The Unraveling of Iraq and the Hubris of Empire

The stunning advances of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), with the capture of Mosul and Tikrit the birthplace of Saddam in the last week has put Iraq on the verge of state collapse. As we write, ISIS now controls one third of Iraq, a terrifying achievement for a terrorist group even more extremist than Al-Qaeda which has summarily rejected ISIS.

What led Iraq to this point? Let us hitch ourselves to our seats as we take an excursion in history and geopolitics. It is February 2 1943. Over the smoldering ruins of a shattered city, the bloodiest battle of human history has ended. The city is Stalingrad. 1.5 million German and Axis forces are dead or wounded. The Russians lose 1.2 million dead or wounded.

The German 6’th Army under field marshal Friedrich Von Paulus is destroyed. He and thousands of top ranking German officers surrender to the Russians. The geopolitical implications are clear. Germany is going to lose the war. The fate of Europe is being decided. The major German forces in western Europe that had being moved east to take Stalingrad are destroyed.

The US and its western allies understand the implications. A second front needs to open in Europe. From 1941 to 1944, there was only one front in Europe, the Eastern front. It is clear that the Russian counter offensive will result in the occupation of all of Europe by the Soviet armies .

Stalin the master of the Kremlin will be master of all of Europe and by extension of all of Europe’s colonies. The US and its western allies open a second front only in June 1944. By August of 1944, Russian armies had destroyed Germany’s most powerful army group center. In April 1945 the Russians take Vienna. They will leave only in 1955. By May 1945, Russian armies take Berlin. The Russians control Eastern Europe, the Americans Western Europe. Western Europe keeps her colonies. The stage is now set.

In 1945, the Americans gather their friends at the Breton Woods conference to establish a new financial architecture for the world. The Russians abstain. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) and the IMF are the result.

For the next 45 years, Soviet Russia and the US will battle for global supremacy. The Americans having established the post-war financial architecture have the advantage.

In 1990, Soviet Russia collapses. For the first time, the US now has unrivaled power. The irony of history, Russia destroys Nazi power in Europe, America reaps the whirlwind. She is the sole superpower. She has unrivaled economic and military power. The reserve currency of the world is the US dollar backed not by gold but by nothing.

The American empire is born. It has taken more than two hundred years from the extermination of tribes upon tribes of native Indians, and the enslavement of black people to the rise of the empire.

The first emperor is George Bush Snr. He plays the same role in history as Augustus Caesar in the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman empire.

Saddam Hussein of Iraq does not read the tea leaves in the cup properly. He invades Kuwait. It causes outrage. The US leads a coalition that evicts Saddam from Kuwait in 1991.

Debilitating sanctions are imposed on Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children die due to lack of medications. One secretary of state of the US empire, Madeleine Albright says, the death of 500 thousand Iraqi children is worth it. The cold logic of hubris and inhumanity.

The US political elite sets itself the task to control the Middle East. The empire needs oil to run the engine of empire. She wants to control the oil. The Middle East has lots of it including Iraq.

A son of the first US emperor George Bush Jnr., a Yale dimwit, comes to power. The Neocon elite led by Donald Rumsfield, Dick Cheney, Robert Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz with their two ‘House Negroes’ Collin Powell and Condelezza Rice have found their Caligula.

A monstrous lie is fabricated, Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. Without authorization from the UN Security Council and against the background of world outrage, the US invades Iraq in March 2003 defying every international law. She is warned by leading experts that the invasion of Iraq will create the centrifugal forces that will cause the country to implode and split.

Iraq is made up of three former provinces of the Ottoman empire. The US elite contemptuously dismisses the predictions. I know their type. I have studied with their type and the scions of their type at an Ivy league school. They are ignorant and full of stupid arrogance fueled by delusions of a superiority of ‘whiteness’, otherwise correctly known as ‘paleness’.

Saddam escapes Baghdad and goes into hiding. He is captured on December 13, 2003. One of the strangest meetings in all of geopolitical history takes place. It is a meeting between a Saddam in custody and Donald Rumsfeld, his old buddy, now US defense secretary. We present parts of the conversation.

Rumsfield: I came to you today to discuss with you the situation in Iraq. Some of your friends have insisted that we talk to you. They told us to hear you out.

Saddam: What do you want? You have occupied Iraq, a sovereign noble country. You overthrew a sovereign government without any legal justifications. You have committed crimes that will go down in history as a bloody stain against your civilization. What more do you want from me?

Rumsfield (trying to control his anger): Let us not talk about the past. I came to present you clear and concrete proposals and I want from you concrete and clear answers.

Saddam (Contemptuously): I suppose you came to apologize and return sovereignty to Iraqis?

Rumsfield: We do not apologize. You are a danger to your neighbors . You tried to acquire weapons of mass destruction. So it was natural for us to extend our hand to the Iraqi people and free them from the dangers that you have exposed them to over the past 30 years.

Saddam: I know that you do not know history. I also know that your president is as ignorant as you if not more ignorant. It seems that you have been lying for so long that you now believe in your own lies. If you mean that we are a danger to the Zionist formation that you inserted into the Middle East, then yes I and every Arab will be a threat to it. ….. But if you have in mind Kuwait, have you withdrawn your troops from Kuwait yet???.

Rumsfield: I want to make you a proposal, you will be released, and can choose a place for yourself in exile in any country, provided that you appear on TV and tell your people that they cease resistance to us.

Saddam: You have the consent of your president on this proposal?

Rumsfield: Yes, this proposal was agreed at a meeting which the president, vice president, secretary of state, intelligence chief attended. And I have been authorized to inform you about this offer.

Saddam: This is not a serious proposal.

Rumsfield: You will be given generous financial assistance and protection for you and your family in the country of your choice.

Saddam: Do you want to hear my conditions?

Rumsfield: I would like to.

Saddam (With contempt and air of superiority): First I want you to set a timetable for withdrawal of your troops from Iraq and that your government has committed itself to the whole world, and that you begin to conclude your troops immediately. Secondly, I ask you to immediately release all Iraqi and Arab prisoners in the prisions that you have created. Release tens of thousands of honorable citizens of Iraq. Third, I ask you to promise to provide full compensation for material losses faced by the Iraqi people as a result of your aggression against our country, starting with Mother of all Battles (so-called war in 1991, Iraq) in 1991 and until today. And I accept help from Arab and International Community on the evaluation of these losses. Fourth, I ask you to return the money that you and your men who robbed the treasury of Iraq and its oil, in particular, criminals [L. Paul] Bremer and his gang of traitors and renegades. Fifth, the return of artifacts that you stole and gave your mafia. These treasures, which are beyond all monetary values ​​in the world, because they are Iraq’s history and civilization. It’s true that you do not have any civilization and history, and that history of your country is a few hundred years, but all this should not serve as an excuse to steal valuables and wealth of Iraq; And Sixth, bring to life all the martyrs whose lives you have extinguished, return honor to the noble women of Iraq.

Rumsfield: Is that a joke?

Saddam: No! It is a bitter reality. . . you know, Mr. Rumsfeld. You have committed the greatest crime in history against a peaceful Arab country.

Rumsfield: You have lost power Saddam!

Saddam: I have nothing that is left except honor and glory which can not be bought and sold.

Rumsfeld: History will condemn you and hold you responsible for the blood that has been shed in Iraq.

Saddam: History will rather judge you for your crimes. I warned you before, that you are committing suicide at the walls of Baghdad. And here you will pay this price. I want you to go to London and read the reports of Foreign Affairs of the United Kingdom, and learn something about the fight of the Iraqi people against the British invaders. You are now repeating their mistakes in dealing with us. The Iraqi people are a stubborn people who are not afraid of death. Resistance is stronger than you imagine. And I promise you that you will have big problems.

Not too long after that, Saddam was tried and hanged. The empire seemed to have won then. They celebrated their Pax Americana.

But the iron laws of history following their cold logic work, even if they turn slowly. Today, the Kurds have taken Kirkuk and claimed it as part of their Kurdistan autonomous region. Kurdistan is defacto independent. ISIS controls the Sunni Triangle which we will call Sunnistan.

Maliki’s government in Baghdad controls the Shite center and south which we will call Shiastan. The American empire and its petro-monarchy friends in the Middle East seeing to create managed chaos in Syria to break Iranian power armed Islamist radicals with ironic names like Free Syria Army and Moderate Islamists.

ISIS was a baby of that movement. Now the baby has come home to roost.

Let us reflect on the one long arc on the grand canvas of world history and geopolitics, from the bloodstained battlefield of Stalingrad to the rise of the American empire and the appearance of ISIS and the unraveling of Iraq, every empire in history is subject to the forces of history.

Everything that goes up must come down. So it is with empire.