SMOKE AND MIRRORS
Boise Weekly, Indiana
June 3 2004
Many media outlets are currently lamenting an unravelling of
administration policy and progress in Iraq. There seems to be a lack
of coherence (or presence of confusion, if you prefer) among our
expressed vital interests, our professed humanitarian imperatives
and the strategies, costs and timing associated with achieving
a “success” defined with reasonable clarity. This confusion is
weakening the support of our populace and making potential allies
(nation participants) reluctant to shoulder part of the load in
putting Iraq back into autonomous and reasonably compliant operation.
America’s preemptive strike in March 2003 was ostensibly due to
imminent threat of use of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam
Hussein and retribution for Iraq’s support of al Qaeda which implies
some responsibility on the part of Iraq for the 9/11/01 World Trade
Center tragedy. In the administration’s world of smoke and mirrors,
the Saudis somehow skated free of this opprobrium.
To anticipate the sincerity, speed and quality of aid the States
might receive from our recently disaffected allies it is instructive
to understand how the Europeans view and remember our role in World
War I. President Wilson led our nation into the war for the reason:
“support of Christianity and, in particular, American missionary
colleges and missionary activities.” A corollary, long-term objective
was that “the peoples of the region were (to be) ruled by governments
of their choice.” As the realities of the war took hold and as the
complexities of defining a durable peace loomed on the horizon the
reasons and objectives for the war morphed through at least five
iterations in 1918.
Designing the peace and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire at the
end of World War I was an enormously complex task. In a diplomatic note
from President Wilson to the French ambassador on March 24, 1920, the
United States ducked any responsibility to further participate with
England and France in Middle Eastern affairs. Moreover, the United
States reneged on a commitment to accept mandates from the League
of Nations to assume responsibilities for Armenia, Constantinople
and the sea lane between the Aegean and Black seas. Yet the note
concluded with a requirement that the anticipated treaty should be
consonant with American views and in particular Wilson’s views on
specific Middle Eastern matters. A last requirement was that treaty
nonparticipants would not be discriminated against and that existing
American rights in the area would be preserved.
What were these existing rights? As defined in 1919 and 1920 by
the Department of State, beyond the rights in the capitulation
agreements, the United States insisted on freedom of navigation of the
aforementioned sea lane; and protection of missionary, archaeological
and commercial activities. Salient among these commercial interests
were those of the American oil companies. Standard Oil of New York had
exclusive, pre-war licenses from the Ottoman government to prospect
in Palestine and Syria, but not Iraq.
In 1919 Standard Oil of New Jersey jumped on the bandwagon and
lobbied with the American delegation to the ongoing Peace Conference
for similar preferences in Iraq. Unfortunately this was followed by
a secret oil bargain between only France and Britain to monopolize
the Middle East’s oil output to the exclusion of U.S. interests.
This agreement was leaked to the American embassy and the reaction
was severe. Not only did this deal discommode the two oil companies,
it was viewed as an affront to the United State’s interests. The
Department of State was advised: “It is economically essential … to
obtain assured foreign supplies of petroleum.”
This March 24, 1920, fundamental shift in American foreign policy
was made even more strident under the administration of President
Harding. The professed advocacy and protection for Christian activities
in the Middle East dissolved into nothing when the administration
declined to intervene in September 1922 in the self-described
“sacrifice and martyrdom” of the Christians in Smyrna, the greatest
city in Asia Minor, by the Turkish army. In a delayed response to
pleas for intervention in the Smyrna massacre, the Secretary of State
in Boston, October 1922, opined that “the entire situation was the
result of a war to which the United States had not been a party; if the
Allies, who were closely connected to the situation, did not choose to
intervene, it certainly was no responsibility of America’s to do so.”
Finally in July 1928, with the Red Line agreement, U.S. participation
in oil ventures in Iraq was assured.
In essence, by March 1920, the United States stopped being a team
player of the entente Allies, and in the following years extorted
what they could from exhausted, depleted and disarrayed British and
French governments, and backed away from any responsibility to help
manage the peace in the Middle East.
In early June 2004 it seems the shoe is now on the other foot. With
this history in the Middle East it seems plausible that no nation will
step forward today to shoulder part of the responsibility for managing
the peace in Iraq and the surrounding area. The impertinence of the
United States in almost single-handedly deposing Saddam Hussein without
substantial international support and snubbing long-term allies as
feckless traitors and cowards in the process, sets the stage for a
torturous time in Iraq for the United States.
This legacy could be as intractable as the Jew/Israel/Arab/Palestine
debacle has been over the last 100 years. Moreover, the most obvious
scam of the last century has been the attempted gulling of the U.S.
citizenry and erstwhile allies that the United States’s war motivation
has humanitarian and self-preservation bases as opposed to a control
of petroleum basis.
President Wilson’s participation in the 1919 Peace Conference with
Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau was characterized by Arthur
Balfour as: “These three all-powerful, all-ignorant men, sitting
there and carving up continents, with only a child to lead them.”
One could conjure up a similar observation regarding President
Bush’s inner circle stampeding our nation and by reckless haste,
leaving international cooperation and institutions in disarray,
to go half-cocked into an Iraq adventure—before it “gets too hot
over there.” This hubris will haunt our nation for decades to come
and stiffen resistance by Muslims everywhere to the initiatives and
prerogatives of the United States. “Shock and awe” and “Bring ’em on”
cockiness is not mature foreign policy. This is the most visible and
memorable occurrence of the government of a first-rate, industrialized
nation having a tantrum.
Gene E. Bray,