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| THE CAUSES OF WAR IN IRAQ: | ||||||||||||||||||
| MY OWN THEORY & SOME COMMENTS ON THOSE PREVALENT AT PRESENT | ||||||||||||||||||
| By Nick Gurevich | E-Mail: [email protected] | |||||||||||||||||
| Before I comment on some of the widespread theories on the causes of war in Iraq, the theories like "war for oil," "clash of civilizations," "war on Islam," etc., I would like to offer my own, which I believe to be an original one, because I've never heard anyone proposing it. Whether it is valid or not, I sincerely hope we'll never find out for the reason which will be made clear later. | ||||||||||||||||||
| My hypothesis is based on three premises: 1) the personality of Saddam Hussein, 2) the present state of Arab world, 3) the present situation of/in Israel. | ||||||||||||||||||
| First - the personality of Saddam Hussein. He is clearly not a madman, but he is a very ambitious man, and in certain extreme situations this difference could be purely semantic. Judging by his actions for the last 20 years, Iraq with its 22 million inhabitants is too small for him. His ambition is to be the Leader of the whole Arab world. And since, after the death of Nasser no Arab leader seriously aspired to such a lofty position, Saddam Hussein always thought that it is his for the taking. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Which brings us to the second premise - the present state of the Arab world. I would suggest that the Arabs, collectively, are the last romantic nation today. Their grievances and aspirations, the verylanguage they use to express them, their actions and reactions to the global and local developments are unmistakably romantic, especially in comparison with that of the contemporary Europeans, who had been cured from their romanticism in the trenches of Somme and in the Flanders killing fields during The Great War of 1914-1918. Those who were not cured that time, like some German war veterans, spawned Nazism and Hitler- the monstrous offspring of the dying European romanticism. And it took up to 40 millions killed during WWII to finally finish it off. | ||||||||||||||||||
| One can only hope that the Arabs' cure would be much less painful. | ||||||||||||||||||
| In addition to romanticism, when it comes to Israel -Palestinian conflict, Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular also suffer from what could be called "cognitive dissonance." | ||||||||||||||||||
| There are, I'm sure, more scientifically correct definitions of this peculiarly modern psychological affliction, but I prefer my own, admittedly imperfect one, which runs as follows: we experience cognitive dissonance when confronted by a phenomenon, which though outwardly familiar to us yet contradicts our previous assumptions about it, and by proving that out projections from the actual past are mistaken leads to frustration of expectations, one of the most disagreeable human experiences. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Our everyday reactions to and actions toward the world around us depend on the set of assumptions about how it works, the assumptions based on our own experience or that of the generations passed. And most of the time they serve us well, for otherwise life would be unbearable, if not impossible. We learned the hard way that fire is hot and ice is cold and act accordingly. But every now and then, mercifully not too often, we face a phenomenon which contradicts all our prior experiences and defies all assumptions we used to rely upon in the past. The world and the people in it suddenly behave in a manner they aren't supposed to and we have to adjust our action to the unexpected. And if we can't, because of inertia of the past, the consequences could be quite serious, even disastrous. | ||||||||||||||||||
| And that's exactly what's happening to the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular when they encounter Israel. Imagine yourself in their place. Before, your experience was: you hit a Jew, a Jew bleeds, he is trying to get away, you chase him and hit again. A Jew pleads for mercy. He offers his possessions as a ransom. Depending on your mood you either let him go or kill him. If you kill a Jew you take his property, if you spare him you rob him all the same. And what's happening now? You hit a Jew, he strikes back. You bleed. A Jew strikes you again. Now it is you who is running. He doesn't chase you, but he takes your land. You try to retaliate and it all repeats itself: you bleed, you run and a Jew takes more of your land. You don't understand what's going on. It is outrageous! Unbelievable! Enough to drive one mad. How dare he?! It wasn't supposed to be like that. There is something fundamentally wrong about it. Cognitive dissonance. | ||||||||||||||||||
| For the past two thousand years the rule was that the Jews could be abused, humiliated, robbed, assaulted and killed with impunity. The basic assumption was that the Jews are an easy target to vent your frustrations, to enrich yourself, and to gain self-esteem at the expense of Jewish powerlessness. | ||||||||||||||||||
| However, in the last 50 years all this, at least in the Middle East, has changed. Every time the Arabs try to act according to the old assumptions the Jews strike back. It has happened so many times one would think they should have learned by now and changed their attitude. But apparently due to the above-described phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, they can't and continue to act on the basis of the old assumptions which are clearly no longer valid. And this psychological handicap is at the roots of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For if instead of the Jews Israel were populated by the English, or Germans, or French, etc., after so many decisive defeats the Arabs would have grudgingly accepted the reality and adjusted to it. But to accept a Jew as a winner, as stronger, as invincible? They just can't. For it goes against the thousand years of experience and therefore could not be true. There must be some mistake. They just have to try harder next time, to use some other tactics, to invent a different strategy. The last resort the romantics always rely upon is a victorious Hero, who shall deliver them from Evil. And that's where Saddam Hussein?s chance lies in. If he wants to be that Hero (and by all indications he certainly does) the one and only qualification for this exalted status in the Arab world is to be the destroyer of Israel. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Thus finally we arrived at the third premise: the situation of/in Israel. Now, Israel is more like a military camp than a country in the usual sense of the word. All its resources, human and otherwise, ultimately are and will be employed for self-preservation. The experience of the numerous Arab-Israeli wars established the fact that Israel cannot be defeated by the conventional means and weapons. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Moreover, it is widely believed that Israel possesses the nuclear weapons, admittedly the weapons of last resort. Consequently, Saddam Hussein, in order to fulfill his ambitions to become an Arab Hero, the legend which shall be told by Arabs for centuries to come, has to acquire nuclear weapons too and use them to destroy Israel. And if he continues to stay in power, sooner or later he will get his a-bombs, for the obstacles nowadays to obtain such weapons are mainly psychological, not technological - any country can have them if it really wants to (hence the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, etc.). | ||||||||||||||||||
| Now, Israel by all accounts, after two years of the relentless attacks by suicide bombers and with no end of them in site is at present, is a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Faced with the potential threat of a nuclear strike by Iraq, which will obliterate the tiny State of Israel, it would inevitably preempt it by its own. And then the World will have the real Nuclear War, the first in its history and with unforeseen but undoubtedly horrifying consequences. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Before I state the final conclusion, let me summarize in a few words what has been said so far. Saddam Hussein is an ambitious man. He wants to be the Arab Hero. To be the Arab Hero he has to destroy Israel. To destroy Israel he has to acquire nuclear weapons. If he acquires nuclear weapons Israel will strike first, triggering nuclear confrontation in the Middle East, with the terrible consequences for the rest of the world. Now, anyone who has been following this chain of arguments up till now has at least to consider the possibility that the USA started this war in Iraq to prevent the much greater Nuclear War in the Middle East in the very near future. But, to repeat what I've said at the beginning, | ||||||||||||||||||
| I sincerely hope we'll never find out whether this hypothesis is valid. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Having finished with my own theory, let me comment on some others, which enjoy more or less widespread acceptance today. One of the most popular is that the real cause of war in Iraq is oil, i.e. that this is "war for oil." I personally do not subscribe to this theory. For though oil is always an important factor in any conflict in the Middle East, it is more about security and free flow of it, rather than actual ownership of oil wells. After all, oil is just a commodity, albeit a very important one, which is sold on international markets to anyone who has money to pay for it. Oil producers cannot be choosy about their customers, neither can they eat or drink it. They must sell it to survive. American companies have been buying Iraqi oil for the last 12 years, and some of this oil undoubtedly fuels American planes bombing Baghdad right now. What Lenin said a long time ago is still true: a capitalist will sell you a rope to be used to hang him. Such is an inexorable nature of free market, its very essence - I sell therefore I exist. (To be fair, the modern consumer is apparently driven by the corresponding motto - I buy therefore I exist.). What controls production and consumption of oil is "supply and demand," and not this or that producer. It is as simple as that. For as even the omnipotent God is powerless to alter the laws of mathematics, so is the United States, who sometimes behaves as His earthly equivalent, cannot abolish the laws of international trade. | ||||||||||||||||||
| I would give more credence to the "clash of civilizations" theory. Some allusions have been already made to the present collective romantic nature of Arab nations, and nobody will deny the pragmatism and cynicism of the modern West. The romanticism and pragmatism don?t mix well, neither in personal nor in international relations, and the imperative to coexist either in one family or on one planet inevitably leads to clashes. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Is it "a war on Islam?" If it means a religious war it is most emphatically not, for the goal of the United States and its allies is clearly not to convert the defeated Muslims into Christians and to force them to pray to Jesus instead of Allah. But I would completely agree with Arabs and other Muslims that this is a war against Muslim countries, which became the breeding ground for hate, mass hysteria and terrorism, both internal and external, directed mainly against the West. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Until September 11 United States could ignore the so-called "Arab street" as something which does not directly affect America. But after September 11 it had no choice but to react to the growing Muslim fanaticism and terrorism head on. It became the "clear and present danger." Something had to be done about it. In this situation, Iraq happens to be just a target of convenience, the example and the lesson to the rest of the Muslim world that in the era of laser bombs and nuclear missiles the romantic saber rattling and petty terroristic harassment can only go unpunished up to a point. And certainly no one is going to play this dangerous game with the only Superpower left in the world. The United States are using the war in Iraq to send a message to the Muslim world that any hostile action against it in particular and against the West in general (for in this struggle United States see themselves as the champion of the collective West) are suicidal. And I am afraid that the present American administration is ready to go as far as it takes to make this point. If a million soldiers are needed they will send them, if it costs a trillion dollars they will spend them. Those who sowed the wind shall reap the hurricane. | ||||||||||||||||||
| In a time like this every man should stand up and be counted. And so, do I support this war? Before answering this question, I had to reveal some personal information. I grew up in the Soviet Union during Stalin's regime and I see a lot of ominous similarities between it and Saddam's Iraq. Anyone with courage to resist it is quickly identified and exterminated. What is left is a mass of frightened slaves who would do anything to stay alive. Nobody trusts anybody. Even friends and relatives are capable of betraying each other. (By the way, the Russians and the Iraqis are not unique in this respect. Just remember what Joseph McCarthy, who was just a senator, not a dictator, did to the inhabitants of "the land of the free and the home of the brave." A few years of McCarthyism did such a substantial amount of damage to American civic and ideological courage that the residues of that era fear are still with us.) And so, it shouldn't surprise anyone that there is no popular uprising against Saddam Hussein, as American troops enter Iraq. The people who populate Iraq today are simply incapable of any action beyond the most abject self-preservation or the blind devotion to their Fuhrer. The Stalin's terror only ended with Stalin's natural death at the age of 74. But based on what has been said in the first part of this article, to wait for the natural death of Saddam Hussein is not an option. And so, I support this war as a lesser evil than continuation of the rule of Saddam Hussein and what it possibly and probably would lead to - the nuclear war in the Middle East. And nothing could be worse than this. | ||||||||||||||||||
| [EDITOR'S COMMENTS: Well, I have to admit that Nick Gurevich surely leaves no stones unturned and gives the reader a LOT to think about. I knew that he would, which is why I asked him to offer his opinions on this war. His support of the war as some sort of 'lesser evil' as compared to just having left Saddam in power is understandable, especially since he grew up in the Age of Stalin in the Soviet Union. That HAS to leave a far worse scar on the psyche than having grown up in the United States during the Era of Nixon, Ford, and Carter (absolutely NO comparison, to be honest and fair here). Still, I think it is a gross overstatement to compare Saddam Hussein to Stalin. That is to say, Saddam and his henchmen have killed several thousands of Iraqi citizens, but Stalin and his henchmen killed millions in the Soviet Union - far more than even the Nazis under Hitler managed to do in World War Two. Hussein could not even measure up to shine Stalin's shoes, much less be his equal as a despot. At least that is how I see that. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Also, after years of due consideration, I do not believe in the concepts of lesser evils. If something is wrong, by my standards, then I will not support it. For me, to have to choose between two evils is to have no choice at all. | ||||||||||||||||||
| As for nuclear war in the Middle East - some will recall that Iraq was building a nuclear reactor in the early 1980s, with which they planned to produce weapons grade plutonium and thus have nuclear missiles. Just months before the project would have been completed, the Israeli Air Force bombed the site, dealing the Iraqi nuclear program a rather permanent setback. Still, Nick, your theory in that respect may well have some merit. Thanks for participating!] | ||||||||||||||||||
| [This article originally appeared in the March/April 2003 issue of THE THOUGHT.] | ||||||||||||||||||
| To read more articles and essays by Nick Gurevich, go to http://maxpages.com/nickgurevich | ||||||||||||||||||
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