I
An evil to be
reckoned with
Paul Kelly
Editor-at-large -
S0 far George W. Bush has failed ignominiously to make his case for a
preemptive strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein - but the US President's
failure cannot excuse the denial in Australia about Iraq.
Australians need to ask themselves why this debate has been virtually 100 per
cent about Bush's declarations and zero about Hussein's evil. There is a
serious problem here that transcends Bush's incompetence.
Samantha Power's 2001 book A Problem From Hell is a good place to answer
this question. The Harvard academic argues first that Hussein is one of the few
leaders in the past century to practise genocide; second, that he is the first
political leader to use chemical weapons against his own people; and, third,
that he has deployed weapons of mass destruction against two enemies, the Kurds
and Iran, thereby constituting a record of unusual evil.
Australia's Richard Butler, the former chief of the UN Special Commission to
disarm Iraq, has documented Hussein's attachment to chemical and
biological,-weapons.
“These were clearly his weapons,” Butler writes in Fatal Choice. “He saw
them as critical to his power both within Iraq and beyond. He knew about the
weapons in detail and personally directed which particular biological cocktail.
should be mixed. He richly rewarded the scientists who worked on the weapons or
threatened their lives if they did not perform ... and he delivered on those
threats. Simply, he is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.”
In another recent book Saddam Defiant, Butler writes that every progress
made by the UN commission came “in the face of Iraqi concealment, deception,
lying and threats”,
Hussein's obsession is such that he long tolerated sanctions that starved his
nation rather than meet his obligations under the nuclear nonproliferation
treaty and the resolutions of the UN Security Council.
Butler says of Iraq: “International law? UN resolutions? Disarmament? They would have none of it, They
wanted, above all, to hold on to their weapons of mass destruction.”
He argues the failure “to complete the task of disarming Saddam and the
politics on which it has rested - including the failure of the Security Council
to maintain its own authority - constitutes a serious crisis in global
security”.
Beyond this, Hussein began one of the worst wars of the 20th
century, the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s that took 1 million military and
civilian casualties. He invaded Kuwait with conspicuous brutality and had to be
forced out by a UN-sanctioned force. In the process, he launched Scud missiles
against Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, trying to promote a regional
conflagration.
There is no evidence he has abandoned his objective to seize much of the
Persian Gulf oilfields. He bankrolls terror against Israel and pledges to
liberate Jerusalem. He has a record of recklessness reinforced by a proven
readiness to use weapons of mass destruction.
Power's book is a critique of the US's pusillanimous response to genocide but
it helps to put Hussein into context.
As she surveys “the major genocides of the 20th century a few stood
out ... the Bosnian Serbs' eradication of non- Serbs, the Ottoman slaughter of
the Armenians, the Nazi Holocaust, Pol Pot's terror in Cambodia,, Saddam
Hussein's destruction of the Kurds in
northern Iraq and the Rwandan Hutus 'systematic extermination of the Tutsi
minority” '
In March 1987, Hussein appointed his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid to solve
the
Kurdish problem. The Kurds, totalling 4 million out of 18 million
Iraqis, were in rebellion against Baghdad. “Iraqi special police and regulars
carried out al-Majid's master plan, cleansing, gassing and killing with
bureaucratic precision,” Power writes.
“In eight consecutive carefully coordinated waves they wiped out (or
'Saddamised') Kurdish life in rural Iraq. Hussein aimed his offensive at every
man, woman and child who resided in the new no-go areas. And the Kurdish men
who were rounded up were killed not in the heat of battle.
They were bussed to remote areas, where they were machine-gunned in
Planned mass executions.” -
The US, alarmed that Iraq and its oil reserves might fall to Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, backed Iraq against Iran and turned a blind eye to Hussein's
slaughter.
A US official, Peter Galbraith, reported the elimination of “villages, many of
which had been inhabited since the beginning of civilisation - even cemeteries
and orchards were mowed to bits”.
In March 1988 Hussein used poison gas in the village of Halabja to combat the
Kurds and Iranians. Power writes:
“In three days of attacks, victims were exposed to mustard gas, which burns,
mutates DNA and causes malformations and cancer; and the nerve gas sarin and
tabun, which can kill, paralyse or cause immediate and lasting,
neuropsychiatric damage.
“Some 5000 Kurds were killed immediately. Thousands more were injured. Halabja
w as the most notorious but it was one of at least 40 chemical assaults ordered
by al-Majid.” People died on doorsteps, pushing prams and in their cars.
Power judges that in 1987-88 Hussein's forces murdered close to 100,000 Iraqi
Kurds. Hussein is a war criminal with a proven ability to exploit the slightest
weakness in his opponents.
His deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz told Butler that “we made bioweapons in
order to deal with the Persians and the Jews”. As The Economist argues
in its August 3 edition, Hussein “is no tinpot despot singled out for arbitrary
American punishment”. He has no claim to be given the benefit of the doubt and
any such advocacy irresponsibly excuses his infamy.
The 1991 Gulf War ended with Security Council resolutions that “Iraq will
unconditionally agree” not to develop WMD and permit inspections to verify
this. Butler's account is not needed to know that Hussein has spent a decade
in' defiance of the UN and inter-. national law. There is only one con-
clusion: he wants to rebuild the WMD capability to which he is so addicted.
Hussein's record is important because the decision about war pivots .upon a j
udgment: the risk of removing him vs the risk of saving him. If he is removed
then, obviously, he should be taken to trial.
Bush's contempt for world opinion has provoked a backlash. Even former US
secretary of state Henry Kissinger warns about the dangers in preemption and of
Bush's inability to devise a policy. The reality is that not even the record'
of genocide, murder and defiance of the UN that defines Hus
sein alone justifies pre-emption, - But it's the place to start a proper debate
in Australia. Australians should consider two questions. First, at what point
does a leader forfeit the right
of protection via the principle of national sovereignty; and, second, if
Hussein deserves to be removed, under what conditions should this occur?