Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein

196 Pages·1999·0.55 MB·English

by  David Wurmser

Tyranny’s Ally

Tyranny’s Ally
America’s Failure
to Defeat Saddam Hussein
David Wurmser
The AEI Press
Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute
WA S H I N G T O N , D . C .
1999
Available in the United States from the AEI Press, c/o Publisher Re-
sources Inc., 1224 Heil Quaker Blvd., P.O. Box 7001, La Vergne, TN
37086-7001. To order, call 1-800-269-6267. Distributed outside the
United States by arrangement with Eurospan, 3 Henrietta Street, Lon-
don WC2E 8LU, England.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wurmser, David.
Tyranny’s ally : America’s failure to defeat Saddam Hussein / David
Wurmser.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8447-4073-X (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-8447-4074-8 (pbk. : alk.
paper)
1.United States—Foreign relations—Iraq. 2.Iraq—Foreign relations—
United States. 3.United States—Foreign relations—1989–1993. 4.United
States—Foreign relations—1993. 5.Arab countries—Foreign relations.
6.Hussein, Saddam, 1937– .
I. Title.
E183.8.I57W87 1999
327.730567—dc21 98-31896
CIP
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
© 1999 by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Wash-
ington, D.C. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or repro-
duced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the Ameri-
can Enterprise Institute except in cases of brief quotations embodied in news
articles, critical articles, or reviews. The views expressed in the publications of
the American Enterprise Institute are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers, or trustees of AEI.
The AEI Press
Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute
1150 17th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
Printed in the United States of America
To my wife Meyrav—a source of inspiration, intellectual
challenge, encouragement, humor, and happiness—
without whom I would have neither the energy
nor the patience to write

(cid:68)
Contents
FOREWORD Richard Perle xi
PREFACE xvii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xxi
1
INTRODUCTION 1
Strategic Retreat and Failure 2
A Symbol of the Region’s Political Malaise 6
From Desert Storm to Retreat 7
2
THE SPENT STORM—ILLUSIONS AND BETRAYAL
SINCE THE GULF WAR 9
The Revolt of 1991 10
Building, Then Betraying the INC 14
Saddam’s Long and Precarious Summer
of 1995 17
The Embrace of the Wifaq 20
vii
viii Contents
The Balkanization of Northern Iraq 25
Saddam’s Reentry into Northern Iraq 27
Challenging UNSCOM and Sanctions 29
Tailspin: The Summer of 1998 30
Another Wifaq-Led Coup Attempt? 37
Regional Implications 38
The Current Policy of Silver-Bullet Coups 39
3
NATIONS AT WAR WITH THEMSELVES AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 42
Is Tyranny a Path to Stability or to Anarchy? 43
Pan-Arabic Nationalism 46
The Revolutionary Spirit in Europe 50
European Influence on Arab Revolutionaries 51
The Failure of Pan-Arabic Nationalism and
Ba’thism 55
Tyranny and Internal Instability 57
Tyranny and External Aggression 59
Tyranny and Anti-Americanism 61
Cutting a Hard Line on Ba’thism 62
4
IRAN, SHI’ISM, AND THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION 66
Iran and Fundamentalism 67
Secular versus Religious Totalitarians 70
Effecting a Dual Rollback of Iran and Iraq 72
The Rule of the Jurisprudent 74
Shi’ism’s Western Affinity 76
5
PAST AS PROLOGUE—IRAQ AND THE HASHEMITES 80
Jordan’s Hashemite Initiative in Iraq 80
Political Decentralization 85
Jordan and the INC 88
Attacking Saddam’s Core 91
Jordan against the Vanguard of Revolution 92
6
COMMON CAUSE—JORDAN AND THE IRAQI
NATIONAL CONGRESS 94
Jordan and the PLO 95
Contents ix
Syria 99
Lebanon’s Regional Rollback of Shi’ite
Fundamentalism 107
Egypt 110
The Syrian Rapprochement with Iraq 114
7
THE STRATEGIC CENTRALITY OF IRAQ 116
Geographically Propitious 117
The Significance of Northern Iraq 119
Picking Up the Pieces in Turkey, Jordan,
and Iraq 123
Toward Defeat 125
8
DEFEATING DESPOTISM 127
Watershed Summer of 1995 129
Reversing U.S. Policy 130
The Middle East Foreign Policy Community 131
To Decentralize Power 135
Perspectives 136
The Age of Modernity 137
NOTES 141
INDEX 157
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 167
MAP OF IRAQ, SHOWING THE NORTHERN SAFE HAVEN 12