Thanks for the kindly sentiment. It would be surly and ungracious to respond in any other but an equally complimentary fashion, and this limits my options severely.
You are quite correct, a nation may have as many casus bellum as the situation permits. America certainly had a casus in WWII, in that there was a war whether we wanted one or not. We couldn’t say “No thanks, busy this year”
Germany had a casus bellum against Poland, an attack on a radio station. It was a lie, of course, but you don’t seem to make much distinction.
My point about madmen isn’t whether Saddam is and Qaddaffy isn’t. The very same false premises we cited for attacking Iraq were entirely applicable to Libya, except: in Libya’s case, they were true. Libya did support terrorism, it did have operational contacts with terrorists, it carried out terrorist attacks, and was actively engaged in acquiring real honest to god WMDs. Iraq was not.
So we invade Iraq. And negotiate with Libya. Force with the suspected, diplomacy with the known criminal.
Kuwait was threatening Iraqi medical students, and crack teams of Cuban bulldozer commandos were installing airfields where medium range bombers could be launched against Iraq. A preemptive strike was unavoidable.
Well, I’m not technically in America, but maybe I can answer. Iraq invaded Kuwait for three reasons:
They own Kuwait a shitload of money.
Under the Turks, the region which is now Kuwait was ruled from Bagdhad.
They thought they could get away with it.
No. 1 is am indefensable reason to start a war, No. 2 is irrellevant and No. 3 is no excuse.
P.S. Saddam Hussain was not a madman, and neither were Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Musolini. With the possible exceptions of Pol Pot and Khaddafi (who is more of a flake), I can’t think of any clinically insane people ruling anywhere over the past century or so, or at least not for long.
Despotism isn’t a pathology, it’s a career choice.
There’s a fourth, or maybe just a corollary to the third (“They thought they could get away with it.”), and that involves U.S Ambassador to Iraq April Gillespie’s statement to Saddam, shortly before he invaded Kuwait:
Saddam, being Saddam, took this to mean that we would not intervene if he sent his army pouring over the border. What she meant, I believe, was that the U.S. didn’t want to get dragged into a border dispute, and that the parties would have to work it out between themselves, peacefully. Based on Gillespie’s inartful phrasing, others have accused the U.S. of “green-lighting” Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, but I think that’s a bum rap.
No, it wasn’t slant drilling. That was a post-hoc Iraqi excuse.
Iraq invaded Kuwait because it was in desperate financial trouble following the Iran-Iraq war, and Hussein’s position was consequently looking a bit tenuous. Iraq owed most of the money to its fellow Arab states, including a humongous chunk to Kuwait.
Iraq’s (e.g. Hussein’s) perception was that the Arab states were doing nothing to help Iraq out of its monster war debt; they weren’t forgiving or refinancing, and at the time OPEC was keeping production low, which didn’t help Iraq, either, as they had to sell as much oil as possible.
Iraq targeted Kuwait primarily because it was the easiest target; they were small, essentially defenceless, and there was a tenuous historical claim that could be used as a bullshit excuse. In the months leading up to war Iraq and Kuwait did engage in talks on debt restructuring. Kuwait was resistant to the idea but at the same time advised the U.S. to lay off Iraq, as they were concerned about provoking Hussein. What the let’s-blame-April-Glaspie-and-the-USA crowd never mentions is that at the end of her conversation with Hussein, he told her he’d just learned (as in he left the room to take the call) that the Kuwaitis had agreed to new talks and that the problem was going to be solved. This tied in very nicely with KUWAIT’S continued insistence that the USA do nothing to anger or provoke the Iraqis; if they could avoid threatening Iraq they were going to avoid it. The USA was following Kuwait’s playbook, which turned out to be the wrong decision.
The talks didn’t work out. War commenced. Certainly Hussein did seem to believe he could get away with it and the conversation with Glaspie didn’t help, but that was as much a stupid miscalculation on his part and Kuwait’s part as it was on the American side. Like a lot of wars, the Gulf War was a stunning intelligence failure on BOTH sides.
Iraq was going to hammer Kuwait whether there was “slant-drilling” or not. Like Argentina in 1982, it was a military dictatorship in a position where attacking someone outside their borders was a quickie solution to what was going on inside their borders, or more precisely, inside their checkbook. They had to do SOMETHING to solve Iraq’s problems, and when you’re Saddam Hussein, “something” can quite possibly be invading a helpless neighbour.
Well, do you want the nuanced version or the simple anti-war version.
The simple version is that Kuwait was slant drilling and Iraq was upset over that and approached the US for permission which the US vaguely implied was granted. Very simple and black and white, the bad US allies provoked Iraq which was duly duped by the nasty US.
The reality is a bit more complicated. The Rumailah oil field runs underneath both Iraq and Kuwait and both are within their territorial rights to access it. Generally, when this happens the two countries negotiate an agreement to share the revenues based on some sort of percentage agreement. This never happened with Kuwait and Iraq. As a result, Kuwait stuck a whole bunch of oil rigs on their (fairly tiny) portion of the oil field and proceeded to pump out as much as they possibly could - especially while Iraq’s production capabilities were damaged during the war with Iran.
Kuwait frequently pumped out much more than was allowed by OPEC quotas, in fact. This was the crux of the $14 billion figure. Iraq claimed that Kuwait’s quota violations were depressing oil prices and that Iraq’s oil production was harmed to the tune of $14 billion every year. A few high level Iraqi officials claimed that Kuwait was slant-drilling into Iraq, but I’m not sure it’s ever been proven (if anyone has a cite, I’d appreciate it). Kuwait never stated how much oil it actually pumped out, but did mention part of the reason for the overdrilling was an effort to recover loans granted to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war that Kuwait didn’t think it was going to see.
At the same time, Kuwait was hoping to get Iraq to get to the negotiating table to get the Rumailah field situation straightened out once and for all and to try and force concessions from Iraq in that area. A sort of economic brinkmanship.
It actually might have worked, except at this time there were all sorts of fun, internal things going on inside Iraq. Due to the debacle of the Iran war, Hussein’s standing within the military was dangerously low - he was at serious risk of military coup or assassination. So he needed a quick, easy victory to boost morale (something the Iran-Iraq war was supposed to be - a quick grab of the entire Shatt al-Arab was supposed to be).
Kuwait was the perfect candidate. Small and militarily weak, it didn’t have the capability of fighting back that Iran did, provided no international help. And Iraq could claim (and did) an economic warfare greivance due to the current argument over the Rumailah oil field. There’s also the issue of the loans which Iraq wanted waived as a “protection payment” (Iraq claimed that it protected Kuwaiti territory from Iran). Not only that, Kuwait has the deep water ports that Iraq pulls off, so there’s strategic benefits as well. PLUS, you get the nationalistic bonus of bringing Kuwait back into its “rightful place” as a part of Iraq. Huge power solidification for Hussein if he pulls it off.
So, Iraq starts putting out feelers - first to the Arab League, who say that Kuwait has done nothing wrong and that they don’t back Iraq against Kuwait. But let’s face it, there’s nothing the Arab League can do so while Hussein was hoping for some sort of regional legitimization of an invasion, the fact that he didn’t get one isn’t anything more than a disappointment (sort of like Bush and the UN). Next he starts feeling out the US to see if they will come to the aid of Kuwait.
The US states it doesn’t want to get involved in an Arab-Arab dispute, giving Iraq the seeming go-ahead. At this time, the State Dept. claims it thought Iraq was just going to seize the Kuwaiti section of the Rumailah field and not take the whole thing. Of course, this was either monumentally stupid of them or an outright lie since Hussein had already said he was going to annex the whole damn country in several speeches.
I’d just like to add that any U.S. approval, tacit or otherwise, does not remove one iota of blame from Iraq for invading a neighbouring country. The U.S. had authority neither over Kuwait nor over Iraq, and it’s influence did not absolve Saddam of responsibility for his actions. If I tell a burgler that I have no problem with him breaking into your house, that doesn’t mean he’s any less guilty of robbery, because I have no authority over your house and can’t give him permission.
I believe that America screwed up, big time, but that doesn’t mean the Iraqis can get off scott-free. Guilt is not zero-sum - just because you have some, it doesn’t mean someone else has any less.
I don’t think anyone is saying Iraq was an innocent lamb in the whole affair, Alessan, merely that the issue was a lot more complicated than the whole “Saddam is an evil power-hungry dictator who invaded Kuwait without provocation” meme that some people continue to promote.
On the other hand, it does appear in hindsight that the United States was willing to exploit the Iraq-Kuwait war for its own goals. For instance, the Bush (Sr.) Administration perpetuated the lie that Iraqi invaders were dumping newborn infants out of incubators in Kuwait hospitals, and used doctored photos of (nonexistent) Iraqi troops along the Saudi border to spook the Sauds into allowing US bases to be built in-kingdom.
Tsk, tsk, we’re not “invading” anyone. We’re securing peace and taking weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of madmen, madmen I tell you, madmen! We’re liberating, not “invading”, whatever Liberal Slant you’re trying to put on these things just won’t work!
This being a smart group, you got your answer. Now, does anyone know why the North Koreans thought they could get away with invading the South in 1950? Hint: it was for a somewhat similar reason.
And to add insult to insanity, in 2003, Saudi Arabia was number two on Parade’s list of top ten dictators, ranked higher than Saddam himself. But of course, Saudi’s are good ol’ boys in the best Texas tradition, so they’re practically immune from scrutiny.
Well, what boggles my mind is that you are blaming us for missing this obvious point when it is the President who you are presumably defending who is going around justifying his invasion of Iraq based on such faulty logic. It is not us who have used the logic, “Cows are evil and must be eliminated. Bertha is a cow. Therefore, Bertha must be eliminated.” Rather, it is us pointing out that Martha and Harriet are also cows so if we are going to be consistent to the chain of logic, they ought to go too…and actually Bertha isn’t really a cow per se but actually a horse, although admittedly still in the category of a vegetarian mammal that likes grass, if you aren’t bothered by small distinctions of zoology.
Seriously though, you are welcome to try to make the case that Iraq is a case that justifies invasion over these others countries. However, you haven’t done so particularly compellingly and the President you seem to support hasn’t done so at all.
No comments on these…I just highlighted them because they made me laugh so hard!
Does it bother you that there is not an explicit account given here of in what way Saddam did not comply. Because my impression is that, while there may have been some small things that they still hid and while they may not have all the documentation that we wanted, the basic argument for serious non-compliance rests on the fact that we knew they did indeed have WMDs and they claimed that they didn’t. And, well, …
Notice the two-valued orientation rears its ugly head again. These were the only choices that Bush had. Apparently, he did not have any other options such as:
(1) Continue to send Hans Blix to the sites we “knew” had WMDs and continue to receive Blix’s reports that the U.S. intelligence didn’t seem to be panning out.
(2) Make a realistic assessment of the threat to America and decide if it actually warranted an invasion.
Logic like Bush is using is completely meaningless. It could be used to justify any country doing any fuckin’ thing. The fact that the media and (many of the) public are letting him get away with this shit boggles the mind!
Well, it’s not as if that meme is all that wrong. I mean:
Evil - by most standards of mirality, Saddam Hussain was in fact an evil man, at least based on the amount of innocent people he hurt unnecessarily for his own personal gain.
Power-hungry - you don’t get as far as he did without ambition.
Dictator - I think this one was pretty self-evident, although it doesn’t make him unique in this neighborhood.
invaded Kuwait without provocation - very few provocations are big enough to start a war against ones will. Wars are initiated - they’re never come as a reaction to anything. They’re always a matter of policy.
Of course, Saddam was only one factor in a pretty big mess, but that doesn’t mean people are wrong about him.