As much as I hate to admit it, our leaders are not stupid, and they and the military saw something more threatening to our national security than Saddam. What was it?
By stringing together certain well-established facts and historical events, did they project an economic doomsday? Consider the following:
The relative ease with which Khomeni and the mullahs overthrew the powerful U.S. supported military regime of the Shah of Iran and the hostile theocratic government they installed.
The horrific logistics we faced mobilizing, with the assistance of Arab nations, to boot Saddam out of the tiny nation of Kuwait.
Bin Laden’s oft-stated objective to replace the U.S. backed regimes in the oil-rich states of the gulf with Taliban-like fundamentalist theocracies.
The total dependence of the Western economy on cheap, accessible Middle East oil.
Bin Laden’s pricing of oil for sale at $140/barrel, but only after the West makes back payments of trillions for oil already “stolen.”
Faced with this scenario, the U.S. and Britain, two nations that have exercised hegemony over the region since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, acted out of self-interest.
Iraq is geographically ideal as a base to initiate a military action. A friendly government, such as the Saudi regime, under siege by fundamentalists, could receive immediate massive military ground, air and naval support.
Moreover, the fundamentalists’ freedom to operate is curtailed with the U.S.’s physical presence smack in the center of the region.
Saddam presented us with the opportunity to pre-empt an impending “super Kuwait situation” by establishing a massive military presence in the region. We took it!
Michael J. Keogh
Pinehurst
