MGGP: Is the unstated reason for invading Iraq to set up a permanent US base in the Middle East?

Is the unstated reason for invading Iraq to set up a permanent US base in the Middle East?
2 Feb 2006


THE UNITED STATES IS losing badly in Iraq. It does not release news
of any kind from there. In the past, before the reality struck in,
one could not escape from Iraq, which it saw as evidence it is
winning, whatever that means, the war. The government there is
bothered about bird flu, as if that is the most important thing amid
the mayhem the US has caused, is causing, in that country since it
invaded it in 2003. The citizens have become the insurgents, and more
join them daily as they see their life more hopeless day by day.
There is the occasional talk from Washington of cutting down troops,
but the aim of the invasion, based on false reasons like Iraq's
nuclear capabilities, was to set up a permanent base in the Middle
Eat in Iraq. That alone will make sure the continued insurgency. The
Sunnis, in power since 1920, accepts that it will never rule Iraq
again, so it will destroy the country, probably more viciously, than
the US armed forces have done.

It is today a test of wills. Washington's inopportune attack on Iraq
for reasons other than stated was aimed at a military presence in the
Middle East. Its military presence in Lebanon was ended 25 years ago
with a car bomb and 241 US Marine deaths. It wants to set up one in
Qatar to keep an eye, it is said, on Al-Jazeera. It does not trust
Saudi Arabia any more, wants to put the Saudi royal family out of
business. But it has touched more than it chew in Iraq. It put Saddam
Hussein on trial for crimes he is alleged to have committed when
President 25 years ago. It has been stressed time and time again that
his trial is not vendetta, that the rule of law will prevaile all of
Iraq. But the trial is in shambles. What happened in Halabja is not
as interesting as what happens in court. It is an impartial tribunal,
so the Americans claim, but it chief judge, a Kurd, cannot stand the
heat, his successor is found to be a Baathist, and his successor is
from Halabja. Whatever happens to the trial, Saddam Hussein has won.
He has already written himself into Iraq, and Middle Eastern, history
as a Sunni martyr.

More important is what this means to President Bush. He can be put on
trial one day for all those prisoners held without trial at
Guantanamo Bay prison. When the poliical climate changes, he would be
asked to explain why he did what he did. No amount of grandstanding
would help him; his Administration has not allowed a President that
courtesy, that there are events in the conduct of a presidency, he
has to do ultra-legal acts. It has denied that of Saddam Hussein by
charging him with offenses that were not when it happened. The
enemies of President Bush, especially Americans, would adopt the
methods he ordered to try Saddam Hussein. The Middle East is in
ferment, often at loggerheads with their rulers as of the United
States. This will be clearer with the passing days. Its control of
the air waves ensures that only its version is broadcast, but the
ground, often illiterate and with no stomach for philosophical or
diplomatic argument, listens to another voice. It might be Al-Qaeda,
or it might be someone else. And what the Muslim ground knows of the
conflict is now what CNN says, not even what Al-Jazeera says. but
what is told them by the mosque officials.

But Al-Qaeda is an American creation. It was used to get the Soviet
Union out of Afghanisation so that it could get into the mess there.
It forgot, or did not realise, that Al-Qaeda members were Islamic
fundamentalists, who accepted American money and training to
eventually overthrow them as well. To it, the Soviet Union, now
Russia, and the United States were foreigners out to rule
Afghanistan, and that it would not allow. The US knows a lot of about
Al-Qaeda – its operations, its senior operatives. that it is built
like an American organisation – but Al-Qaeda is successful because it
gives its leaders in the field the freedom to operate within a set of
rules given it. Washington pokes holes in what it sees as Al-Qaeda's
operations, but it says them so that the Americans are not unduly
frightened. Al-Qaeda taunts the United States with frequent video and
audo tapes to keep the Americans frightened. It came into Iraq after
the US invaded the country. Most of its fighters are foreign, now in
about the same proportion of the US-led coalition. For all this
interest in seeing Osama bin Laden dead, it is a fact that if he is,
the Americans would in time leave Iraq with their tails behind their
back. It took only seven years after Ho Chi Minh's death for the
Americans to leave South Vietnam in defeat.

America would have been acceptable if it did not have its political
baggage about it. In December 1991, the fundamentalist Islamic
Salvation Front had won handsomely in the first run of the elections
in Algeria. It was declared an illegal outfit. It went on an
offensive, more than 10,000 people died in the violence, and Algeria
would, for the second time, be hostile to the West. In December 2005,
Hamas won three quarters of the seats in the Palestine elections. The
Western nations saw that as a dangerous trend, but not the people who
voted them in. Hamas will rule Palestine, but the West will not have
any role because of its opposition to Hamas, regarded in Washington
as a terrorist organisation. But elections are held elsewhere so that
it would return pro-Washongton administrations. Hamas obviously has
support among the Palestinians. But this is not unusual. The Israeli
terrorist group that created havoc in Palestine before the state of
Israel was set up was headed by Manechen Begin, who later become the
prime minister of Isreal.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com