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December 16, 2006 at 13:54:04

The Old American Century: Twenty Years of Realist Foreign Policy

by Kenneth Anderson Page 2 of 2 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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Highways of Death

In compliance with UN Resolution 660, Iraqi forces began their withdrawal from Kuwait on February 26, 1991. Saddam Hussein announced this on Baghdad radio the same day and eye witnesses in Kuwait confirmed that Iraqi forces were leaving that afternoon. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that US forces would not attack Iraqi forces in retreat. However, it was the position of the White House that Iraqi forces were not retreating and George Bush insisted that "there was no evidence to suggest the Iraqi army is withdrawing. In fact, Iraqi units are continuing to fight." He further promised to continue prosecuting the war. But what ensued could not, by any stretch, be considered "war."

On two stretches of road leading out of Kuwait, large convoys comprising some 2000 vehicles were attacked by US aircraft, which initially destroyed vehicles at the front and rear of the columns. Once the traffic jam was created, US airplanes bombed and strafed every vehicle with impunity. One pilot would describe it as "shooting fish in a barrel."

There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it's impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.

While there were some survivors, General Schwarzkopf estimated that 100,000 Iraqi soldiers had been eliminated. Schwarzkopf later wondered, "How long the world would stand by and watch the United States pound the living hell out of Iraq...." Long enough for yet another episode of merciless extermination to unfold.

In an event that would become known as the "bulldozer assault," two brigades of the US Army 1st Infantry, using combat earth movers, consciously buried alive an unknown number of Iraqi soldiers in the desert sand. The US military claimed that the soldiers were defending the "Saddam Line," really just a trench in the dirt, though this claim, as with all claims about any war emanating from the White House and the Pentagon, is highly questionable. Before getting their story straight, one US commander at the time place the number buried in the thousands while another said the number was only one to two hundred.*

Unguided by any measure of moral rectitude or rule of war, the realist aim in slaughtering retreating Iraqi forces on the highways of death was the complete annihilation of any and all Iraqi military capacity. This is crucial, of course, if one's goal is continued military and economic dominance of the country, a goal few doubted was ultimately at stake and entirely achievable now that the systematic destruction of the military and economic infrastructure of Iraq had taken place. The realists' agenda, however, was not yet complete. Severe economic sanctions described by UN Resolution 661, which had already been coerced by the White House, would impose yet more uncountable deaths in the decade subsequent to the first Gulf War.

***

At their most ruinous height, the draconian economic sanctions imposed on Iraq would be implicated in the deaths of several hundred thousand children, as well as the sick and elderly, over the several years before the Oil for Food program began in late 1997. Harsh restrictions on medical supplies, food, water treatment chemicals and other necessities would be collaterally imposed under the rubric of "dual use," the American position being that such goods could be weaponized. At its peak, the death rate was estimated to be about 5,000 civilians per month, mostly children, the elderly and infirm, a number that is considerably higher than the even the worst months of carnage seen in Iraq today. This was a "price" then Secretary of State and contemptible realist, Madeline Albright, asserted was "worth it." Just what "it" was remained unstated, though the implication was clear enough: removal of Saddam Hussein through the decimation of civil society in Iraq. It was believed that, despite the immense hardship inflicted on the Iraqi people by the sanctions, it would be this suffering that would lead Iraqis to depose Hussein; a fantasy under the guise of "realist" foreign policy. After having been "bombed back to the stone age," Iraq remained unable to rebuild even its most basic infrastructure, such as water treatment plants. Disease was rampant, and many of the deaths were attributed to cholera and dysentery. In 1998, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad, Denis Halliday, resigned, saying, "I don't want to administer a programme that satisfies the definition of genocide." The death toll of the sanctions, the final program of the realist agenda before George Bush became president and invaded Iraq, is estimated to be 1.5 million people. And all of this devastation was wrought without a single US military casualty. This was the realist path toward domination in the Middle East.

***

In the decades preceding the current invasion of Iraq, realist foreign policy in the Middle East produced some remarkably horrifying atrocities. The realist part of that, of course, is that much of this was done and kept outside the glare of daily media coverage. Covert operations, UN coercion and bribery, illegal arms dealing, war crimes and "shock and awe" under the cover of darkness, all were conducted as extra-legal enterprises, only to be discovered later. As the wisdom goes, it is easier to get forgiveness than permission. Indeed, the first Gulf War was so swift that almost no one had a chance to witness it before the US military had finished the job. Though the after effects, such as the Highway of Death, remain as testament to some of this policy, attention to much of what has been crafted in the name of US interests has so faded, the established narrative regarding the realists and the neoconservatives actually portrays the likes of James Baker and George H. W. Bush as the wise and kindly men of a bygone and benevolent era. Nothing could be further from the truth. They have agitated for and encouraged war and conducted their own, which along with devastating economic sanctions, have produce millions of dead. The neoconservatives are still well down in the body count. But what the realists never did was mess up the Middle East to the point that Iraqi oil production and distribution was seriously threatened or place Iran in a position of power, which it certainly is now.

Baker and the rest of the realists may have doubted the outcome, but they did not oppose Bush's invasion. Any doubts would have stemmed from Bush's disregard for the Powell doctrine and the obvious need to keep US troops out of an extended, bloody conflict. He did not do that. Moreover, after recurring deployments, stop-loss orders, 25,000 casualties and dismal recruiting levels, as in the aftermath of Vietnam, the US military is now at its lowest level of readiness since that time. Bush has broken the military, just as that earlier insane war did. The realists did not like that.

Bush's invasion also produced something that was entirely expected by the realists, because they had already considered an invasion of Iraq. It was not going to have a beneficial outcome, as George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft would tell us in 1998:

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream . . . and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. . . . We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect rule Iraq. . . . There was no viable 'exit strategy' we could see. . . . Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different -- and perhaps barren -- outcome.

We are now well beyond a "perhaps barren outcome." There is no foreseeable outcome that not entirely bleak and there is certainly none envisioned by Bush. Perhaps he thinks things will just get better one day and he is willing to wait until that day comes. This is why the realists felt a need to step in. Bush had no intention of altering course, and still doesn't, even as his misadventure in international illegality continues its now out of control eruption. Robert Gates, a member of Baker's ISG panel and now Secretary of Defense, is someone thought to be the signal that Bush was ready to change his tack. As an un-indicted co-conspirator in Iran-Contra, Gates certainly has a realist track record, but it remains to be seen just what kind of effect he will bring to this White House. Given Bush's current state of intransigence, he may have no effect at all.

Some have considered that the Iraq Study Group report is mere political cover for Bush, which may be true to some degree, but this seems to ignore the genuine concern the realists have for the region. And given how Bush has blithely dismissed most or all of the recommendations, whatever political shelter the report may have offered has been likewise dispatched. The true realist concern lies in one seminal fact: the Middle East is where the oil is. But with the violence rampant throughout Iraq, oil is going to be hard to come by when the pumps and the drillers are getting shot and blown up. Along with breaking the military, this also, was a too serious breach of the trust. With the Pentagon now seriously considering troop increases, The Surge, and that Condoleezza Rice has said she does not want to talk with Iran or Syria, it is clear that Bush is not considering the ISG recommendations. While there seems to be a revolt around him and that it seems impossible to believe that Bush can continue to ignore it all, we know that he is perfectly capable of ignoring the advice of anyone presenting perspectives that fail to comport with his particular view of things. At this point, it is not at all clear whether Bush listens to much of anything. Though the Iraqis seem willing to oblige a couple of the ISG recommendations regarding the new oil law, this is scant help to the realist agenda if the oil is made inaccessible by the civil war. And if Iraq becomes a Shi'ite state with close ties to Iran, which is almost what it is right now despite the bloodshed, then the realists will have a very difficult time on their hands, which is probably why the ISG is encouraging talks with Iran and Syria right now. But who knows, maybe such an outcome would make our government consider the unused avenue of becoming a good, international neighbour rather than a covertly operating, murderous regime. But after decades of always siding with confrontation, aggression and war, such a happy fantasy will remain just that.

It is indeed a dark, dark place we have entered with the Bush administration that the band of nefarious, mercenary realists are now viewed as the great statesmen of the day. The realists and the history of their brutalizing agenda have been granted a pass on their dreadful legacy. There are two reasons for this. One is that the United States, firmly enthralled by the myth of its own exceptionalism and greatly abetted in this by the vehicle of a compliant media, has long sported an intentional desire to remain ignorant of it own true history. And two, because the current gang of murderous fantasy-landers appear to be so much worse.

_____________________________________
* It should be noted that the magnitude of the numbers of casualties, both military and civilian, were highly disputed by US officials, which is often the case when horrifying slaughter has taken place. We need only observe the current administration and Pentagon positions regarding the number of casualties in Iraq today. Independent observers place the Iraqi death toll at least an order of magnitude larger than anything the Pentagon will admit, even as they insist that they "don't do" body counts. Fifteen years after the carnage, there is now de facto acceptance of US military reports regarding the number of Iraqi casualties; relief for the American conscience that the killing was not too horrific -- only tens of thousands and not hundreds of thousands. In fact, a Washington Post story of March 11, 1991, entitled, U.S. Scrambles to Shape View of Highway of Death, should demonstrate sufficiently that there was a concerted effort by the Pentagon and the White House to discredit any reports of US action in the Gulf War that did not comport with the Pentagon's official version of those events. Indeed, the new ISG report has cited a concerted effort on the part of this Pentagon to systematically under-report violent episodes in Iraq by an order of magnitude.

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An astronomer who has worked on a number of NASA projects, Ken lives in Baltimore, where he devotes his scientific training to observations and inferences about current affairs, politics and the media. He authors Shockfront and The Bonehead Compendium.