistic beliefs and defeats the purpose of the debate.
Herald journalist Paul McGeough does it all the time, almost palpably blindly deriding the Americans for their belligerence – but he is not objective when he does it, it’s his opinion, not the facts. It seeps through his work and diminishes its authority, as well as perhaps his ability to see what’s important.
McGeough writes as if banality in itself contains insights, as if the zero-point of nothingness that banality contains allows us to see more clearly what is actually going on. But banality in itself is a lie, because it makes us believe the appearances that dictators want us to see.
While Paul McGeough was in Baghdad reporting on the business-as-usual of mechanics fixing Toyota trucks – he manifestly ignored the fact that they live in a military dictatorship and a mafia economy, whereby if they said anything against the regime they would have been executed – Saddam Hussein was threatening Qatar with total annihilation.
The overriding fact, against which all scenes in Iraq must be weighed, is that Iraq is a military dictatorship. “What colour was the sky in Baghdad?” “Why, it was blue!” But it is not blue. The Toyota mechanics had an invisible gun pointed at their heads. It made the sky black. Even if they were willing players in the mafia economy, the gun was real. McGeough did not seek to portray the gun that was there.
Because he could not see it. And if the smoking gun cannot be seen, it cannot exist.
A Soviet era maxim: Never trust the impressions you get from seeing what a dictator lets you see. Especially one that models himself after Stalin.
Paul McGeough wants to contribute something of substance when he is taken as a guest of the Iraqi government to “inspect” some site where “the Americans claim the Iraqis are producing weapons of mass destruction”. He sees one building out of several, nothing suspicious, and reports this. Freely admits the limits of his visit. But he is not neutral. Not objective. In his quest for absolute objectivity, he has portrayed a lie that the dictator wanted him to tell.
For even if there was indeed no bioweapons plant in that building, he portrayed a little piece of Iraq to make it look as ordinary and familiar to us like a factory in an outer Sydney suburb. Now when we think of our images of Iraq, we think partly of an ordinary outer Sydney suburb. Nothing too unpalatable, just a bit of blue sky and a pesticide factory. And suddenly Saddam’s terror is made a little bit more banal, more palatable, acceptable.
But the banal image is a lie. The instant Paul McGeough elicits the only answer of substance, his interview is terminated and he is sent back to Baghdad. As a consequence of his presence, a person was sentenced to death. Or could have been, because he let the cat out of the bag: 80 percent of the workers here had previously worked on bioweapons projects. I wonder if the guy still works there. Will McGeough go back and find out? This could be substance.
Each of us has power, even when we think we don’t. Perhaps the one duty we are born with is to learn what power we have, and how to use it responsibly.
McGeough also spun the weapons production site claim by dismissively attributing it to the Americans. Because of his carelessness, his articles add to blind hype in this way. This is not objectivity. His reports always contain an implicit factual error: in reality, such claims usually originate from defectors or informants on the ground – scientists, people who know much more about what is happening in the military dictatorship than either I or Paul McGeough does – and the Americans later try to corroborate them using spy satellites. A futile effort if the spy satellites are looking for “small labs built underground or concealed inside specially modified trucks”. Or “hidden in schools or private homes.”
When McGeough got the chance to ask a really interesting, potentially definitive question – as when he interviewed the spiritual leader of Hamas – he missed his opportunity. The question that he missed was: “What do you see is the solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?” I suspect that he avoided the question because the answer would have been too revealing. It would have made his readers come to a judgement about the nature of Palestinian extremism.
Isn’t it better to know the truth, however ugly it is, and to deal with it?
Extremism on all sides. Condemn Israeli extremism, too, but don’t avoid the truth.
Another problem with media presentation of the Iraq issue in particular is exemplified by the continual publication of Scott Ritter’s view on Iraq without publishing expert commentary that critiques it – so that people can at least try to judge for themselves. Ritter’s views are obviously controversial, so good editorial policy ought to have some “mainstream” expert (Richard Butler, say) critique it.
The problem is, we are presented with testimony from a guy with impressive credentials who is contradicting much of what the muppets are saying – stealing the wind from their belligerence, and puffing up antiwar hubris – which would be valuable if he was right. But the more you look into his claims, the more they seem deceitful. How are ordinary members of the public supposed to judge what he’s saying? (His claims are matters of fact, not mathematical models.)
Ritter is interesting because one of his central arguments captures precisely the denial mode of many proponents of the no-war-at-any-cost view. The argument is familiar from other fields.
In 2001, Ritter had a brief stoush with two scientists from something called the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Gary Milhollin and Kelly Motz, who had published an article (“Shopping with Saddam Hussein”) in Commentary Magazine iraqwatch detailing how Saddam Hussein is smuggling military hardware despite UN sanctions.
The most important points made in the article by Milhollin and Motz are the following: it is certain that Saddam has actively been seeking military hardware – including nuclear-related equipment – despite giving assurances to the UN that he will not; numerous military component companies, particularly in Belarus, Romania, Russia and Ukraine, have proven their willingness to supply these parts despite the UN sanctions; and an effective and widely used system exists of smuggling goods via Jordan and paying for them through undeclared oil. It is detailed in the article.
Given these certainties, the fact that no military hardware has turned up in a truck at the few border crossings (perhaps only one) between Jordan and Iraq – where UN monitors check the cargo – is irrelevant to the assessment of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein. From this report and others, the tracks are clear – only the smoking gun is missing. This does not mean it doesn’t exist; and it doesn’t mean that we may not form a judgement that we ought to believe it exists.
Scott Ritter’s central argument is that until we find the weapons, we cannot be sure that they exist, despite every sign that points to their existence. This is deceit. It’s the same argument used by those who say: “The signed document ordering the Final Solution has never been found;… therefore the Final Solution never happened.” Or: “Nobody has seen a black hole, therefore they don’t exist.” (No astrophysicist actually says this anymore.) We know they are there by the traces they leave behind.
Scott Ritter’s apparently unsolicited reply to Milhollin and Motz’s article is revealing for other reasons. Ritter’s letter, and Milhollin and Motz’s reply, are at iraqwatch.
The relevant concept here is “manifest intention”: there is no smoking gun yet, but that need not and must not stop us from forming an image of Saddam Hussein’s manifest intention; ie the dense matrix of indicators that outline his intention, whatever it actually is.
Part of this outline is the following:
“Inspectors concluded that Iraq retained at least 157 aerial bombs and 25 missile warheads filled with germ agents, spraying equipment to deliver germ agents by helicopter, and possessed enough growth media to generate three or four times the amount of anthrax it admitted producing. Iraq either claimed that these items were destroyed unilaterally, claimed they were used for civilian purposes or simply refused to explain what happened to them. Nor could the inspectors account for the results of a known project to deliver germ agents by drop tanks or account for much of the equipment Iraq used to produce germ agents. Finally, Iraq contended that many essential records of its biological weapon program, such as log books of materials purchased, lists of imported ingredients, and lists of stored ingredients, simply “cannot be found.”
…
“What U.N. inspectors know for certain is that Iraq did not account for all the biological agents it made before the Gulf War, and that it produced anthrax on an industrial-scale and loaded it into warheads. In addition, Iraq admitted filling R-400 bombs and developing drop tanks to deliver anthrax, as well as developing and testing the so-called “Zubaidy” device for helicopter dissemination. Finally, Dr. Rihab Taha, a senior Iraqi biologist, told inspectors that one goal of the Iraqi genetic engineering team was to develop a strain of anthrax that was resistant to antibiotic treatment.
…
“Dr. Spertzel confirmed that Iraq had made progress in drying anthrax; he said that instead of grinding anthrax into a fine powder, Iraq used a dryer and chemical additives. According to Dr. Spertzel, the Iraqi technique was a novel one-step process that dried the spores in the presence of aluminum-based clays or silica powders. He said inspectors destroyed one of two industrial dryers that Baghdad used in its static-free experiments, but had not managed to destroy or remove the other, which would still be available for Iraqi use. Thus, Iraq had learned how to dry anthrax and get it to a size that would allow it to be an effective weapon.[From the latest Iraq Watch report iraqwatch]
***
The poll results Margo Kingston quoted in Don’t Believe the Hype could mean anything – for instance, that few Australians can recall anything but generalities on Iraq in recent years, generalities that have become so much of a cliche that they’ve lost their meaning and impact. We ought to look at the groundswell of details that are periodically summarised in good articles or reports.
As a starting point, I recommend the Iraq Watch website: iraqwatch .
A number of key United Nations disarmament documents on Iraq that have been made public are at: iraqwatch
Too little of the information at places like Iraq Watch is available to, say, the audience of Channel Nine’s Sunday program during debates, who are then polled to see what they think of the government’s view. How are people supposed to make an informed judgement when very little of the groundswell of evidence seeps through the lacquer of set opinions?
We ought not rely on one or two “king hits” of evidence that are supposed to convince even the most die-hard disbelievers. People who really want to win – and Saddam Hussein is one of them – aren’t so stupid as to make mistakes that would let their enemies in like that. The real king hits – the ones nobody can deny – always come too late. By then it will be much more difficult for anybody other than Saddam to have a say in the matter.
Do we resist assimilating evidence against Saddam Hussein, deny that he intends to establish a pan-Arab nuclear dominion in the Middle East, because we want to avoid the horror of the choice and responsibility that would entail?
* * *
Some more passages from Mark Bowden’s essay.
He is long-limbed, with big, strong hands. In Iraq the size of a man still matters, and Saddam is impressive. At six feet two he towers over his shorter, plumper aides. He lacks natural grace but has acquired a certain elegance of manner, the way a country boy learns to match the right tie with the right suit.
…
While he served as vice-chairman, from 1968 to 1979, the party’s goals had seemed to be Saddam’s own. That was a relatively good period for Iraq, thanks to Saddam’s blunt effectiveness as an administrator. He orchestrated a draconian nationwide literacy project. Reading programs were set up in every city and village, and failure to attend was punishable by three years in jail. Men, women, and children attended these compulsory classes, and hundreds of thousands of illiterate Iraqis learned to read. UNESCO gave Saddam an award. There were also ambitious drives to build schools, roads, public housing, and hospitals. Iraq created one of the best public-health systems in the Middle East…. Today all these programs are a distant memory. Within two years of his seizing full power, Saddam’s ambitions turned to conquest, and his defeats have ruined the nation. … his single, overriding goal throughout was to establish his own rule.
“In the beginning the Baath Party was made up of the intellectual elite of our generation,” says Hamed al-Jubouri, a former Command Council member who now lives in London. “There were many professors, physicians, economists, and historians – really the nation’s elite. Saddam was charming and impressive. He appeared to be totally different from what we learned he was afterward. He took all of us in. We supported him because he seemed uniquely capable of controlling a difficult country like Iraq, a difficult people like our people. We wondered about him. How could such a young man, born in the countryside north of Baghdad, become such a capable leader? He seemed both intellectual and practical. But he was hiding his real self. For years he did this, building his power quietly, charming everyone, hiding his true instincts. He has a great ability to hide his intentions; it may be his greatest skill. I remember his son Uday said one time, ‘My father’s right shirt pocket doesn’t know what is in his left shirt pocket.'”
…
Yet no man is without contradictions. Even Saddam has been known to grieve over his excesses. Some who saw him cry at the lectern during the 1979 purge dismiss it as a performance, but Saddam has a history of bursting into tears. In the wave of executions following his formal assumption of power, according to Said Aburish’s biography, he locked himself in his bedroom for two days and emerged with eyes red and swollen from weeping. Aburish reports that Saddam then paid a brazen though apparently sincere condolence call on the family of Adnan Hamdani, the executed official who had been closest to him during the previous decade. He expressed not remorse – the execution was necessary – but sadness. He told Hamdani’s widow apologetically that “national considerations” must outweigh personal ones. So on occasion, at least, Saddam the person laments what Saddam the tyrant must do.
* * *
It’s tempting to speculate that the publication of Bowden’s essay and views in April/May may have influenced the US government to step on the accelerator. Much seems understandable after reading these two works.
Excerpt from an interview with Mark Bowden, author of “Tales of a Tyrant”. By Sage Strosser. Published in Atlantic Unbound (online), April 25, 2002. (iraqwatch)
What end do you foresee for him? Are there circumstances under which his own people would overthrow him without outside help? And how receptive would the Iraqi people be to assistance from the U.S. in eliminating Saddam and/or in setting up a successor government?
My guess would be that Saddam will fall, probably fairly soon. He’ll probably be killed by somebody in his inner circle. But it will be connected in some way to an American effort-in conjunction with American military strikes. That’s just pure conjecture on my part, but that would be my guess. If the military people around Saddam were convinced that the United States was definitely going to invade, they would know they were going to be defeated. And since I doubt that there’s really any intense personal loyalty to Saddam, I suspect that the people around him would not fight to the death to protect him, but rather would begin to maneuver to try and head off an American invasion and defeat by getting rid of Saddam themselves.
So you don’t think the United States will end up having to go after him?
I don’t think so. But we have to be ready to do it, and that has to be apparent to Iraq. We may even have to launch some strikes into Iraq, just to demonstrate that we are serious about getting rid of him. If we do that, I think he will be gotten rid of.
Knowing what you know, how would you advise the decision-makers in Washington to deal with Saddam?
After working on this story, I really do think that Saddam poses a serious threat to the United States and the rest of the world – not that he will attack Israel or the United States directly, but if he possesses or develops nuclear weapons of mass destruction, I have no doubt that he will find a way to get those weapons into the hands of groups like al Qaeda and others who will use them. Saddam has been making a very serious effort for some years now to develop the kinds of weapons that really can only be developed by a state. So I think that in the interest of self-defense it’s really important that we do something to end his regime. But as for how to go about it? I’m afraid that’s, as they say in the military, “over my pay grade.”
* * *
How can one rationally think about threats that can only be realized in the future?
Winston Churchill did this – and was right. The range of reactions to Churchill on a certain issue – almost entirely hostile – is the same as current reactions to the Americans. Are we committing the same mistakes as the West did in the 1930s and 40s?
Martin Gilbert, author of The Holocaust (1985) as well as a biography of Winston Churchill, discovered this surprising aspect of Churchill, seemingly unique among westerners at the time. [The following is quoted from http://www.winstonchurchill=.org/p92gilb.htm.]
“When in November 1932, shortly before Hitler came to power, and Churchill was in Munich doing some historical research about the First Duke of Marlborough, his ancestor, an intermediary tried to get him to meet Hitler, who was in Munich at the time and had high hopes of coming to power within months. Churchill agreed to meet Hitler, who was going to come to see him in his hotel in Munich, and said to the intermediary: ‘There are a few questions you might like to put to him, which can be the basis of our discussion when we meet.’ Among them was the following question: ‘What is the sense of being against a man simply because of his birth? How can any man help how he is born?’
“This may seem a simple sentiment to us now, but how many people, distinguished people from Britain, the United States and other countries, who met or might have met Hitler, raised that question with him? So surprised, and possibly angered, was Hitler by this question that he declined to come to the hotel and see Churchill.
“From the moment that Hitler came to power, Churchill in his public speeches, and in his Parliamentary speeches, made it clear that the racial aspect of Nazism was a central concern. He always insisted on raising this issue, and pointing out the relevance to his listeners of the Nazi racial policies, and this he did again and again.”
So Churchill was Britain’s Donald Rumsfeld, totally convinced of the validity of the “manifest intentions” argument, that the dense matrix of indicators that outline intention must be taken seriously, for they can point to the potential for catastrophic acts in the future; and knowing what is at stake, since we cannot know the true mind and can only suspect it from flimsy signs, we have to act to avoid the potential catastrophe: the apparent aggressor must prove they do not intend to perpetrate the catastrophe. If they refuse to provide credible proof, we must force the issue, or be prepared to accept moral responsibility for our inaction.
We already know of Hitler’s intentions towards the Jews from Mein Kampf, published nearly two decades before the order for the Final Solution was given. People at the time had good reason to fear the worst when he came to power and was given the opportunity to fulfil his ambitions.
Churchill feared what he saw, even in 1933. Martin Gilbert describes Churchill’s prescient note:
“I also found in an article which he wrote in April 1933, some two months after Hitler came to power, an extraordinary forecast or foresight, the recognition, which I haven’t seen elsewhere at the time: that it was not only the 500,000 Jews of Germany, but many other Jews, many millions of Jews elsewhere, who were now threatened. This is what he wrote:
‘There is a danger of the odious conditions now ruling in Germany, being extended by conquest to Poland and another persecution and pogrom of Jews being begun in this new area.”
But Churchill’s attitude was not cool enough, not balanced enough, for the higher echelons of Western power. The most unpalatable thing for his interlocutors was that at the bottom of his views on Hitler lay a judgement, a conviction that seemed to irrationally focus on a particular horrific future. He burned bridges instead of leaving the options open to align himself with the wind, whichever way it would blow. I also imagine they almost certainly resented being presented with a nightmare every time he spoke on the matter. They did not want to face the horror, because it means they would have had to make a dreadful choice. They would have to comprehend that they were complicit in the worst mass-murder in history.
“It is interesting to note, sad in a way, that Churchill’s constant ‘harping’ on the Jewish issue – as his contemporaries sometimes described his concern – was more and more held against him in the general argument about his lack of reliability, balance, judgement and statesmanship.”
Churchill’s confronting the nightmare vision with rationality increased his humanity. He saw some things from others’ perspective better, went beyond himself, his private visions, his self-interest.
President Roosevelt’s comprehension of the Jewish situation was inferior to Churchill’s. It made him reluctant to do certain things. (I believe this has resonances with Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.) Martin Gilbert again.
During my Churchill researches, I found an account of a lunch which he had in April 1943 with the Spanish ambassador in London. During the lunch, Churchill brought up the recent closing by Spain of the Pyrenees frontier to Jews who were seeking to escape from France. “I must warn your government,” Churchill told the ambassador, “that if you prevent these unfortunate people seeking safety from the horrors of Nazi domination, such a thing will never be forgotten and will poison the relations between the Spanish and the British people.”
Churchill then enlisted Roosevelt’s help to put pressure on Spain. At first Roosevelt was reluctant to participate, but in the end he agreed. Having to argue this case at a very difficult and dangerous moment of the war, with great military forces in violent contention both in Europe and the Far East, Churchill wrote to Roosevelt: “Our immediate facilities for helping the victims of Hitler’s anti-Jewish drive are so limited that surely the ability of removing some of them to safety is all the more incumbent upon us.”
Years before World War Two, because of his harping on about Hitler’s threat to the Jews, Churchill was treated like George Bush or Rumsfeld are today, when they harp on about Saddam Hussein’s threat to the entire Middle East – especially Israel. When Churchill spoke, he fuelled disbelief in whatever he said on the matter, and his credibility suffered. The problem is that he was right; and it seems that history has now primed the same set of circumstances, and public reaction is much the same.
Jan Karski got an even stronger reaction when, in 1943, he met President Roosevelt and a number of American Jewish leaders, and presented microfilm of Nazi documents and his eye-witness account of the Warsaw Ghetto and the murder of many Jews at a transit point along the road to the Belzec concentration camp. His accounts of the Nazi “manifest intention” to carry out the Final Solution, though they should have been utterly convincing, were dismissed as self-interested propaganda – many said he was trying to win attention to his own people’s cause, that it was just another example of his prejudice. Or they dismissed his testimony simply as unbelievable, without any further thought.
In the words of Karski’s biographer, “He came face to face with the adherents of Realpolitik in the British and American governments who argued for caution, argued for prudence, argued for routine in both the democratic world’s alliance with Stalin and its struggle against Hitler. Karski argued for action. His mission was a failure.”
Finally, Martin Gilbert writes the following on Churchill and Neville Chamberlain:
When in May 1939 the British government put on the statute book the limitation of immigration to Palestine, Churchill led the opposition to it in the House of Commons and spoke very bitterly of the policy of closing the gates of refuge at the very moment when they were most needed. But just as his friend had said to me, “He was too fond of Jews,” so I found a letter at the time of the Kristallnacht, the destruction of Jewish synagogues, property and lives, a letter in which Neville Chamberlain wrote privately to his sister: “Jews aren’t lovable people, I don’t care for them myself.” Although this expression of opinion killed nobody and hurt nobody physically, it was symptomatic of a terrible malaise which, in enabling the gates of rescue to be closed, did incredible harm, in those few months leading up to the outbreak of war.
What underlies your certainty?
What is the basis of your disbelief?
* * *
Come on, baby, take a chance with us
Come on, baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
…
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
[copyright the Doors Music Company (ASCAP); from Apocalypse Now Redux]