ODE TO SADDAM HUSSEIN |
Shocking subject to begin with but not in the context of what-if with history. Saddam was never a friend of America or he ever understood our values. The fact still remains he existed in his own world. Likes of him through the history created a trail of acts that will never pass the filter of acceptable human behavior or would be perceived to be beneficial to the world. Nonetheless they existed like Saddam Hussein and left their marks on the history.
America confronted Saddam Hussein twice. In liberating Kuwait the cause was right, loss of human capital was low, cost was covered primarily by Kuwait and we built a perfect coalition to succeed. A success owed to George H.W. Bush, Jim Baker, Collin Powell and others. It was one international military engagement since WWII that made America proud. Then came 911 tragedy and we tempered ourselves to blame anyone and everyone we did not like. Some in administration itching to go after Saddam Hussein worked hard to find reasons and to every numeric 1 they added many zeros to magnify without doing any fact checking thus born Weapons of Mass Destruction. This created a decade long quagmire costing $1 trillion plus to the treasury, costing almost 4,500 lives and poorly managed war incurred waste of 40% resources with zero success. We did accomplish regime change from Hussein to Maliki – a tyrant to an incompetent.
This essay is to imagine what the Iraq-Syria-Iran geopolitical landscape would have been if Saddam Hussein is still running Iraq. I have contemplated similar what ifs about Marshall Tito, Joseph Stalin and others. Here is my what ifs, if we would not have embarked on engaging Iraq in last war |
-
Saddam would have brutally managed differences between Shea, Sunni and Kurdish factions
-
Iraq would have remained oppressed but a single geopolitical entity
-
Iran would have continued to focus on Saddam and probably less on nuclear ambition from the fear Iraq will develop similar capabilities
-
Iraq under the weight of sanctions would have behaved better to remain a natural resource provider on world market
-
Iraq would have maintained good, fighting military to keep Syria [Alawite Shea Regime] and Iran [Shea Regime] as counter balance
-
Iraq would have remained in check because of first Gulf War and Kuwait experience
-
America would have saved $1trillion and 4,500 lives
-
Islamic State [Islamic Caliphate] would have never come to exist
History does not permit to un-ring the bell but it certainly produces lessons. Regime change to make any geopolitical span conform to our desire is not practical or feasible. As biggest economy we have commercial clout of sanctions and isolations imposed on miss behaving parties to be backed by our military capability. A model successfully implemented by China as their commercial clout is generating more weight around the world with no current military interventions on the horizon. Strategy planners from executive to legislative branch must consider consequences. Our leadership position is hollow when 20% of our population is below poverty line, we threaten to cut food stamps, veteran healthcare in shambles while hawks do not mind wasting $1trillion in Iraq.
We cannot change events and course of history – Yugoslavia disintegrated after Marshall Tito, creating strife among ethnically diverse population. Syria is falling apart after Hafez Al-Assad and Soviet Union is no more after Stalin. We did not influence any of these changes. They are natural evolutions from within. We may take some credit but change was from within. The what if on Iraq even after the fact exposes our inability to successfully engage in internal affairs attempting to reset the geopolitical environment. So what we can do? Create regional and global coalitions – an example will be Japan, South Korea and Australia for South East Asia; India, Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia for Middle East and others. Create common goals, shared responsibilities and team work. A possible way to succeed than burdening the treasury while sacrificing lives for a zero gain. Someone recently posed a question – why NATO even though stagnant is more successful than EU? Simple response – EU interferes in internal affairs such as economy of its members. So concludes my what ifs and wish list.