December 13, 2004
Wildcatters
It turns out Saddam got most of his ill-gotten gains from smuggling oil to Jordan, Turkey, and Syria. And of course, the Bush administration knew all about it.
Sure, there were reasons not to stop the smuggling: Jordan was on the verge of collapse, we owed Turkey a favor, and it wasn't a big enough deal to blow up the Iraq-Syria pipeline.
Or was it? I can certainly make the case that without Saddam's $10.9 billion in smuggling revenue (compared to the "paltry" $1.7 billion from the oil-for-food scam), Saddam's regime might have collapsed on its own.
Much brouhaha has been generated over the UN oil-for-food scandal, in which it's conveniently forgotten by anti-UN pundits that Bush campaign contributors made out like bandits. Pun intended. But those indignant critics are silent when it turns out the US government's tacit contribution to Saddam's coffers dwarfs that of the hated, black helicopter wielding, world government headquartered in New York City (I'm talking about the UN, not Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.).
In any case, I predicted that the Bush administration wasn't making a big deal out of the scandal because a thorough investigation would turn up embarrassing information. The oil-for-food uproar served Bush's purpose: to undermine the legitimacy of the UN. Now I'm sure he wishes the scandal would quietly disappear.
Just like we found out that President Bush could have, but refused, to kill Zarqawi before he cut off Nick Berg's head and mounted an effective insurgency in Fallujah and elsewhere, we'll continue to find out more about our oil-rich administration's connections with Saddam.
This is a no win situation for any administration. How do you cut off illegal shipments? It sounds pretty ominous that the U.S. “allowed” shipments or that they were done with “tacit” approval, but this is exactly the problem with sanctions. The U.S. still gets stuck enforcing them and gets all the blame for what gets through, what doesn’t get through and anything else anyone can think of.
I remember the “sanctions” war before the real war. Everyone who subsequently opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq was working against us on the sanctions front. It is disingenuous to blame the U.S. for what others we up to. It is like the criminal blaming the cops for not catching him sooner. The Turks are our friends. We needed their cooperation to keep Saddam as far down as we did, but they pointedly didn’t help out in the invasion. The article explains the Jordanian case and it is not primarily a U.S. problem. The Syrian wouldn’t even give us the correct time of day if we asked them nicely.
Our choice in 2002 was to let Saddam go or go get him. This all goes to show that the sanctions weren’t working well and were coming apart. The article you gave me says as much, “Baghdad could read this turn of events only as growing momentum of its strategy to undermine sanctions with the goal of an ultimate collapse.” Events will tell us how well the choice we made worked out. We will never be sure what would have happened had we let Saddam go.
Excellent post, AP. Sadly, this demonstrates that the term “illegal” only applies to places where there is such a thing as law enforcement.
Geopolitics is and always will be about what you can get away with.
Those that poo poo Sadaam for skirting sanctions, perhaps should look at our dealings with any number of nations around the world. This isn’t attack America or praise Sadaam. It’s power politics.
There are always consequences to actions. There are valid reasons for Arabs to hate the West, and there are valid reasons for America to play empire with OPEC. Sadaam reaped what he sewed and so will we.
Posted by: Greg at December 13, 2004 01:39 PMI think the point of the whole story is, instead of fighting an expensive and quagmiry war against Saddam, we could have just cut off his smuggling benefits and he’d be just as powerless.
Was that not clear?
Posted by: Josh at December 13, 2004 03:11 PMSo to respond to Jack, our choice was not to let Saddam go or go get him. Our choice was to let Saddam go, to fight to remove his power while leaving Iraq stable (i.e., no looting, no civilian deaths, no beheadings), or to go get him. And probably some other options nobody ever mentioned on prime time. The choice is in the past, but the consequences aren’t. We could have done better.
Posted by: Josh at December 13, 2004 03:27 PMWow, they smuggled. Big deal. When did we become the world police? Is it really our duty to blow up their oil pipes in an act of reveiling their scandle? I don’t think so. We have scandles here all the time, do you think that everyone should know about those? Probably not. I say let’s just let it go, in fact lets let a lot of the world’s problems to. At the time I bet Bush had more important things to worry about, like Homeland security. Isn’t that more important than destroying a regime?
Posted by: Millhouse at December 13, 2004 03:48 PMAp,
I have always been amazed at what our “allies” get away with, and that we overlook it with a nod and a wink.
Jack, you offer a false choice: either let the sanctions fail or invade Iraq. There were other options - strictly enforcing the sanctions would have been one. Josh hit the nail right on the head there.
As for the rationalizations offered for turning a blind eye, that’s just what they are. Either we strictly enforce the sanctions we impose, or we might as well not impose them.
And I’m not oblivious to the fact that the smuggling had been going on since 1990, so this isn’t so much an issue of “Bush is inept”, as much as better options were squandered (despite my ranty tone).
Wow, they smuggled. Big deal. When did we become the world police?
When it ends up costing the lives and limbs of thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, it’s a big deal.
And enforcing our own sanctions has nothing to do with being the world police. But if you really want to know, the exact date we became the world police was August 19, 1991.
Sadly, this demonstrates that the term “illegal” only applies to places where there is such a thing as law enforcement…Geopolitics is and always will be about what you can get away with.
That’s obviously a good point, Greg. Have you ever read Barnett’s book, “The Pentagon’s New Map”? We discussed it here a while back. The really basic premise is, we need to expand the areas of the globe covered by law enforcement. It impressed the heck out of me as a Grand Strategy.
No I haven’t read it, yet. It’s on my Christmas list to Santa, though:)
Posted by: Greg at December 13, 2004 10:10 PMThis all happened while we were more concerned if Clintons’ fly was up.
Posted by: at December 16, 2004 07:20 AMThere were definitely more important things for Republicans in Congress to be concerned about, weren’t there.
