From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: The Gulf Crisis & the U.N. (Part II)(footnoted article)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 20:46:49 GMT



     The Middle East tinderbox is more explosive than ever.  The State 
    Department and the corporate media speculate (or fabricate) which 
    Arab state will next attain strategic military parity with Israel, 
    the possibility looms of Operations Desert Storm without end. 
    Perhaps they will be subtitled "First Blood," "Second Blood," etc. 
    This will be the legacy of Bush's New World Order. 

##################################################################
*Date: 13 Oct 1992 16:17:05 -0400 (EDT) 
*From: GWELTY@DESIRE.WRIGHT.EDU 
*Subject: Lets try part 2, I think this is readable. 

Gordon Welty "The Gulf Crisis and the United Nations" UNIVERSITY OF 
DAYTON REVIEW, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer 1991), pp. 75-85. 

                   =============================== 
                    > P A R T   I I   o f   I I < 
                   =============================== 

[/78] II.   George Bush's war occurred and the Gulf Crisis 
continues  until today because the United States (and its allies) 
first  armed and supported Iraq against the Islamic Revolution of 
Iran,  and then opposed and ultimately disarmed Iraq on behalf of  
Israel.  Before developing this point, let us note one important  
implication.  It is not  the presence of weapons of mass  
destruction in the arsenals of regional powers which threatens  
World War III, as some have suggested in behalf of Operation  
Desert Storm./20/   Rather it is the proclivity of the United 
States  to violate the Principle of sovereign equality of other 
nations,  a principle guaranteed by Article  2:1 of the United 
Nations  Charter, which threatens world peace.  We will return to 
this  implication towards the end of our remarks; now let us 
consider  the background of the Gulf Crisis. 

     The Iranian Revolution of the late 1970's occurred, in large  
part, in response to United States violation of the sovereign  
equality of Iran in 1953, at a time when both countries were  
signatory to the UN Charter./21/  The United States continued in  
these violations for the next quarter century, through its  
restoration and support of Shah Pahlavi, and other measures.    
According to the UN Charter, the United States could have been  
expelled from the United Nations on those grounds alone, except  
that according to Article 6, such action must be initiated by the  
Security Council, where the united States itself could veto such  
an initiative.  As Oppenheim and Lauterpacht observe "measures of  
enforcement cannot be taken against a permanent member of the  
Security Council."/22/  Finally, the United  States sold the  
Pahlavi regime of Iran some twenty billion dollars worth of  
weapons in the Seventies.  And then the chickens came home to  
roost; revolution drove the Shah from the Peacock Throne. 

     Recently, there has been considerable renewed attention in  
the commercial media to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979.  As  
you recall, this crisis was an aspect of the Iranian Revolution.   
When the United States offered a visa to the once again deposed  
Shah Pahlavi in late 1979, the Iranian revolutionaries responded  
in an act of what an earlier age would have called "revolutionary  
self-defense," occupying the US Embassy in Teheran and taking the  
Embassy officials hostage./23/   Gary Sick, staff member of the  
National Security Council during the Carter administration, has  
suggested that "individuals associated with the Reagan-Bush  
campaign of 1980 met secretly with Iranian officials to delay the  
release of the [fifty-two] American hostages until after the  
Presidential election.  For this favor, Iran was rewarded with a  
substantial supply of arms from Israel."/24/   The hostages were  
eventually released, of course, on January 21, 1981, only minutes  
after Ronald Reagan took his oath of office as President. 

     Let us make four points in this regard.  First, this is not  
really `new' news.  Two `insiders,' Abdol Hassan Bani-Sadr,  former 
President of Iran, and Barbara Honegger, White House  policy 
analyst during the Reagan Administration, had made the  similar 
charges in the Eighties./25/   Second, if these charges  are proven 
to be true, they will have a devastating impact upon  the American 
political scene.  Because the Fourteenth Amendment  to the U.S. 
Constitution holds, to quote, "no person shall  hold any office, 
civil or military, under the United States, who,  having previously 
taken an oath as a member of Congress [such as  George Bush did], 
or as an executive officer of any state [as  Ronald Reagan did], 
shall have given aid or comfort  to the  enemies thereof." [78/79] 
By most understandings, revolutionary Iran was  an enemy of the 
United States; the two countries were committing  belligerent acts 
against one another during this period, etc. 

     Third, the United States was thus not only arming Iran  during 
the Sixties and Seventies, but also during the Eighties.   Finally, 
the role of Israel in this arms supply scheme, as in the  
subsequent Iran-Contra Conspiracy, would put it in a position to  
assert profound `influence' over both the Reagan and the Bush  
Administrations -- providing an hypothesis which goes a long way  
to explaining what Professor Naseer Aruri has called the 
"rejectable  peace plans" of Secretaries of State Schultz, James 
Baker, etc. 

     After these successes, Ayatollah Khomeini sought to direct  
the revolutionary enthusiasm of Iranians -- as well as the  
armaments supplied by the United States, and by its client,  Israel 
-- towards the liberation of the holy cities of Karbala  (in Iraq) 
and Mecca (in Arabia).  Iraq was the only country with  a large 
enough population and armed forces to resist this.  The  royal 
families of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia bankrolled the effort,  while 
the United States and its "allies" sold Iraq some twenty-  four 
billion dollars worth of weapons in the first half of the  Eighties 
alone./26/ 

     Three staff members of the Strategic Studies Institute of  the 
U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA., Dr. Stephen C.  Pelletiere, 
Col. Douglas Johnson, and Dr. Leif Rosenberger  completed, in early 
1990, a study of Iraqi military posture which  was then published 
by the U.S. Government Printing Office./27/    The book recounts 
how Iraq decisively defeated Iran in the final  months of their 
eight-year war.   

     The fortunes of war had shifted rather inconclusively until  
1987, due in part to the Iraqi strategy of "static defense."   Iraq 
sought to minimize its human losses during the war.  The  fortunes 
of war also depended in part upon shifting alliances.   The authors 
point out that "Israel backed the Iranians throughout  the war.  
Israel practically initiated the Irangate conspiracy  and, had the 
Israelis their way, they would have tipped the  balance of power to 
the Iranians."   They note, however, that a  number of Israelis 
opposed this official "tilt."/28/      

     Iran escalated the war at several points, for instance by  
being first to attack civilian targets with its Scud missiles in  
1985.  By February 1988, Iraq was finally able to respond by  
attacking Teheran with Scud-B missiles.  Iraq then attained  
victory through the "In Allah We Trust" campaign, including the  
decisive battles of Faw (April 1988), Basra (May), Majnoon  (June), 
Dehloran (July), and Qasr-e-Sherin (August 1988).  We  should not 
forget that the U.S.S. Vincennes shot down Iran  Airways # 655 on 
July 3, 1988, killing all 290 persons on board,  dramatically 
illustrating United States' military resolve.  Iran  accepted the 
cease fire on July 18, 1988. 

     Pelletiere et al. attribute the Iraqi victory in the 1988  
campaign to an overall reorganization of the Army, including the  
Republican Guards, and to a shift from "static defense" to a  
high-tech offensive strategy.  They conclude their account of the  
Iran-Iraq War with an assessment of Iraqi military vulnerability.  
 This assessment anticipated Operation Desert Storm in many  
respects, especially as it highlighted the necessity for an  
adversary to have absolute air superiority over Iraq. 

     Pelletiere and his colleagues predicted that "Iraq's  military 
policies will be restrained" in the post-armistice era,  that is to 
say after August 1988, while acknowledging that "at  the same time 
Iraq has enemies."/29/  These included Iran, [79/80] Syria,  and 
Israel -- and the latter was "the greatest threat to Iraq --  as 
the Iraqis perceive it."   As Saddam Hussein stated to US  
Ambassador Glaspie, "if the capability of our army is lowered,  
then Iran could achieve [its military] goals.  And if we lowered  
the standard of our defenses, this could encourage Israel to  
attack us."/30/  Further, the Pelletiere et al. observed -- in  
early 1990! -- that "the United States seems to be on a collision  
course with the Ba'thists."/31/   That may prove to be the under-  
statement of the decade.  

     By late 1988, Iraq had fended off Iran with a cost of  
hundreds of thousands of lives.  At this point, it had become  
clear that Iraqi military power was roughly equal to that of  
Israel.  It is a premiss of Israeli strategic planning that it  
must have greater military power than any single Arab state, or  
any combination of  Arab states./32/   The United States has 
repeatedly pledged to support Israel in this respect, under what  
has come to be called the Nixon Doctrine, and it surely has.  In  
late December 1988 and again in late 1989, the Washington Post  
claimed that Iraq was rapidly developing it missile capabilities,  
a development which precipitated harsh verbal exchanges and  veiled 
threats between Iraq and Israel./33/  The impression was  
widespread that Israel seeking an encore to its 1981 assault on  
Iraq's Osirik nuclear research facility.  Saddam Hussein  cautioned 
Israel in February 1989 not to attempt "direct  aggression."/34/  
The threats and counter-threats between Israel  and Iraq continued 
well into 1990.  It might be recalled in this  regard that Israeli 
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir again praised  the July 1981 Israeli 
attack, in his address at the opening  session of the Knesset on 
October 15, 1990. 

     So Israel seemed unable by itself to cow Iraq, and thus was  
no longer able to -- in the words of Pelletiere, Johnson, and  
Rosenberger -- "exert hegemony over all the Arab states."/35/  Iraq  
had to be disarmed.  But how?       

     The campaign had already begun, soon after Iraq had turned  
back the Islamic Revolution of Iran.  In September 1988, the  State 
Department surprisingly levelled charges that Iraq had used  
chemical warfare -- poison gas -- against its Kurdish population.  
 These charges have become part and parcel of the current 
demonization of Iraq.  Yet  Pelletiere, Johnson, and Rosenberger 
point  out that "the Iraqi government denied that any such gassing 
had  occurred."  Further, they state that "having looked at all the  
evidence that was available to us, we find it impossible to  
confirm the State Department's claim."  The authors go on that  
"Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack [in March 1988], even  
though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used  
chemical [weapons] in this [military] operation, and it seemed  
likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually  
killed the Kurds."/36/  When the United States made these charges,  
then Iraqi Foreign Minister, Sa'dun Hammadi, was caught  unprepared 
and questioned the "true motives" behind the charges.   Pelletiere, 
Johnson, and Rosenberger, for their part, simply  decline to 
speculate about the identity of the motive force  behind the State 
Department action./37/ 

     In January 1989, the United States further orchestrated an  
international conference in Paris against chemical weapons.  When  
the United States refused to expand considerations to all weapons  
of mass destruction -- including Israeli nuclear weapons -- all  
the Arab states balked and the conference ended  
inconclusively./38/  Since a country acquires weapons of mass  
destruction in response to a perceived threat from another  
country, the answer to the problem of proliferation is regional 
[80/81] -- if not world-wide -- disarmament of nuclear, chemical, 
etc. weapons.  This multilateral disarmament policy is evidently 
not  in U.S. interests.  So Iraq alone had to be disarmed.  Again, 
how  was this to be accomplished? 

     On the one hand, there are political limits even to the  
exercise of United States military power.  These limits were  
severely tested in early 1990 in Operation Just Cause -- the  
brutal United States attack on Panama, the installation of the  
Endara puppet regime there, another imperialist intervention --  
which has found Bush being questioned even a year later about the  
"embarrassment" of it all,  the pretexts, the provocations, the  
phony evidence, etc.  On the other hand, Iraq and Israel have  been 
in a state of war, without so much as an armistice, for  forty 
years.  While one could attack the other at will, the  United 
States was at war with neither.  A military exchange  between 
Israel and Iraq would have incited another Arab-Israeli  War, and 
that would have necessitated a United States'  intervention against 
a number of the Arab states on behalf of  Israel.  So Iraq had to 
be disarmed, but how?  

     What was needed was a pretext for massive United States  
intervention against Iraq.  That pretext came to be contrived  
through Kuwaiti provocations against Baghdad.  During the  
Eighties, while Baghdad was distracted by the war, Kuwait had  
slowly encroached upon  Iraqi territory.  This gave Kuwait more  
land along its northern border, as well as greater access to the  
rich Rumailia oil field west of Basra.  Kuwait not only pumped  oil 
from the Rumailia field, oil which Iraq claimed, but Kuwait  and 
the United Arab Emirates also exceeded OPEC petroleum  production 
quotas, driving down the world price of oil and  furthering the 
economic crisis in Iraq. As King Hassan II put it  in an August, 
1990 interview, "Kuwait was trying to stifle Iraq,  according to 
Saddam Hussein -- and that claim doesn't seem to me  to be 
completely unjustified."/39/   United States' intervention  against 
Iraq would give Kuwait an occasion to consolidate its  gains.  

     With assurances from the United States, Kuwait provoked an  
Iraqi incursion into the disputed territories, an intervention  
which the United States was to respond to with force./40/  As  
Ambassador Glaspie put it on her way out of Baghdad, however, "We  
never expected Iraq to take all of Kuwait." 

     Once Iraq had occupied Kuwait, the Bush Administration  
rapidly swung into action to freeze the situation.   The Arab  
League was effectively disabled, to preempt an "Arab Solution to  
an Arab Problem."   The Rapid Deployment force was sent into  
Arabia, and Operation Desert Shield began to form behind the  
preposterous claim that Iraq was about to invade Saudi Arabia.    
We say "preposterous" because satellite photos taken in early  
September 1990 showed no signs whatever of previous Iraqi troop  
movements towards the southern border of Kuwait./41/  Of course,  
these alleged satellite photos were the `evidence' which  convinced 
King Fahd to `invite' the United States to begin the  invasion of 
Arabia in the first place./42/   As the possibilities  of 
diplomatic resolution were eliminated, Iraq was faced with two  
alternatives: military confrontation or abject retreat.  As  
Michael Dugan made clear on September 17, Israel was already  
identifying Iraqi targets for the U.S. Air Force. 

     The ensuing series of UN Security Council Resolutions should  
be no source of pride./43/  As Rep. Henry Gonzalez (D-TX) has  
argued, their passage was crassly bought and paid for by the Bush  
Administration./44/  This demeaning episode of "bribery and [81/82] 
intimidation" was paralleled by a series of diplomatic blunders 
that we  have come to expect from the Bush Administration, 
culminating in  the undignified quibbling over dates for Secretary 
of State Baker  to go to Baghdad.  Were it not so tragically 
serious, it would  have been pure buffoonery.  Muhammad Ali surely 
came out best  when Bush compared him to James Baker.   

     But it was tragically serious.  The United States spent more  
than a trillion dollars during the Eighties, preparing for this  
war.  Actually, Reagan was preparing for any war whatever,  
preferably with a Grenada or a Nicaragua rather than an Iraq or a  
Soviet Union.   But disarming Iraq  would do, following the  
"warmups" of Grenada or Panama.  "Any means necessary" to get  Iraq 
to withdraw from Kuwait was glibly interpreted to promote  "peace 
and security" in the Gulf region, and that in turn was  
reinterpreted to mean the crushing of Iraq, the obliteration of  
its military power.   As King Hussein stated to the Jordanian  
people on February 6, 1991 "the real purpose behind this  
destructive war, as proven by its scope, and as attested to by  the 
declarations of the parties, is to destroy Iraq."  The deluge  
lasted forty days and forty nights. 

     Who stood to gain by this destructive war?  Hardly the  Saudis 
or the Gulf shaikhdoms, who would be confronted again by  the 
spectre of an Islamic Revolution from Iran moving into the  power 
vacuum.  The King continued "if this situation continues,  it will 
only benefit those who covet our [Arab] lands and  resources, with 
Israel at their forefront." 

     Now we are in the aftermath of George Bush's War.  Hundreds  
of thousands of Iraqis are dead, so many a body-count cannot be  
permitted.  The infrastructure of Iraq is shattered; no food, no  
potable water, no electricity./45/  Emir al-Sabah is restored to  
his throne by the U.S. Marines, now reduced to the role of a  
Praetorian Guard.  The Emir's death squads -- including members  of 
the ruling family -- are busy assassinating democratic Kuwaitis, as 
well as Palestinian guest workers who have outlived their  economic 
usefulness./46/  The Shamir government in Israel has  repeated its 
rejection of negotiations with the PLO, preferring  to authorize 
further Zionist settlements in the Occupied Territories instead.  
In sum, the Middle East tinderbox is more explosive than ever.  As 
the State Department and the corporate media  speculate (or 
fabricate) which Arab state will next attain  strategic military 
parity with Israel -- will it be Syria? will  it be Egypt? and 
recently, we have heard that it may be Algeria!  -- the possibility 
looms of Operations Desert Storm without end.   Perhaps they will 
be subtitled "First Blood," "Second Blood,"  etc.  This will be the 
legacy of Bush's New World Order.[82/]  

                                        
                      NOTES to PART II. 
20.  Even if Iraq had possessed weapons of mass destruction, not  
only nuclear by any of the full range of ABC weapons (Atomic,  
Bacteriological, and Chemical weapons) -- and suitable delivery  
systems -- Operation Desert Storm is not an effective disarmament  
program.  These ABC weapons are incorporated into the arsenals of  
regional powers in response to perceived threats.  Hence the only  
effective disarmament program is multi-lateral regional  
disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction, such as Iraq  
proposed in early 1990. 

21.  Kennett Love makes this point in Bill Moyers' Secret 
Government Washington, DC: Seven Locks Press (1988), pp. 38-39; see  
W.R. Louis and J. Bill (eds.) Masaddiq, Iranian Nationalism and  
Oil London: Tauris (1988); also Mansoor Moaddel "State-centered  
versus Class-centered Perspectives on International Politics: the  
Case of US and British Participation in the 1953 Coup Against  
Premier Mossadeq in Iran," Studies in Comparative International  
Development, Vol. 24:2 (Summer 1989), pp. 3-23.  

22.   Oppenheim and Lauterpacht, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 414.  

23.  See Gordon Welty "The Iranian Crisis," Holiday, Vol. 15  
(December 1979). 

24.  Gary Sick, "Election Story of the Decade", New York Times,  
(April 15, 1991).  

25.  See Barbara Honegger October Surprise  NY: Tudor Publ.  
(1989), and Abdol Hassan Bani-Sadr L'Esperance trahie Paris:  
Papyrus (1982) and his Le Complot des Ayatollahs Paris: Editions  
la Decouverte (1987); the latter is now available as his My Turn  
to Speak (McLean, VA: Brassey, 1991).   In neither case have  these 
`insiders' used their priviledged status as effectively as  might 
be expected. 

26.   See also Akins, op. cit., p. 18 and Chomsky, op. cit., pp.  
23-24.  

27.  Stephen C. Pelletiere, D. Johnson, and L. Rosenberger Iraqi  
Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East Carlisle, PA: U.S.  Army 
War College (1990).  

28. Pelletiere et al., op. cit., p. 45; see also Jonathan Mar shall 
et al, The Iran-Contra Connection Boston: South End Press,  (1987), 
esp. Chapter 8.  For Israelis opposed to the official  "tilt," see 
e.g. Amatzia Baram "Israel and the Gulf War," New  Outlook (March 
1987), pp. 18-19. 

29.  Pelletiere, et al, op. cit., p. 41.  

30.  As reported in the New York Times, (September 23, 1990).  

31.  Pelletiere, et al, op. cit., p. 69.  

32.  Pelletiere, et al, op. cit., p. 70.  

33.  See C. Murphy and D. Ottoway "Iraq has Tested Satellite  
Rocket," Washington Post (December 9, 1989). 

34.  Pelletiere, et al, op. cit., p. 89.  

35.  Pelletiere, et al, op. cit., p. 46.  See also Philip Agee  op. 
cit., p. 5.  

36.  Pelletiere, et al, op. cit., p. 52.   

37.  Pelletiere, et al, op. cit., p. 90.  

38.  See M. Heylin "Chemical Weapons," Chemical and Engineering  
News, Vol. 67:3 (1989), p. 5, and L. Ember "Chemical Arms Action  
Urged at World Meeting,"  Chemical and Engineering News, Vol.  67:3 
(1989), p. 7.  

39.  As reported in Le Monde (August 16, 1990).  See also Akins  
op. cit., pp. 19-20.  

40.  See also Michael Emery "How the U.S. Avoided Peace" Village  
Voice (March 5, 1991), pp. 22-27.  

41.  See St. Petersburg Times, (January 6, 1991), p. 1-A, p. 9-A. 

42.  For a differing account of the subterfuges of early August,  
see Bob Woodward The Commanders NY: Simon and Schuster (1991).,  
pp. 239-261; e.g. "The prince [Bandar] had been working  overtime," 
p. 255, etc.  

43.  Chomsky, op. cit., pp. 24-26.  

44.  Henry Gonzalez "Terms of Impeachment," The Texas Observer  
(January 25, 1991), p. 11.  

45.  See "Excerpts from U.N. Report" New York Times (March 23,  
1991).  

46.  See Nora Boustany "Beatings and Torture by Kuwaiti 
Interrogators Alleged" Washington Post (March 13, 1991), and Middle 
East  Watch's executive director Andrew Whitley's "Dirty War in 
Kuwait"  New York Times (April 2, 1991).  

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