By Peter Boyle
What did the Gulf War achieve? The liberation of Kuwait? The triumph of democracy over dictatorship? A safer, more equitable and peaceful world? It may be too early to draw a final balance sheet, but some of the most lasting effects of this relatively quick, sharp war are glaringly obvious. The paeans to Western military triumph cannot hide the skies darkened with smoke, an oil-fouled sea, the mounting death toll and the smouldering ruins of two countries.
The selective reality presented on the television and in exuberant newspaper articles — written by journalists finally relieved of the tedium of regurgitating army-censored pool reports and official military briefings — seem to confirm that the war achieved great things.
In the last week, newspapers and television programs followed a predictable formula: 1. Story or cameo shots of rejoicing Kuwaitis welcoming liberators. 2. Pictures of "our brave boys" — even if it is only the well-staged reoccupation of empty embassies by over-armed troops descending from helicopters (was the real fighting censored because it wasn't all that pretty?). 3. Stories of Iraqi brutality.
Embarrassing interviews with Filipina nurses in Kuwaiti hospitals who deny the much-publicised "baby killing" stories get short shrift.
The impact of this media campaign is calculated to exploit our relief that the war is ended and the desire of many people in the West to believe that no matter how terrible, this war was necessary. But even if we look at the facts allowed to emerge, the syrupy fantasy the victorious generals and politicians would foist on us falls apart.
Has Kuwait been liberated? There is no doubt that the people left in Kuwait were relieved that their nightmare was over. But this nightmare had two components. Iraqi occupation was at least as brutal as Baathist rule in Iraq and made worse by acts of vengeance for the bombing of Iraq and by pillaging. Also part of the nightmare for Kuwaiti residents was the months of deprivation through economic blockade followed by the terror of seven weeks of round-the-clock bombing.
But truth is being twisted to fit the victor's fantasy. "Something evil visited Kuwait", a headline screams. "These people were not humans as we know them", says a general fresh from long-distance slaughter. Every scrap of evidence is summoned to prove the inhumanity of the Iraqis. Everyone in Kuwait faced starvation, but the Iraqis are attacked for not feeding the race horses in the emir's stable!
We are shown torture chambers and pictures of mutilated bodies in the morgue, but a visit to the torture chambers in Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and numerous other US-supported dictatorships would be just as horrible. These will continue to operate even as the victory celebrations rage. In Kuwait, martial law has been declared as the al-Sabah family prepares to resume "democracy" Kuwaiti-style. The Bush administration, now little bothered with the technicalities of United Nations resolutions, has vowed to keep economic sanctions on Iraq until Saddam Hussein goes. Apparently, starving 17 million Iraqi people to punish their dictator is a "civilised" tactic.
Bush is hoping that the Iraqi military will topple Saddam Hussein. It doesn't matter to Bush that the Iraqi people remain under dictatorship, as long as that dictatorship does not challenge US interests. Anyway, we are told, Arabs don't appreciate democracy.
Why is this supposedly noble war for democracy being accompanied by an explosion of racist propaganda in the West not seen for many years? Is this necessary to sell the fact that up to 150,000 Iraqis have been slaughtered in a merciless bombing campaign that coalition pilots compared to "turkey shoots"? or that human beings are the ubiquitous "collateral damage"?
If racism and jingoism are needed to sell this war to the Western public, perhaps its real achievements fall far short of balancing its terrible human, economic and environmental costs. Perhaps there was another way of ending the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.
Just days after Iraq's occupation of Kuwait last August, Saddam Hussein offered to withdraw if Israel would withdraw from the occupied territories. The US and its allies dismissed this immediately, claiming that linking these two acts of military occupation would reward Iraqi aggression. But such a solution would have done much to redress the causes of conflict in the Middle East. If the question of unequal access to the region's resources had been added to the agenda, even more would have been achieved.
US rejection of this solution to the conflict (which was presented in various forms through peace initiatives from the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Soviet Union) had nothing to do with the simplistic notion that aggression must not be rewarded. "Might is right" is the primary law that the US has followed and continues to follow in international relations.
The US rejected "linkage" because the resolution of the real problems in the Middle East is against the interests of corporate barons it acts for. War was needed to protect long-term Western profits, so war would be waged at all costs.
There are immediate opportunities for lucrative Western profits from the war. Arms manufacturers were celebrating before military victory. The oil companies made windfall profits in the last quarter and now the construction companies are greedily bidding for the estimated US$100 billion of contracts to rebuild Kuwait (only conquerors need apply). After that there will be US$255 billion of civilian damage in Iraq to deal with. The US may have a war-driven economic recovery!
A peace of sorts may be enforced for a while in the Middle East, but it will be temporary, enforced by the threat of US intervention. Underneath the surface, the real causes of conflict — inequality, injustice and repression — will continue to fester. The victims are now nursing bitter resentment against the West, and the real mother of all battles may be yet come.