America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (16 page)

Gaddafi was an Arab nationalist, a radical Islamist, an anti-Semite, a proponent of violent revolution, and something of a nutcase. But it was Gaddafi’s support for terrorism that had drawn U.S. attention. As Washington saw it, terrorism was the real enemy, with Gaddafi merely one manifestation of this much larger problem. With Operation El Dorado Canyon, the United States inaugurated what was to become an extended and ultimately futile experiment in employing military might to defeat that enemy.

Even so, surveying the experiment’s preliminary results, the Reagan administration pronounced itself pleased. The Defense Department’s principal spokesman described El Dorado Canyon as “an absolutely flawless professional performance.”
²¹
Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger told reporters that the raid would “send an unmistakable signal,” predicting that “it will go far toward deterring future acts” of terrorism.
²²
Secretary of State George Shultz later wrote that “after twitching feverishly with a flurry of vengeful responses,” Gaddafi himself “quieted down and retreated into the desert.”
²³
The United States had put the Libyan dictator “back in his box, where he belongs.”
²⁴

If so, he did not remain there for long. Less than two years later, the State Department spokesperson admitted that the United States had seen “no evidence that Libya has abandoned support of international terrorism, subversion, and aggression.”
²⁵
Soon enough, events affirmed the truth of that statement. On December 21, 1988, as Reagan was preparing to hand the presidency over to George H. W. Bush, a device planted by Libyan agents blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and crew, 189 Americans among them, along with eleven others on the ground.
²⁶
The United States did not retaliate against Gaddafi for engineering this atrocity. If U.S. policymakers intended their response to the Berlin disco bombing to demonstrate that terrorists were no longer going to get away with murdering Americans, the non-response to the destruction of Pan Am 103 showed that they still could.

Clearly, as an exercise in behavior modification through bombing, Operation El Dorado Canyon had a transitory impact at best. Even so, U.S. policymakers clung to their belief that armed might could somehow provide the ultimate solution to terrorism. Here was an illusion destined to last for decades to come.

On the long list of Hitlers with whom the United States has contended since the demise of the genuine article back in 1945, Saddam Hussein certainly ranks at or near the very top. Yet in contrast to the real Hitler, who never enjoyed American sympathy or support, Washington once threw in with Saddam-as-Hitler prior to concluding that it needed to throw him over.

This coming to Saddam’s aid—indeed, to his rescue—also forms part of America’s War for the Greater Middle East during its preliminary stages. Here, more than any other Reagan-era episode, the confusion and incoherence that permeated U.S. policy in the Islamic world during the 1980s become blindingly apparent. Those who revere Reagan remember him as the embodiment of constancy and moral purpose. When it comes to Iraq, little of either quality was evident. Instead, shortsighted opportunism prevailed.

Americans rarely attend to or remember military conflicts not directly involving the United States. There are exceptions, of course, such as the Six-Day War of 1967 and the October War of 1973. Yet the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988, although far larger, longer, and more destructive than all of the Arab-Israeli wars combined, does not number among those exceptions. Never having gained more than a toehold on the nation’s collective consciousness, this Muslim-on-Muslim conflict has today almost entirely vanished from memory, for the average American retaining about as much salience as the Boxer Rebellion. This is unfortunate since, not unlike the events of 9/11, the Iran-Iraq War thrust the United States more deeply into its War for the Greater Middle East.

Ultimately at stake in this conflict was regional primacy, neighbors vying with one another to determine who would dominate the neighborhood. In that sense, rather than
Iran-Iraq War,
the term
Persian Gulf War
more accurately captures the essential issue. More accurately still, the contest of 1980–1988 deserves to be called the First Gulf War, since it inaugurated a series of armed conflicts, still ongoing even today, to determine who will exercise dominion over the core of the Islamic world.

The United States intervened in this First Gulf War, both directly and indirectly, and thereby helped determine its outcome. Yet in so doing, the U.S. all but ensured that a second Gulf war would follow in 1990 and then a third in 2003. As this succession of conflicts unfolded, U.S. policymakers became ever more insistent that it was incumbent upon the United States itself, employing its superior military power, to determine the region’s fate. In short, the First Gulf War marked an important way station propelling the United States toward a fateful attempt to implement a strategy of regional hegemony.

Much as the Sino-Japanese conflict of 1931–1941 served as a precursor of the Pacific War of 1941–1945, the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988 served as a precursor to an American war in Iraq destined in its various phases to continue for over a quarter-century. The parallels between these two sets of events are imprecise, of course. Among other things, whereas Washington condemned warmongering in the 1930s, it tacitly abetted warmongering in the 1980s. And while the Pacific War culminated in the enemy’s unconditional surrender, the same cannot be said of the American military involvement in Iraq.

The First Gulf War began with an act of unprovoked aggression. Assuming that the Islamic Revolution had left Iran militarily weak and therefore vulnerable, Saddam Hussein spied a chance to help himself to some easy pickings. Although the Iraqi dictator possessed boundless ambition, in this instance narrow objectives prompted his decision for war. He sought not to conquer Iran, nor even to topple its government, but to acquire territory—more or less, the same motive that had once inspired the United States to invade Mexico. Back in 1846, President James K. Polk had coveted the great prize of California. In 1980, Saddam coveted the lesser but still significant prize of Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan Province, just across Iraq’s eastern border. He also wanted to assert unquestioned Iraqi control of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
¹

Put simply, when Saddam sent his Soviet-equipped army plunging into Iran on September 22 of that year, he envisioned a brief, satisfying land grab. What he got was something altogether different. We may wonder how it could have been otherwise. A war pitting Arabs against Persians, secular Ba’athists against Islamist revolutionaries, a Sunni-dominated regime against one controlled by Shiites involved too many grudges to stay limited—especially when Iranians in large numbers evinced an unexpected willingness to fight and die for their country. In short order, a brief campaign launched for small stakes became a long war with both parties shoving more and more chips onto the table. On each side, the contest took on life-or-death implications.

At the war’s outset, with Jimmy Carter still in the White House, the United States had declared itself neutral. At a press briefing on the afternoon of September 24, Carter stated categorically that “we have not been and we will not become involved in the conflict between Iran and Iraq.” That said, Carter didn’t want anyone else nosing in either. “There should be absolutely no interference by any other nation,” he continued. Yet the president also warned the two belligerents not to infringe on the “freedom of passage of ships to and from the Persian Gulf region.”
²
Access to oil was still of paramount importance.

As a practical matter, with the hostage crisis still ongoing and few Americans predisposed to sympathize with Iran, Washington was not unduly troubled by the prospect of Saddam Hussein subjecting that country to a drubbing. True, the United States did not want to see the Islamic Republic dismembered either.
³
But subjected to a bit of punishment? That possessed a certain appeal. Only when events on the battlefield took an unexpected turn did that hands-off attitude begin to change.

Although Iraqi forces quickly secured their assigned objectives, Tehran rejected Saddam’s offer to negotiate—on his terms—an end to hostilities. Instead, in January 1981, rejuvenated Iranian regulars employing U.S. arms acquired by the Shah and reinforced by highly motivated militias launched the first in a series of counteroffensives. As the hostage crisis that had fixated American attention finally came to an end, the Ayatollah’s forces were on the march.

Over the course of the next year, involving months of bitter fighting, Iran succeeded in ejecting the invader from its territory. With the tables now turned and his own survival at risk, a panicked Saddam declared a unilateral ceasefire. This Iran rejected. The clerics who determined Iranian policy were intent on pressing their hard-won advantage.
⁴

Contemplating the unwelcome prospect of an Iranian victory that could vault the Islamic Republic to a position of regional preeminence, the Reagan administration now committed itself to propping up Iraq as its preferred counterweight. This meant forging a marriage of convenience with the very regime that Paul Wolfowitz had identified as the chief emerging threat to U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf. Simply put, by 1982 ensuring Saddam’s survival had become an American priority.

For an administration not shy about advertising its moral superiority, assisting a government that claimed charter membership on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism entailed some fancy footwork.
⁵
Complicating matters further was the absence of a diplomatic relationship. To protest Washington’s support of Israel, Baghdad had severed relations with the United States back in 1967. There things had stood ever since.

Now change was in the wind. In February 1982, the State Department quietly “de-designated” Iraq as a sponsor of terrorism. Fence-mending U.S. envoys began visiting Baghdad. Friendly messages from Secretary of State Shultz to his Iraqi counterpart emphasized the “very important common interests” shared by the two countries.
⁶
Although the full restoration of diplomatic relations did not occur until November 1984, that qualified as mere window dressing. A visit to Baghdad the previous December by former (and future) defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, acting as Ronald Reagan’s personal representative, had sealed the deal. Rumsfeld’s ceremonial handshake with Saddam, videotaped for posterity, signaled that the United States had joined the ranks of the anti-Persian (and therefore anti-Shiite) axis. The prior U.S. policy of neutrality with regard to the Iran-Iraq War was now defunct.

During his visit to Baghdad, Rumsfeld assured Saddam that any resolution of the ongoing war “which weakens Iraq’s role or enhances [the] interests and ambitions of Iran” was not going to find favor in Washington. Along those lines, the United States was “encouraging others not to sell weapons to Iran” and would continue to do so.
⁷
Rumsfeld was alluding to Operation Staunch, a State Department initiative launched earlier in 1983 to prevent Iran from acquiring arms and particularly the spare parts needed to maintain weapons of U.S. origin.

Needless to say, Staunch exempted Saddam. True, Washington was not going to provide Iraq with U.S.-manufactured Abrams tanks or F-16 fighter jets. Yet the Reagan administration looked the other way as the world’s arms merchants—France and the Soviet Union at the forefront—lined up to sell Baghdad armored vehicles, combat aircraft, and other weaponry needed to replace its battlefield losses.
⁸
(“Looking the other way” also describes the U.S. response when Israel began secretly selling Iran large quantities of U.S. arms and spare parts to sustain the Ayatollah Khomeini’s war machine. Ostensible allies, Israel and the United States thus found themselves supporting opposite sides in a war in which
both
warring parties were stridently anti-Israel
and
anti-American.)

Its population only a third of Iran’s, Iraq had to fight outnumbered. Enjoying an edge in hardware was, therefore, crucial to Saddam’s prospects. Here, indeed, was the essence of his approach to waging war: Rely on a plentiful supply of cannon to compensate for an insufficiency of cannon fodder.