Saddam Hussein's Iraq had attaked Iran in 1980, thinking it would be a quick and decisive war. Instead, it dragged on for years in what was little more than a bloody stalemate that took many lives on both sides. The Reagan-Bush administration was officially neutral in the war but was actively supporting Iraq, including allowing materials to be sent from the United States to facilitate Saddam's chemical and biological weapons program. In 1987, the US actually became a belligerent on Iraq's side for a brief period of time.
As LaFeber summarizes it:
In early 1987, [the Reagan-Bush] administration concluded that Iran threatened the oil exports of Kuwait (which was pro-Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war). The Kuwaiti exporters depended on free movement of their tankers through the Persian Gulf. The president put Kuwaiti tankers under the American flag and used a U.S. fleet to protect them against attacks by Iranian gunboats. Behind that decision lay Reagan's and Shultz's determination to reassert their power in the region as well as to try to intimidate [Ayatollah] Khomeini [leader of the Iranian Revolution and the top person in the Shi'a theocratic government at that time]. Reagan had been told that the nine U.S. warships in the area were sufficient for the job. Within two months, however, he had to send forty-one combat vessels to the region and spend $10 million to $20 million each day on the operation. Even then, the Iranians disabled a number of U.S. and non-U.S. flagships. Americans and Iranians were virtually at war with each other. In 1987, an Iraqi missile killed 37 sailors on a U.S. ship. In mid-1988, a U.S. naval commander mistook an Iranian airliner for an attack jet and shot it down, killing 290 innocent civilians. The passageway was kept open, and the U.S. Navy, with the help of a few allies, continued to carry off a difficult and dangerous task. Critics believed that, given Iranian policy and naval strength, the passage would have remained open without such a U.S. commitment. (my emphasis)One of the key players in the Cheney-Bush administration's Middle East policy has been Elliot Abrams, who was also around in the Reagan years. LaFeber writes of his notorious role in the Iran-Contra scandal, for which Abrams was convicted of a felony but was pardoned by Old Man Bush when he was President:
The State Department's point man on Central America, Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, had also lied to Congress when he told it, in November 1986, that no third-party funds were going to the [Nicaraguan] Contras [a rightwing anti-government terrorist group supported by the Reagan-Bush administration], even though he personally had begged for some of those funds from the sultan of Brunei. Abrams became an outcast on Capitol Hill (Minnesota Republican senator David Durenberger said that he would trust Abrams no further "than I can throw Oliver North"), but Reagan and Shultz kept him in the State Department. Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton from Indiana, chairman of the House investigation committee, summarized the affair by declaring that the "policy was driven by a series of lies - ... lies to our friends and allies, lies to the Congress, and lies to the American people." Hamilton concluded that "the policy achieved none of the goals it sought. The Ayatollah got his arms, more Americans are held hostage today [and] subversion of U.S. interests throughout the region by Iran continues." Reagan's confusion throughout the three-year affair was exemplified when reporters asked him if the late William Casey had engaged in secret CIA activities without the president's knowledge. Reagan replied, "Not that I know of." (my emphasis)That Lee Hamilton has more recently been known as the second half of the name of the Baker-Hamilton Commission.
Good quote from Hamilton: Reagan's policies on Nicaragua and Iran were "driven by a series of lies - ... lies to our friends and allies, lies to the Congress, and lies to the American people." That pretty much describes the entire Cheney-Bush administration, doesn't it?
Tags: elliot abrams, iran, iran-contra, iran-iraq war, lee hamilton, ronald reagan
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