As U.S. forces battle guerrilla fighters, fierce sandstorms,
rising heat, and the fear of possible chemical attacks, anxious
Americans are beginning to question those early war projections
that confidently predicted a swift romp to Baghdad lined with
dancing Iraqis. Instead of candy and flowers, however, U.S. forces
have been faced with a surprisingly staunch militia resistance and
little public back-slapping of U.S. troops by the average
“liberated” Iraqi.
Why? Perhaps America’s last “liberation” has something to do
with it. In 1991, shortly after U.S. troops booted Iraqi soldiers
out of Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush called on Iraqis to rise
up against Saddam Hussein. Worn out by Saddam’s two disastrous wars
in the last eleven years (he invaded Iran in 1980 leading to a
brutal eight year war) and longing for greater freedom from
Saddam’s brutal police state, Iraqis across the country heeded the
American president’s call and rose against their dictator, a man
who truly deserves the Bush moniker “evil.”
In large numbers in the south, Shi’a Iraqis, who compose the
majority of the population, rose up in defiance of Saddam’s Ba’ath
party henchmen in Basra, Nasiriya, Umm Qasr, the same cities that
have become etched into our consciousness as battle sites today.
They tore down Saddam photos, vandalized official buildings, and
took revenge on Ba’ath party officials. In one scene, an angry mob
hung an official in the same torture chamber Saddam used for local
dissidents.
In the north, Iraq’s Kurds — long victimized by Saddam Hussein
including a devastating chemical attack on the city of Halabja —
saw Saddam’s day of reckoning and eagerly rose up in defiance.
In the center of Iraq, people whispered excitedly about Saddam’s
imminent demise, according to reports at the time, though they
feared open rebellion: Saddam’s Republican Guards were still too
close for comfort. (Incidentally, Saddam’s hit squads are still too
close for comfort, another reason why there is little in the way of
uprising.) Both the Kurds and the Shi’a and the Sunni Muslim Iraqis
in the center assumed that their rebellion would be supported by
the United States. After all, they thought, why would the President
of the United States — the most powerful and knowledgeable man in
the world — tell them to rise in revolt if the U.S. didn’t plan on
supporting the uprising? Surely, they thought, the President knows
they’re not capable of defeating Saddam on their own.
And yet, when Iraqis rose, America stood idly by as Saddam’s
forces slaughtered nearly 200,000 Kurds and tens of thousands of
Shi’as. President Bush later said he never intended his comments to
mean that the U.S. would provide air cover to rebellious Iraqis.
For the average Iraqi, however, that’s exactly how they took the
President’s call.
Of course, Iraqis must know that this time is different. Though
there is once again a Bush in the White House, Iraqis have
certainly seen the barrage leafleting and Arabic radio broadcasts
announcing America’s intention: to march on Baghdad until the
butcher falls. And yet, Iraqis still hesitate to embrace their
“liberators.”
Well, perhaps the last ten years has something to do with it.
You see, for the average Iraqi, America has represented an economic
oppressor — not a liberator — due to the crippling United Nations
sanctions, backed vigorously by the United States. Sanctions have
decimated Iraq’s middle-class, and contributed to up to 500,000
deaths due to lack of medicine, according to the World Health
Organization and UNICEF. An entire generation of Iraqis have
experienced the slow strangulation of their economy and their lives
at the hand of UN sanctions.
As one Iraqi professor turned refugee told me in neighboring
Iran: “Saddam kills us suddenly. Sanctions kill us slowly. Forgive
me if I cannot trust the Americans.”
Still, there is hope because Iraqis keenly understand one thing:
the Americans are certainly better than Saddam Hussein. Given a
real choice, the average Iraqi would rather have an American
military governor for a limited duration (“limited duration” being
the operative phrase) if it meant an end to Saddam’s reign of
terror, if it meant that Iraqis could hope once again for a better
future for their children and their rich and tormented land. It
would, in their eyes, be the lesser of two evils, and don’t be
fooled by chest-thumping coffee-house Arab nationalists in Cairo or
Riyadh who tell you otherwise.
A key issue that threatens the U.S. position as “the lesser of
two evils” is one of civilian casualties. How could America’s
precision-guided bombs hit a market, Baghdad residents ask,
justifiably enraged? What next, a school?
Ironically, the most important tool in the battle for the hearts
and minds of Iraqis might be U.S. military technology: if more
missiles go astray, average Iraqis could turn quickly against
allied forces.
Let us hope we see the quick end of Saddam Hussein, who
represents the worst of his generation of Arab tyrants. In his
quest for greater glory for himself, his family, and his tribe, he
has crushed the aspirations and hopes of two generations of Iraqis
and strangled a people that spawned the world’s first civilization
between the Tigris and Euphrates and one of the Arab world’s
greatest cities in culture-rich Baghdad. When the dictator falls,
Iraqis might not embrace their liberators, and their liberators
ought not to overstay their welcome, but don’t be surprised if an
American GI is offered a sweet or two by a thankful Iraqi mother.
Unless, of course, her innocent son is killed by another errant
missile.
