Donald Rumsfeld and Our Curious Fickle Ways -- U.S. Diplomacy in the Middle East

A recent Lee Child/Jack Reacher novel I was reading -- I believe it was Gone Tomorrow -- made reference to a photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein during the Reagan ear. The reference prompted me to do a Google search and sure enough, there it was in .6 seconds. 

The photo shows Donald Rumsfeld as special envoy on behalf of President Reagan, carrying an olive branch (figuratively) to indicate our alliance with the Iraqi commander-in-chief. One copy of this photo is located on a page in a National Security Archive along with a host of details surrounding this moment in history. The meeting took place December 20, 1983. The National Security Archive document was written in February 2003.

This meeting between Rumsfeld and Hussein took place around the mid-point of the Iran-Iraq War which had begun in 1980 and lasted till 1988.

It seems strange to me that from the 1950s till Khomeini overthrew the Shah of Iran the U.S. was a strong ally with Iran. When I was in Cuernavaca in 1981 I walked past the mansion of the deposed Shah-in-exile, which stood next door to former President Richard Nixon, also a deposed leader, on elite street.

Strangely enough, the U.S. took the side of Hussein even though we knew he was using chemical weapons in this eight year war, weapons that were outlawed by the Geneva protocols. Iraq was also using chemical weapons on the Kurds, a minority group within their own country.

So it is that we went from friends with Iran to friends with Hussein, only to go to war ourselves with Hussein during Desert Storm in January 1991. In the first instance, the U.S. powers that be determined that a Iran victory would not be in our best interests. We chose to help Iraq with intelligence and arms support, despite Iraq's appalling human rights record. When Iran appealed to the U.N. about Iraq's chemical weapons usage, the U.S. attempted through back room pressure to thwart any U.N. action. 

Still later, post-9/11 we decided it was in our best interest to eliminate Saddam Hussein altogether. I remember going to the county fair and they had one of those rifle range games where you got to shoot this giant image of Hussein. The drums of war were sounding and the government efforts to win support for this effort had filtered down to the grassroots of our nation.

The title of this NSA report is "Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq: 1980-1984."

The conclusion the report's unnamed author draws begins as follows:

The current Bush administration discusses Iraq in starkly moralistic terms to further its goal of persuading a skeptical world that a preemptive and premeditated attack on Iraq could and should be supported as a "just war." The documents included in this briefing book reflect the realpolitik that determined this country's policies during the years when Iraq was actually employing chemical weapons. Actual rather than rhetorical opposition to such use was evidently not perceived to serve U.S. interests; instead, the Reagan administration did not deviate from its determination that Iraq was to serve as the instrument to prevent an Iranian victory. Chemical warfare was viewed as a potentially embarrassing public relations problem that complicated efforts to provide assistance. The Iraqi government's repressive internal policies, though well known to the U.S. government at the time, did not figure at all in the presidential directives that established U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing.* * 

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The conclusion I myself have surmised from reading this brief account is that it must make leaders somewhat uneasy being an ally of the United States. We were allies of Iran for decades for political reasons, but the U.S. was applying pressure on the Shah to speed up its Westernization, modernization and secularization. Ever since the Shah's exile, we've now stood in opposition to Iran, which turned from a pro-Western authoritarian monarchy into an anti-Western theocracy.* 

One last corollary: Is it possible that some of our troubles here at home have to do with a values conflict in which conservative, family-values people are resistant to being modernized and secularized? This, more than anything, is what led to the Shah's downfall. 

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As for Donald Rumsfeld, my article above was written Tuesday June 29, the day before his passing was announced on the 30th. This is not, therefore, a eulogy. Rather, it is a coincidence.

Trivia: In 2002 Donald Rumsfeld was named Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine, an inauspicious list that includes Mel Gibson, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, JFK Jr., Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Pierce Brosnan, Bradley Cooper, Richard Gere and many other familiar names and faces. Except, really? A Secretary of Defense for sexiest man alive? 

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* Wikipedia

* * National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82