We had already fired perhaps 300,000-350,000 regular soldiers (who were clearly differentiated from other large "security" forces by not being as loyal to Saddam) and 30,000 Baathists (mostly high-level civil servants) who didn't fight us during our invasion. Rather than purge just the higher levels of Baathists, they fired people who likely did not help execute, and more likely could not have tried to stop without punishment, the worst atrocities occurring up until and during 1991. The plan, as far as it was announced, was to rehire them at the discretion of the CPA if they could convince the CPA that there was no evidence tying them to a crime, rather than fire officials only after a case was made so that a functioning government could continue.
When we fired the regular Army, they had long since fled their bases, presumably to avoid being bombed. They could have taken whatever weapons they wanted to with them; therefore Rumsfeld must have known that he was guaranteeing that Iraq's weapons would be available and useful to their owners. The only thing we denied them by firing them was tanks, which we could have removed before (or destroyed with airstrikes as soon as) they were misused anyway.
Assuming that whoever Badr wanted revenge against was participating in the resulting insurgency and thus was deserving of death is tantamount to enabling mass murder, and could only reasonably be thought to provoke massive retaliation, as there would be no other deterrent to the assassinations. This is true whether or not Badr was in the security forces in 2003 and 2004.
Considering that deBaathication would give them discretion to rehire people, and that many Americans wanted us to do so, this approach made no sense. The fact that we ended up hiring some Sunnis from the old security forces back under Naqib and Thabit is a reminder of how far from counterinsurgency killing them would be. Regardless of who decided on having those two Sunnis initially head the police, for Rumsfeld it was doubtless nothing more than good cover.
To cover some relevant history: Iraq had invaded Iran in 1980, but Iran turned the tables and by 1982 pushed into Iraq. We then secretly aided Saddam (yes, that Saddam) in a variety of ways beyond the scope of this essay. Near the start of this effort, Rumsfeld took time off from his private-sector life to shake hands with Saddam on behalf of the US in 1983. One can wonder whether Saddam would have invaded Iran if he thought sanctions against his oil were a possibility. And supposing he didn't think sanctions were possible, one wonders how he knew that we wouldn't impose sanctions for invading the country that still held 52 Americans hostage because we were protecting the former Shah.
People claim that we aided Saddam in the Iran-Iraq War to help prevent the spread of Iran's power - a manufactured fear that they are still trying to use as a pretext for war today. It became more commonly known that despite our supposed fears we secretly sold Iran weapons. We did this instead of letting Iran know we were helping Saddam, which would have induced Iran to give up, ending the war without Iran gaining anything. In fact, as soon as the US directly entered the war by attacking Iran's navy during a campaign to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers shipping oil for Iraq (we also inadvertently shot down an Iranian passenger jet around the same time and lied about multiple aspects of it), Iran predictably gave up.
The lives of half a million to a million people would have been saved had not the Reagan administration covertly gone to great lengths to make sure both sides thought they could win. Despite calls for sanctions from some Democrats, our support for Saddam also continued through his genocide of 50,000-100,000 Kurds before and after the end of the war (many of them having been allied with Iran), ending only with his invasion of Kuwait. During the Gulf War, H.W. Bush called on Iraqis to revolt while allowing Saddam to use helicopters and while leaving many of his tanks intact, leading to the deaths of more Shia and Kurds.
Yet despite this sordid history, the prevailing wisdom about our alliance with the Badr Brigade throughout the entire war is that it was explained by pragmatism. In addition to the idea that this was counterinsurgency, the thinking goes that we had to let the Shia do whatever they wanted because they were the biggest group in Iraq. Yet it was hardly the Shia, the vast majority of whom had not revolted under Saddam, whom we were letting start a civil war. It was a proxy of Iran, the country which Shia remaining in Iraq had actually fought. This is a clear difference between our strategy in Iraq and our strategy in the otherwise-apt comparison to the "dirty war" in El Salvador - Badr killed our enemies, but they were not our friends. For this reason, the situation had more in common with the Iran-Iraq War.
It would have been expected if they had fired just the top officers in the army along with the Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard, Intelligence Service (Mukhabarat), and Fedayeen Saddam, which would have been a lot of people anyway. The regular army's "rank and file" were thought to be 80% Shia, so it is clear that they didn't simply want to empower the Shia.
This early Manning cable sent at the end of May mentions Badr assassinations and explains the openness of the SCIRI/Badr presence, specifically the recent arrival of Mohammed Baqir Al Hakim and the creation of the SCIRI's public headquarters/other buildings. Is it plausible that Rumsfeld wasn't aware of all of this from some channel, given his focus on Iran's (as well as Syria's) role in Iraq? Why would he decide to allow this immediately after he fired the Baathists, before we could even judge their reaction? Could this have been counterinsurgency then? And since it couldn't have been, why would we release them later?
Rumsfeld was aware of the origins of SCIRI/Badr and he said at the end of March that hundreds of Badr fighters were in Iraq. He said that they were "trained, equipped, and directed" by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard". He said that they would be considered combatants if they were found with weapons inside Iraq, and that he would hold Iran responsible for their actions. He said in that PBS article that shipments of military equipment, which included night-vision goggles from Syria, "vastly complicates" the operation in Iraq. So how much would allowing in hundreds or thousands of IRGC-directed forces complicate the operation?
There was actually no need to even allow in anyone from Iran or from exile groups which were trying to fight for an undemocratic, Iran-backed government for the first couple of years - after all, they (including pilgrims) had already been banned for previous twenty years. It's obvious what would happen if you let them in at the same time as you fired the Baathists/army.
The only hypothesis that explains all of the evidence is that he decided on allowing the Badr killings before firing the Baathists and the army, and that the purpose of the firings was to make Baathists easier to kill.
The Zarqawi LetterThere was a letter released by the Coalition Provisional Authority in February 2004, which the Coalition believed was sent by Zarqawi to Al Qaeda. The author states that he wants to start a sectarian civil war in order to mobilize Sunnis against the new government formed by Shia working with the Americans. He says that the Shia have been treacherous throughout history, but aside from pointing out that they are working with Americans, there is only one contemporary grievance he points to:
"These [have been] a sect of treachery and betrayal throughout history and throughout the ages. It is a creed that aims to combat the Sunnis. When the repulsive Ba'thi regime fell, the slogan of the Shi'a was 'Revenge, revenge, from Tikrit to al-Anbar.' This shows the extent of their hidden rancor toward the Sunnis. However, their religious and political 'ulama' have been able to control the affairs of their sect, so as not to have the battle between them and the Sunnis become an open sectarian war, because they know that they will not succeed in this way. They know that, if a sectarian war was to take place, many in the [Islamic] nation would rise to defend the Sunnis in Iraq. Since their religion is one of dissimulation, they maliciously and cunningly proceeded another way. They began by taking control of the institutions of the state and their security, military, and economic branches. As you, may God preserve you, know, the basic components of any country are security and the economy. They are deeply embedded inside these institutions and branches. I give an example that brings the matter home: the Badr Brigade, which is the military wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution, has shed its Shi'a garb and put on the garb of the police and army in its place. They have placed cadres in these institutions, and, in the name of preserving the homeland and the citizen, have begun to settle their scores with the Sunnis. The American army has begun to disappear from some cities, and its presence is rare. An Iraqi army has begun to take its place, and this is the real problem that we face, since our combat against the Americans is something easy. The enemy is apparent, his back is exposed, and he does not know the land or the current situation of the mujahidin because his intelligence information is weak. We know for certain that these Crusader forces will disappear tomorrow or the day after. He who looks at the current situation [will] see the enemy's haste to constitute the army and the police, which have begun to carry out the missions assigned to them. This enemy, made up of the Shi'a filled out with Sunni agents, is the real danger that we face, for it is [made up of] our fellow countrymen, who know us inside and out. They are more cunning than their Crusader masters, and they have begun, as I have said, to try to take control of the security situation in Iraq. They have liquidated many Sunnis and many of their Ba'th Party enemies and others beholden to the Sunnis in an organized, studied way. They began by killing many mujahid brothers, passing to the liquidation of scientists, thinkers, doctors, engineers, and others."
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
