Saddam, Iraq and Obama :Pakistan Daily
Saddam, Iraq and Obama
Pakistan Daily
Saddam, Iraq and Obama PDF Print E-mail
Written by www.daily.pk
Saturday, 14 February 2009 23:24
It a maneuver typical in liberal democracy, Obama has broken, prior to
his inauguration, all of his campaign promises. He is continuing with
the Wall Street bailout as Americans go bankrupt, he is considering a
draft, and will keep Americans in Iraq indefinitely. This is not
personally about Obama, who, in my personal view, is a moral man far
beyond the mentally ill McCain, but is inherent in the system itself:
liberal democracy demands a wealthy series of donors who control
campaigns, write the "promises," and demand repayment as soon as their
client is "elected." This is a systemic problem.
What is far more significant here is the violent nature of liberal
democracy. Since the fortunate fall of the USSR, the expansionist,
revolutionary force is the neo-conservative United States, who believes
that it has the right to remake the world in its ideological image. To
back this up, George Mason University and corrupt American academia in
general has held, almost without dissent, that liberal, capitalist
democracy is the final end of history, and hence, the beacon of this
final ideological movement, the end of history and the final expression
of the French Revolution, needs to remake the globe into a "one world"
system dominated by US capital. Both the Clinton-type neo-liberals and
the Bush type neo-conservatives hold the identical view but for
different reasons, the neo-libs hold to this on vaguely "humanitarian"
grounds, while the neo-cons hold it for "national security" reasons,
including Israel’s "security."
But what is important is what the neo-con/neo-lib alliance has
destroyed. The media-driven "political debate" in America is a ruse.
The neo-con/neo-lib "discussion is in fact negotiations between
friends, the two pillars of the Temple of Solomon, the Right and Left
hand paths to Enlightenment and to One World. Their views are
identical, through the means of getting to their ends are very
different. But in terms of foreign policy they are identical: violence,
invasion and destruction.
According to the neo-lib/neo-con alliance propaganda, Saddam Hussein
was an evil dictator. All evidence to the contrary was repressed. But
what are the facts? Do democracies deliver the goods better than
dictatorships? Lets look at a few points.
1. Saddam became a dictator because he had to. Iraq is a creation of
British colonialism, and is an artificial state held together only by a
strong state system; this is not the fault of Saddam. Of course, the US
invasion upset this system, causing far more damage and violence then
even Saddam was accused of. Because the alleged massacres he committed
were so shaky and based on minimal evidence, his rigged "trial" that
sent him to the gallows only convicted him of one charge of comitting a
war crime. His alleged "crime" amounted to about 10 minutes of the
firebombing of Japanese cities during World War II, or the war crimes
of the American Civil War, or Israel's current crimes in Gaza. Keep in
mind that the "hundreds of massacres and torturers" his "regime" was
accused of were quietly dropped during his trial. In reality, even the
prosecution during Saddam’s trial could find very little in terms of
abuse of power to directly link him to. As far as dictators go, Saddam
was very well behaved, and certainly he had no motive to be anything
else.
2. The United Nations had stated that Saddam’s social achievement in
Iraq was soon to create a "first world country" out of a third world
mess. Only a dictatorship could do this, since the religious and ethnic
violence was too vicious for a democratic system. The events,
especially the sectarian violence, over the last two years in Iraq
prove this.
3. Saddam, with oil money, used German technology to create a first
world health care system in Iraq, free of charge. The United Nations
Development Program writes:
In the 1980s, Iraq was widely considered to have one of the region’s
best health care systems, with advanced, technological specialist care,
and an extensive net of primary health care. However, after years of
war and sanctions, this situation has changed completely. Among the
current major problems are lack of health personnel, lack of medicines,
non-functioning medical equipment and destroyed hospitals and health
centers (Iraq Living Conditions Survey, 2004).
4. With the same oil money, Saddam imported western form of education
at all levels, including that for women, which led to him being hated
by the very Islamic forces that sought his removal. The White House
itself admits that by 1980, Saddam had 100% primary school enrollment
for all children regardless of sex or religion (White House Executive
Summary Report, 1.5.04)
5. He created a secular Iraq where Christians could feel safe. His
strongest backers were Christians, and many Christians worked for the
government and military, including foreign minister Tariq Aziz.
6. Hussein plowed the oil money into many domestic investments, to be detailed
below.
Keep in mind that many international agencies have removed their
statistics from the 1970s and 1980s, prior to the American invasion and
war with Iran, so as to camouflage the achievements of the military
governments, of which Saddam was the key player as far back as 1968.
The World Bank and the IMF has censored much of its data, and has
removed its statistical reports from its website. Its almost humorous
how these internationalist agencies claim that their data is incomplete
because "economic data was kept a state secret by Saddam," but the much
more Iraq friendly OSCE, as well as independent researchers, had no
difficulty collecting data from the pre-war era.
The main structural interests (outside of the obvious petroleum) in the
Saddam years (1968-2005) was food processing. Global Security reports
that it was the Ba’ath policy to make certain that Iraq was
self-sufficient in food, and hence, food processing plants were erected
in each major and minor city. At the same time, prior to the disaster
of the war with Iran, financed by the United States, the building
industry under the Ba’athists also developed strongly. Iraq, up until
the war, was free of foreign debt. Keep in mind that Saddam was the
power in the military government from 1968 on, and largely made
economic policy as deputy Chairman of the Ba’ath party. He did not
formally take over until 1979, however.
Global Security writes the following:
By the late 1970s the emphasis in development planning shifted
toward heavy industry and diversification away from oil. Iron and steel
production was set up with French assistance at Khor al-Zubair and the
defense industrial sector received a high priority. However, objectives
were ill defined and the economy’s concentration on oil was never
challenged. Inevitably, as with all other segments of the economy,
manufacturing and industrial diversification was scaled down when the
Iran-Iraq war began and never recovered.
Pro-western author Ahmed Jiyad writes:
The 1980s under Saddam began with Iraq recognized as being one of
the highly promising countries in the Middle East and the Third World
in terms of its economic development: a donor country, a creditor
country, a modestly outward FDI player, a cash country, and owner of an
estimated U.S. $36 billion in foreign assets. By the close of the 1980s
however, following the devastation of an eight-year war with Iran, Iraq
faced — for the first time in its history — a serious debt-related
liquidity problem. ("An Economy in A Debt Trap: The Iraqi Debt
1980-2000." Arab Studies Quarterly, 2001)
In a review of the book The Iraqi Economy under Saddam Hussein: Development of
Decline? writer Abbas Mehdi writes
But despite the many impediments and adverse factors, Dr. Zainy
concludes in the first section of this book, Iraq's economy 1960-80 was
actually quite vibrant, achieving a real GDP growth of around 8 percent
per annum and a real per capita GDP growth of around 4.7 percent per
annum; such growth rates were among the highest in the world during
that 20-year period.
London based writer Muhammed Ali Zilani writing in the Middle East Economic
Survey (July 2008) writes:
To give examples of what happened, the successive Iraqi governments
used most of the oil money, whose cumulative amount reached around
$100bn by 1980, to finance the five-year economic development plans. As
a result of those genuine endeavors, the Iraqi GDP almost quintupled
over the period 1960-80, growing in real 1980 prices, from around
$10.7bn in 1960 to around $53bn in 1980, with a remarkable average
growth rate of 8% per annum. The Iraqi per capita income increased in
real 1980 prices about 2.6 times from $1,557 in 1960 to $4,000 in 1980,
making a yearly real growth of 4.7% despite the high Iraqi population
growth rate during that period of around 3.3% per annum. Furthermore,
on the road of economic diversification, the Iraqi oil sector’s
contribution to GDP decreased from 66% in 1960 to less than 62% in 1980.
The economy under Saddam Hussein performed in nothing less than a
phenomenal way. Just dealing with one indicator, the general
performance of the GDP (which the World Bank says it "cannot find"),
the GDP went, from 1970 to the start of the war with Iran in 1980 from
$16.4 billion to a huge $53.9 billion, using 1980 American dollars. At
the same time, oil output only went up by 50%. Hence, the huge GDP
increase was due solely to the internal policies of the military
system, which was based on economic diversification and the
nationalization of the predatory, western oil firms, something that
made Saddam, even by his enemies, more and more popular by 1980. In
1970, Hussein was a key player in the nationalization of the Iraqi
Petroleum Company, dominated by western capital who pulled the profits
from Iraq to western elite bank accounts. He was rightly seem as an
anti-imperialist crusader. Hence, according to Mossad, something needed
to be done, and hence, the US created the Iran-Iraq war, and financed
both sides.
Here are a few more figures from the violently anti-Saddam writer Abbas
Alnaswari at the University of Vermont. Though Saddam did not take over
formally until 1979, Hussein was a key player in previous military
governments, and was a key player in the 1968 coup. He essentially
acted as Prime Minister from that time on.
* Private consumption went up 13% yearly on average between 1970 and 1980
* Gross Fixed investment went up 27.6% yearly on average
* Domestic Trade went up 17% yearly on average
* Transport and Communication went up 20% yearly on average
* Industry and Manufacturing went up about 13% yearly on average in the same
time span.
All of these figures the World Bank, the IMF and Global Security claims
to "not exist." What is particularly nauseating is that the System
destroyed this economy, going from first world in 1980 to fourth world
in 2000, all based on US warfare, either by proxy or directly. The
System then says that the reconstruction numbers, showing a huge
American-financed growth in the last two years, though only about 25%
of pre-1980 numbers, is a "huge victory." This is the typical deceit of
system economists and academics. In other words, American reinvestment
in the region registers, as is typical, huge growth rates. The System
calls this a victory. But what it really is is the usage of American
tax money to reconstruct a system that it destroyed in the first place.
(All figures from Alnaswari’s piece in E.W. Nafziger, F. Stewart and
R.Väyrynen, eds., War, Hunger, and Displacement: The Origins of
Humanitarian Emergencies. Volume 2 (Oxford University Press, 2000),
pp.89-119).
By the 1980 war, there was not a single independent voice that was not
calling Iraq an "Arab Tiger" in global economics. A dictatorship that
had delivered the goods better than any other Middle Eastern country.
All the while controlling the Islamic fanatics and creating a secular,
first world Arab country that was soon to dominate the region. The
Israeli panic is understandable, and hence, a joint Mossad-CIA mission
created the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, reducing both the military and
economic impotence, and not coincidentally, brought the oil industry
back under western control. Recently declassified documents prove
without a doubt that the CIA/Mossad coalition created the Iran-Iraq war
to destabilize the region and prevent with Iran or Iraq from become a
major power both economially and militarily. As the Iraqi unemployment
rate was about 10% in 1980 (Iraq had a huge population), it is not
almost 80% of the adult workforce today.
Randy Stearns from ABC News writes in his (1998) The CIA’s Secret War in Iraq:
In 1991, the CIA swung into action, spending roughly $20 millions on
anti-Saddam propaganda and at least $11 million in aid to various Iraqi
opposition groups in London and Kurdistan. The agency pursued two
parallel, but not necessarily compatible, strategies for ousting
Saddam. It first supported the Iraqi National Congress, a popular
political opposition group led by Ahmed Chalabi. The INC tended to move
faster than its American sponsors anticipated, recruiting an
independent army and temporarily uniting Kurdish factions behind a
planned attack on Saddam’s forces. By late 1994 CIA field operatives
had set up a base in the northern city of Salahuddin and had begun
actively directing military activities. Top CIA and White House
officials, however, doubted that the INC could bring down Saddam and
were anxious about their ability to control the Kurds. They preferred a
second alternative, focused on a group of exiled Iraqi military
officers based in London called the Wafik, or Accord. Accord leaders
promised Washington that it could pull off a "zipless coup" to bring
down Saddam without dismantling the Iraqi state.
Hence, the fact is that, since Saddam was relatively popular, the US
needed to use propaganda to paint a negative image of him. If Saddam
was not popular, why was there any necessity for the propaganda war?
Why was the Ba'th party banned from electorial competition under
American occupation? The fact is that Saddam’s economic gains had
created millions of workers who were a natural constituency for Saddam
and his policies. Hence, the CIA needed to create political movements
and blacken Saddam’s name where there were none before.
Former Mossad agent Viktor Ostrovsky writes:
The Mossad leaders know that if they could make Saddam appear bad
enough and a threat to the Gulf oil supply, of which he'd been the
protector up to that point, then the United States and its allies would
not let him get away with anything, but would take measures that would
all but eliminate his army and his weapons potential, especially if
they were led to believe that this might just be their last chance
before he went nuclear. (The Other Side of Deception, Harper-Collins,
1994) 254)
Robert Fisk, journalist for the British Independent (sic) writes:
Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest
war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a
half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons
with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did (Independent,
12.30.06)
Now apart from the "we did" silliness (as if the Americans, all at
once, demanded its government sell weapons to Iran and Iraq), Fisk,
normally an establishment hack, has it right. The war to destroy Saddam
came from the west. The only country that benefitted from the 1980-88
debacle was Israel. The two losers were Iran and Iraq. Israel was the
only country that benefitted from the 9/11 debacle (whoever is
ultimately responsible), Israel was the only country that benefitted
form the two US-Iraqi wars, and the Israeli state is the only
beneficiary of the continued US occupation of the region, which is
acting like a magnet to attract all anti-American elements from around
the world to assist in the civil war the US invasion started. The one
thing the Israeli’s could not handle was a strong, secular and wealthy
Iraq.
:: Article nr. 51798 sent on 06-nov-2009 05:58 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=51798
Link: www.daily.pk/world/middle-east/9460-saddam-iraq-and-obama-.html
:: The
views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the
author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.
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