Introduction
This paper examines the USA foreign policy especially towards Iraq after the 9/11 attack on Pentagon and World Trade Center in 2001. The attack was launched by suspected al-Qaeda network suicide bombers who hijacked the American Airlines Flight 77 and later plunged it into the infamous American Pentagon and the WTC. However, it is of great interest to examine the interconnection between the attacks on Pentagon and the American war in Iraq which was supported by the British government, then headed by Prime Minister Tony Blair. This paper also seeks to analyze the relationship that has existed between U.S and Iraq from 1980s to their fall out which culminated into Saddam Hussein’s execution. There are several questions that have been raised in concern about the complexity of the events linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks and his link with Al-Qaeda networks. A conclusion is made to summarize the whole issue on the U.S policy tactics to end the regime established by Saddam Hussein.
Relationship between the U.S and Iraq since 1980s
The relationship between the U.S and Iraq in the ‘80s was not as sour as it is now. The intense war between Iran and Iraq which took place in the period running from 1980 to 1988 was to benefit the U.S. The U.S openly took sides with Iraq and was ready to render its support until Iraq would win. Militant students had occupied the U.S embassy in Tehran; this also raised some concern in the U.S government. The long period war was also sparked by high tension between the Iranian Islamic republic and the secular Iraqi nationalists. Iraq launched an attack against Iran in September 1980 believing the political infighting within Iran would guarantee then fast victory (Battle, 2003, Para 1-3).
Iraq had gone into the Iranian territory but within some months they were driven back and placed on the defensive. The U.S realized that it was only Iraq’s victory that would be beneficial as opposed to Iran’s victory which would not serve its interest. This situation forced the U.S to relent on its neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war so it began to support Iraq. This was the beginning of a good relationship between the U.S and Iraq.
High ranking officials in both Iraq and the U.S exchanged visits as they consolidated their relationship. In fact, long before the U.S started supporting Iraq against Iran it had put Iraq in the list of the states which supported terrorism internationally. The U.S removed from her the list to strengthen the ties. But this could be suspicious because if the U.S belief that Iraq was involved in terrorism was true then Iraq should have realized that U.S just wanted to please them for some selfish objectives. The U.S started funding Iraq through loan program and the White House issued an instruction to the Export-Import Bank to finance Iraq in the war.
A formal relationship between Iraq and the U.S.A was formally restored in the year 1984; however, in the formal restoration the U.S.A was already supporting Iraq in terms of military and intelligence. That was contrary to the policies of the U.S as regards its neutrality to such matters of war.
As the war became extensive Iraq started to use chemical weapons against Iran and the U.S had intelligent information confirming Iran’s complain on it (Battle, 2003, para9). In this case the U.S was caught up in the whole issue; on one hand it supported Iraq against Iran and on the other hand it did not support the use of chemical weapons. It was entirely against its policy when it came to use of weapon during war.
In 1983, the U.S sent an envoy to Iraq and met Saddam Hussein. The details of the discussions during that visit were on issues of mutual interest based on region, common enemies- Syria and Iran, and the alternative transport route for Iraq’s oil. It is possible that the reason U.S supported Iraq in the war was because it was concerned with the low flow of oil to world market. Iran had stopped the flow of oil and the U.S intervention would ensure the American markets did not have reduced supply of oil.
In 1984, military equipment was secretly taken to Iraq to help in the war. At the same time the U.S was against the use of chemical weapons by Iraq, subsequently making it to prevent shipment of phosphorous fluoride to Iraq; phosphorous fluoride is a precursor to chemical weapon. Exporting it to Iraq when the war was still on would mean that Iraq would quickly use them to manufacture more chemical weapons to add to their existing ones. The U.S informed the government of Iraq of its intention to protest against use of chemical weapons in war against Iran and on 5th of March the same year it issued a public condemnation though it never mentioned Iraq as the target of the condemnation (Battle, 2003, para 5-8).
After the Iran-Iraq war the relationship between the U.S and Iraq took a new dimension. The Iraq’s use of chemical weapon was viewed as embarrassing in terms of public relations. In that war the U.S was mainly concerned with keeping oil to flow, an objective they used Iraq to win. After Bush’s administration, came in Bill Clinton. During his first tenure in office, Clinton faced a number of challenges from Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
Saddam Hussein’s government had tried to assassinate the Clinton predecessor, George Bush when he visited Kuwait in June 1993. The U.S responded by bombing an intelligence center situated in Baghdad. It became clear that the U.S had completely changed and no longer was a friend to Iraq (Freedman, 1999, para4).
The U.S started suspecting that Iraq under leadership of Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons. It wanted to invade Iraq so as to put an end to manufacture of dangerous weapons but there were a number of constraints which barred the likely invasion. There were already differing opinions about invading Iraq and also President Clinton had a saga with Monica Lewinsky which was a threat to him personally and his administration. Clinton chose to use diplomacy through the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. As a result there was an agreement that United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) was to inspect weapon activities in Iraq without interference from Hussein’s government. In 1998, Hussein stopped Iraq’s cooperation with UNSCOM and the inspectors left. This act and change of mind by Hussein facilitated Clinton to mobilize military forces for possible attack against Iraq.
Continuous interference with the activities of the UNSCOM inspectors by Hussein’s government forced Clinton to approve military attack against Iraq. The air strikes which lasted about seventy hours were meant to destabilize Saddam’s power to make and deliver weapon of mass destruction. This would also not give him time to hide the weapons from the UN inspectors. The U.S policy had shifted sharply towards ensuring Iraq never made such weapons of mass destruction and also to ensure Saddam’s ultimate down fall.
In 1998, Iran pursued ties with the U.S, in fact the U.S would be interested since it believed with the cooperation of Iran Saddam Hussein could be toppled and his regime brought to an end. Hussein had become so dangerous that the U.S never felt comfortable with him any more. It was determined to change its policies to focus on total destruction of Hussein’s regime.
Reasons behind the 9/11 Pentagon and WTC attack
There have been theories about what could have led to the Pentagon attack. Some of these theories have circulated through videos and books; these have challenged the official account of the attack. One of the theories claims that it is not true that the Pentagon was hit by Boeing 757 (Hoffman, 2006, para1). It sites the absence of debris of aircraft, insufficient aircraft debris for a jetliner, the absence of aircraft wreckage that would have survived a jetliner crash like wings and tails and the absence of seats, luggage and bodies of dead people in the photo showing the crash site was a proof that the crash was not by Jetliner Flight 77 (Hoffman, 2006, para7). However, some theories maintain that the plane was actually Jetliner Flight 77.
The official information on the account argues that four Arabs hijacked four jetliners and steered three of them to crash into the pentagon and the twin towers. From the list of terrorists drawn soon it became evident that Osama Bin Laden was the mastermind of the hijackings and the subsequent crash.
The official account of the attack came sooner than anticipated raising some doubt on the real cause. It is argued that the flights flew to the target points from airports far away or made it some hundreds of miles away before turning to fly direct into the targets yet there are international airports from which it only takes three minutes to arrive at World Trade Center. The hijackers instead chose to use routes that would take approximately eight times the normal standard time to reach WTC.
Due to this long time and route taken by the flights it is argued that it would be possible for the planes to be incepted in the air by the air defense operating normally. This raises suspicion about the possibility of a pre-meditated plan by some U.S officials to stage the strike in order to achieve some high end objectives.
Unused tones of aluminothermic explosive were discovered in the rabbles of WTC raising sensitive concerns about their being in the scene. It is argued that aluminothermic explosives can be chemically enhanced to create such destruction as there was in WTC and Pentagon. The argument is that the highly explosive substance might have been used to deliberately bring the twin Towers and the Pentagon down. Prior to this discovery request for a thorough examination of the site to find if there could be evidence of explosives was turned down in the pretext that there could not be explosives used. The government maintained its position that the event was due to planes having been crashed in the buildings.
Before the actual crash it is reported that several events that might link to the day took place. These events raise questions in some quarters. The Pentagon officials cancelled their flight plan on 10th of the same month, the then mayor of San Francisco was warned not to travel on 10th the same month, Odigo employees had emailed warnings about the attack two hour earlier than the first crash; this time was enough for necessary actions to be taken since it only took the hijackers approximately forty minutes to reach the target site and the attorney general never flew during the summer of the year 2001. These events have been used to dispute an act of foreign planned terrorism.
The many arguments about the attack of 9/11 in 2001 leave a lot to be questioned. It seems to be a very complicated issue that seeks to make the U.S government culpable and answerable. Some individuals believe the government has been hiding the truth about the incident in which many civilian citizens lost their lives.
Possible link between the 2001 9/11attack and the U.S war in Iraq
It is reported that during a prime time conference the then president Bush mentioned about the September ninth attack and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to the effect of linking the attack to the knowledge and participation of Hussein. He talked about the attack severally but more than that about Hussein (Freedman, 1999, para1). It clearly appeared that President Bush had nursed an interest of invading Iraq and he wanted a way of getting public approval. Seemingly he wanted to create an impression that Hussein played a role in the attacks (Mearsheimer and Walt, 2006, p3-12).
The government succeeded in creating the impression that Hussein was actually culpable in the attacks. Reportedly sources close to the U.S intelligence service revealed that Hussein had not even remote link to the attack. Bin Laden’s encouragement for more attacks on U.S created a perception of his possible involvement in the attacks; however, terror experts reported that sharing a common enemy with Osama was not enough reason to make Hussein and Osama to be allies against the United States. Each hated the U.S in his own capacity and on different issue. In fact reports say Osama never liked Saddam Hussein’s repressive rule in Iraq. But this never exonerated Hussein from links to terrorism (Freedman, 1999, para3).
It clearly emerges that the Bush’s administration had created a perception in the public mind that Saddam Hussein was culpable in the 9/11 attack which left thousands of people dead. The administration later made a solid allegation that Saddam was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. It finally found perceived good grounds to invade Iraq.
The U.S. Policy toward Iraq from 9/11/2001 to the U.S.-Iraq War
Immediately after the infamous 9/11 attack on pentagon in 2001, the American security agency started coming up with plan to attack Iraq (Roberts, 2002, para1). The link between Iraq and the attack lacked any proper evidence that would warrant U.S invasion of Iraq. The then defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was noted to have instructed his top aids with the plans of striking against Iraq immediately the attack was done (Roberts, 2002, para1). The immediacy with which plans to invade Iraq was ordered raises suspicion on the motives of U.S and its government.
After the 9/11 attack on U.S grounds, Bush linked Saddam Hussein to it, however, he later changed and accused Iraq of harboring weapons of mass destruction. George Bush said;
The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001…The terrible morning, 19 evil men, the shock troops of a hateful ideology….They imagined, in the words of terrorist, that September the 11th would be the beginning of the end of America…They have failed…The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of Al-Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding. (May 1, 2003 – George W. Bush, MBA)
The American policy in the Middle East changed especially concerning Iraq. It wanted inspectors to access Iraq and inspect the possibility of finding weapons of mass destruction, however the U.S was not genuine with this demand because whether the weapons would be found or not it would still strike Iraq. Bush’s administration also argued that it was concerned with the plight of innocent Iraqis, so the policy change was also anchored on liberating them from Saddam’s dictatorship (Anon. 2010, para1-9).
The perceived growth of movements associated with radical Islamists placed Iraq strategically at the mercy of the American policy makers. The presence of these radical movements drove the U.S to re-examine its policy toward Iraq given that the U.S already had a negative perception of the Muslim world. Generally, the U.S policy towards the Middle East has been shifting depending with its interests. Taking for instance, the case for Iran-Iraq war, the U.S had broken its neutrality policy and tilted it to favor Iraq against Iran, later the policy was altered to contain Iraq on some issues the U.S perceived as contentious (Zunes, 2001, para3-10).
A member of the British Joint Intelligence Committee had testified in the hearing about why Britain joined the U.S in the war that Bush administration started discussing about change of regime in Iraq several months before the 9/11 attack. This discussion also came two years before war against terror was officially announced in public (Byrne, 2009, para1). The Bush administration was concerned about the failed sanctions against Iraq including lifting the sanctions if Saddam Hussein allowed the UN inspectors to go back and continue with weapon inspections and imposed “no fly” zones in some regions.
The U.S government transferred the responsibility of handling Iraq policy to the Pentagon from the State Department. This happened immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Then, Pentagon was headed by a staunch supporter of Iraq war. Probably the transfer of the policy responsibility was to ensure proper execution of every plan against Iran. It is reported that Condoleezza Rice, then U.S National Security Advisor, suggested that Saddam Hussein might have been connected to the attacks. The implication of Hussein in the attacks might have been a common agreement amongst the powerful government officials. It was very clear that the Bush administration was capitalizing on two things to invade Iraq. First, it made the public to perceive Hussein as a sponsor of the attacks, and then claimed that he manufactured weapons of mass destruction (Byrne, 2009, para14).
The U.S had changed its policy toward Iraq in a way to suggest to the world as a whole and American people in specific that Saddam Hussein was dangerous to all nations. It created a picture that the U.S invasion of Iraq would bring to end terrorism and make the world a safe place. The argument of Bush administration was that the policy toward Iraq was beneficial to all nations of the world especially those that neighbored Iraq.
The U.S embarked into series of discussions with the British government then under leadership of Tony Blair. The British, though without provable fact, decided to form an alliance with the U.S to launch an attack that would bring regime change in Iraq (Drury, 2009, para2-5). The British officials are still finding out the truth about it involvement in the war.
Conclusion
The U.S invasion of Iraq had long been planned even before George W. Bush took power. When he got to presidency he was quick to initiate discussions about the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The events leading to 2001 9/11 attack and the subsequent planning of Iraq’s invasion left a lot to be desired as regards the interconnect between the two major events.
It is a possibility that the 9/11 attack was deliberately masterminded to create an opportunity to link Saddam Hussein with global terrorism. This was to pave way for sharp U.S policy change towards Iraq. The U.S brought the British troops on board and also wanted to get the support of the UN; the UN was not supportive of the war in Iraq, however, America and its ally went to war in defiance of UN’s advice using insecurity to their citizens as an excuse. U.S was quoted to have said that UN cannot prevent it from defending itself and the life of its people.
It still remains a mystery the connection between the attack on U.S pentagon and the World Trade Center and Iraq and then the claim that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction. After Saddam had been toppled and finally executed there has not been any evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (Freedman, 1999, para6-11).
The U.S policy in the Middle East has never been stable. It keeps on changing according to situation demand or as their interest in the Middle East dictates. For instance, it had placed the name of Iraq in the list of nations funding and supporting international terrorism. It later removed the name when it realized that it total support to Iraq against Iran would be beneficial. Later after fallout with Iraq, the U.S pursued a relationship with Iran in which the U.S was considering means of bringing an end to Saddam’s regime in Iraq.
The U.S policy on Iraq was largely selfish and meant to destroy rather than build Iraq. The policy itself which sought to link Iraq to the U.S 9/11 attack has failed to convince the world and both American and British citizens on its legality and relevance. It is actually emerging that there was not need to go to war with Iraq when the real cause was not yet established. The whole issues can be narrowed down to mean that the 9/11 attacks of 2001 were used to allow policy change that would ensure Americans and the whole world support the “War on Terror” (Byman, 2008, para4).
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