First Iraq, Next Syria and Iran.
June 13 2005

Most experts of the liberal anti-Western persuasion sniffle that the second Iraq war is a costly mistake, as they endlessly recount the 1700 GI body bags. They declaim that the second Iraq war has taken 15.000 civilian lives or in the case of extreme left wing groups 100.000, and that this carnage is unacceptable. They discount of course the 300.000 murdered over a 20-year period by a fascist government. Certainly we have seen in recent months far too many civilians being targeted and killed in Iraq. But these victims were not destroyed by American bullets or bombs, but by Islamic terrorists and fascist Iraqi Sunni’s, using primitive and cowardly methods of destruction. There is no general insurgency or anti-US ‘rebellion’ going on in Iraq. What is occurring is terrorist activity by the remnants of fascist-Baathism allied with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups waging a war upon the Iraqi people. The fascists are in essence trying to destroy a democracy at its birth. A fair question is therefore the following. If the war was the right war at the right time, and it certainly was, is Iraq the right place ?

On the one hand Iraq is a very difficult and unnatural country riven by a history of sectional violence. It is a complex area to prosecute a war and maintain the peace. Its terrain and geography, including difficult topography, rivers, sandstorms, and sheer size makes the country difficult to fully conquer and secure. Its ethnic and religious enclaves make sectional rivalry intense. Religious differences exacerbate fights over political and economic power. Institutions in the modern Western sense have never existed. It is not an easy country to reform or subjugate. This is rooted in its historical development.

It is clear that modern Iraq is a British creation. Before World War I, the Ottoman Empire controlled the area and much of the Middle East. But the Turks joined the Germans and paid for their inopportune alignment by having the Ottoman empire dismantled. The sick man of Europe as the Russian Tsar Romanow called Turkey, saw its near eastern lands occupied by the British and their Arab allies. These two groups then set about to create colonies and quasi-independent countries.

The area of modern day Iraq served two important purposes for the British. First it allowed them to set up military bases to secure their eastern trade routes and project power in the Middle East. Second the area had oil. Under Churchill’s naval leadership the post World War One British navy refitted its fleet from coal to oil burning. This necessitated a constant supply of the black fuel. A state owned Anglo oil company was created to secure this supply. In essence Iraq was created not out of organic historical development, but because the British wanted it.

However Iraq has rarely remained peaceful. Since the 1920s Iraq has been a tremble with violence and sectarian divisions. The British in 1920 installed a Saudi from Mecca as the Iraqi Prince and during the rest of the 1920s finalized Iraq’s present day borders. The British withdrew in 1932, helping to establish an Iraqi monarchy before they left. Iraqi’s viewed the monarchy as foreign imposed and controlled, and it never had much support or success. There was widespread violence and agitation. The monarchical institution such as it was, evaporated in a 1936 military coup and only returned with the British invasion and occupation of Iraq during 1942. The British fearing the destruction of their oil supplies and the threat posed to Egypt by a Nazified Iraq invaded, taking over the country until the end of the war.

The British pulled out after World War II, leaving behind their preferred monarchy, but they also left behind festering resentment. Political and terrorist violence against civilians and public assets became common. Party politics became extreme. Many Sunnis and some Shi'ites joined the growing Ba'ath Party, an Arab nationalist party with fascist elements. Others, mostly Shi'ites, joined the Communist Party or other extreme socialist groups. Many Iraqis harbored growing resentment toward the Iraqi monarchy, which they felt was too closely aligned with the British. In 1958, a military coup overthrew the monarchy. King Faisal II and all leading members of the Iraqi royal family were executed. In the early 1970s Hussein led an internal coup and took over the country purging the former leadership and any perceived enemies. Hussein’s fascist state was thankfully destroyed in 2003 by the US after years of civil destruction, external wars, UN funded oil scams and economic and social mutilation.

So why then given the historical problems with building and securing Iraq, is it a good place to wage the general war on terror ? If one reads the 2003 Bush declaration of war the issue of democracy is a common theme in many of his points though WMD was given as the main reason for the war’s prosecution – a bad legacy of Colin Powell and the State department trying to appease ‘allies’ France and Germany. Democracy as a moral argument plays well in the media and indeed the Bush plan has been brilliant in that regard. Democratic governance embedded in the Iraqi elections of January ’05 has proven that Iraqi’s want freedom and not fascism. There is still a long way to go to secure the country, but the end for the terrorists and fascists is nigh. This has somewhat relieved the unrelenting media criticism of the war.

But there are other more important reasons to be in Iraq as they relate to the War on Terror.

First, terrorism needs money. Hussein and his gang provide ample money to terrorist groups even during the Oil for Food program scam. It is estimated that Hussein stole $10 billion from that program and a large percentage of that sum would have been spent to fund terrorist groups. The nexus of money and terror has to be destroyed. Iraq under the Oil for Food scam represented a potentially lucrative source of cash for terrorists and anti-Western groups. Since the EU, and UNO are too corrupt and weak to effect regime change to destroy this money source, the US was forced to act.

Second, there is the nexus not only of money and terrorism, but of terrorism and technology. The Iraqi’s were and are expert in building WMD. What they lacked in the 90s was projection capability or distribution technology. Allowing a fascist regime, behind the guise of a UNO program, to survive and in fact prosper, was only to invite a day of reckoning wherein the Iraqi regime would ally itself with other middle-eastern terrorist organizations to build or procure distribution capabilities for WMD. A pre-emptive strike against such a regime was mandatory then, and is still prudent today. This is why the dithering about Iran is so vexing.

Third, by fighting it out in Iraq you have created a front line in the very heart of a terror-ridden region. It is vital to fight terrorism at its source. Once Iraq is secured, and it will be, then the Iraqi base can be used to launch attacks east against Iran and West against Syria. Such actions will force changes in Saudi Arabia. All three of these nations spend an estimated U$5-8 Billion per annum in funding world-wide terror groups, anti-western mosques and anti-western madrassas. All three states need a regime change.

Lastly, the cartel of OPEC may now be doomed. High oil prices mean more money for terrorist-Arab regimes. It costs only $5 to bring crude to the surface. Arab economies are profiting greatly from high oil prices and this money is not being used for benign purposes. Regard the failed economies of the Arab states. Instead of building economies and lives of hope, Arab regimes spend massively on military purchases and of course terrorist financing proceeds apace. Iraq is the first step to destroy the OPEC cartel. This can be effected once other regimes in the Middle East are replaced.

The only chance for peace between the Islamic world and the West is to completely change the Arab regimes – fascist, discriminatory, arrogant, and militant – with some form of democratic suffrage and western-based institutional development. Yes democracy cannot be imposed, but the obstacles to democracy need to be removed by force. Especially when fascism and government repression exist.

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