Global Implications: Why the World Hates America (Part 4)

See the other articles in this series:

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Operation Ajax: The 1953 Iranian Coup d'état
Support for rebellions throughout the Cold War
Shifting alliances in the Middle East
Unflinching support of Israel
The War in Iraq
American Exceptionalism and its two-faced foreign policy

Shifting Alliances in the Middle East

All students of political science inevitably find themselves in the quagmire of American foreign policy toward the Middle East. Since the 1940s and early 1950s (with FDR’s oil deal with Saudi Arabia, the establishment of Israel, and the overthrow of Iran), the United States has had a vested interest in the affairs of this region.

Unfortunately, the Middle East is a confusing place. As the birthplace of civilization and the three major monotheistic religions, the region has an incredible history and its people are rooted in ancient grievances and centuries-old traditions. The United States, as a strappingly young nation of 200 years, has been unable to fully comprehend the culture of the Middle East and has repeatedly found itself in an undesirable position as a colonialist, a meddler, and “the Great Satan.”

So how has the United States found itself in this position? The biggest contention in the Middle East is the status of Israel and the Palestinian people. I will devote an entire post on this issue tomorrow -- today, we are specifically looking at America's alliances in the Middle East and how our support has shifted throughout various regimes and revolutions in a bizarre sequence of arms deals and army training. Rather than give you a comprehensive history of American foreign policy in the region, we will focus on one relationship as an example of America's vacillating policies in the Middle East: Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

Saddam Hussein: U.S. Operative to Regional Tyrant

A few years after its 1953 intervention in Iran, the United States shifted its focus to Iraq. In 1959, the CIA began a series of operations to remove Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim from power. The newly empowered Qassim had just withdrawn Iraq from the Baghdad Pact, which obligated his country to defend the Middle East from the Soviet Union. The U.S. was obviously concerned with the sudden decision and the CIA partnered with Egyptian intelligence to overthrow the new Republic of Iraq. After a failed assassination attempt in October 1959 (in which a young Saddam Hussein was a member of the six-man team), the CIA began to support the Baath Party’s efforts to take over the country.

They succeeded in February 1963, when the Baath Party staged a coup d’état that killed Qassim and established a new regime in Iraq. In 1968, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr led a bloodless coup and was named as the new president—he named Saddam as his deputy. The United States provided weapons and intelligence support to the new government in exchange for technical information on Soviet aircraft and tanks. By 1979 the ambitious Saddam Hussein had grappled power away from President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and took over as the fifth (and last) president of Iraq.

For the next twelve years, Saddam was a loyal ally of the United States—this was notably demonstrated when he requested and received permission before invading neighboring Iran in 1980. By 1982, Iraq was in dire straits in the war and the White House was concerned about losing an important anti-Soviet ally. To bolster the Iraqi war effort, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Saddam and the United States doubled its financial aid to Iraq. This continued until the war’s anticlimactic end in 1988.

Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein

This chummy relationship took a turn for the worse in 1990. Tensions were rising between Iraq and Kuwait, its tiny neighbor to the southeast. Saddam claimed that Kuwait was stealing oil from Iraqi oil fields through a process known as slant drilling, in addition to hurting Iraq’s economy by increasing its own oil production (saturating the market and lowering global prices, which cost Iraq billions of dollars).

On July 25^th, Saddam met with the April Glaspie, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq—in a notorious statement, Glaspie told Saddam that the United States has “no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” This has widely been seen as tacit American approval of invasion. Sure enough, Saddam invaded Kuwait a week later, infuriating the global community and forcing the United States to change its policy toward Iraq.

The United States (with the 34-member Coalition of the Gulf War) responded with economic sanctions and, ultimately, one of the most dominating military assaults in the history of modern warfare. They easily drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait and Saddam quickly became one of the most notorious dictators in the world.

So what were the consequences?

After the Gulf War, United States troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia to help deter any future attacks. While the U.S. has been responsible to protect Saudi Arabia since FDR’s presidency, this was the first time its military had a permanent presence on Saudi Arabian soil. This proved disastrous as the blossoming al-Qaeda listed infidel soldiers in the holy land as one of its primary grievances against the United States

The United States’ support of Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War has been widely reported, which has had consequences with U.S. allies and enemies. From the perspective of its allies, the United States proved its willingness to work with dictators if it might help U.S. strategic goals (particularly after Saddam used chemical weapons on his own citizens, killing 5,000 people in Halabja). Unfortunately, Iraq is currently a faux government while neighboring Iran is stronger then ever (with the exception of the current election protests). The support for Iraq was not lost on the Iranian regime, who see it as one more example of the United States’ animosity toward Iran.