JEDDAH: What shall we call the 2003 US war in Iraq? The Americans had no problem at all in describing it as a liberation. From the Arab perspective, however, it was something completely different.
If you flip through editions of Arab News published in the lead-up to the start of the bombing of Baghdad on the night of March 20, 2003, what strikes you is that many Arabs were opposed to the US war in Iraq because they, correctly, foresaw that the result would be to hand the country to Iran on a platter.
US President George W. Bush was always prejudiced against Saddam Hussein. Bush’s cabinet colleagues and advisers, especially Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and other neocons in the administration, made no attempt to hide their own pathological dislike of the Iraqi leader.
There were several theories for why Bush despised Saddam so. Some reports suggested the hatred stemmed from Saddam plotting to kill his father, former President George H. W. Bush, during a visit to Kuwait in 1993. Whatever the reasons, Bush Jr.’s advisers took full advantage of the president’s strong dislike and fed it with a variety of stories.
The horrific attacks on US soil by Al-Qaeda on Sept. 11, 2001, gave Bush and his advisers a reason to take out Saddam. He was portrayed as a supporter of Al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, and was therefore tarred with the same brush of Muslim terrorism.
Nobody in the Middle East was taken in by this story, however, because it was well known there that Saddam hated Al-Qaeda more than anything else. As a Baathist, he viewed Islamist terrorists as a great threat to his rule, much more so even than the danger posed by his archenemy, Iran.
How we wrote it
The “High Noon for Cowboy Era” headline, with Bush in a cowboy hat, remains one of the newspaper’s most iconic front pages.
But the post-9/11 atmosphere was such that it was easy to create any narrative as justification for the elimination of any perceived enemy. That is exactly what happened with Saddam. A flimsy case was put together that alleged he was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, based on flawed intelligence.
Colin Powell, Bush’s secretary of state, gave an elaborate speech to the UN, complete with maps and pictures of where the WMDs allegedly were hidden. The wider world was nonetheless unconvinced, and the UN, which had sent its own experts to Iraq on a fruitless search for such weapons, refused to approve Washington’s war.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal raised serious concerns on “Frontline,” an investigative documentary series on the US TV network PBS.
“What’s going to happen to them (Iraqi soldiers and officials), especially since the army was disbanded and the government fired? And who’s going to rule Iraq if you have that?” he asked.
“Saddam Hussein had perhaps 2 million people controlling Iraq. The US and its allies have close to 150,000. How do you make that work?”
Nonetheless, Washington developed and choreographed its plan to attack Iraq. Arab News published many reports at the time about how Saudi authorities advised the US, its closest Western ally, to call for sanctions instead.
Key Dates
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1
US Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses the UN Security Council and offers a rationale for war on Iraq: the country’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction.
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2
American aircraft launch a blistering attack on Baghdad. Dubbed “shock and awe,” it knocks out Iraqi anti-missile batteries, aircraft and power installations. The presidential palace is attacked.
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3
US President George W. Bush flies to aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in a Lockheed S-3 Viking aircraft and gives a speech in which he announces the end of major combat operations in Iraq.
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4
Saddam Hussein captured after 9 months in hiding.
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5
Saddam executed after sham trial by the interim Iraqi government. Despite prolonged searches by the US, no WMDs are found in Iraq.
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6
After nearly 9 years of a guerrilla war, the last US soldiers leave Iraq. The estimated cost of the conflict exceeds $800 billion, with 4,500 American and more than 100,000 Iraqi lives lost.
Even after Saddam had invaded Kuwait in the early 1990s, and his army was pulverized by the US and Saudi-led liberation forces, Riyadh had gone to great lengths to convince Washington it would be a bad move to remove Saddam from power. Saudi officials knew his demise would lead to chaos in the region and provide Iran with a golden opportunity to run amok.
Sure enough, as things panned out a little over a decade later, the removal of Saddam did indeed lead to horrific atrocities, both in Iraq and the wider region. Al-Qaeda, which had been given a severe drubbing in Afghanistan, bounced back and found an ideal and very fertile breeding ground in post-Saddam Iraq.
Much later, Daesh appeared on the scene. Sensing an opening, Iran stepped in and unleashed a sectarian war. Thousands died. Tehran and its many murderous militias used improvised explosive devices to devastating effect.
As a senior member of staff at Arab News, I was part of the team that would select stories and photos for the front page. Some from that time remain etched in our memories. The front page on March 19, 2003, for example, pictured Bush in a cowboy hat under the headline: “High noon for cowboy era.”
That same front page also reported on King Fahd’s address to the Saudi people on March 18 in which he said: “The Kingdom will under no circumstances take part in the war against Iraq, and its armed forces will not enter an inch of Iraqi territory.”
Baghdad was bombed for the first time the next night, after a 48-hour ultimatum issued by Bush to Saddam expired. There was extensive reporting by Arab News from Kuwait, Jordan, Washington and, of course, Baghdad. Our correspondents on the ground filed their reports to the newsroom in Jeddah. The March 21, 2003, edition carried the headline: “Baghdad set ablaze; palaces, Saddam’s family home targeted in aerial bombardment.”
On the nights that followed, the US unleashed at least 3,000 satellite-guided bombs and cruise missiles upon Iraq. There was not an Iraqi weapon of mass destruction in sight. In the “Letters to the Editor” page of Arab News, readers referred to these elusive WMDs as “weapons of mass deception.”
There was intense and severe criticism in Saudi Arabia of the war, especially because the UN had refused to approve it. In an article in the March 21, 2003, edition, Adnan Jaber, a Jordanian journalist in Saudi Arabia, said the conflict “would increase terrorism rather than reduce it, since political instability would provide a breeding ground for radicalism.”
Iraqis watch the televised execution by hanging of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, the “Butcher of Baghdad” captured by US forces in Operation Red Dawn. AFP
His words were profoundly prescient. The very political instability he predicted led many members of Saddam’s army, which the Americans had foolishly disbanded, to join Daesh and Al-Qaeda so that they could strike a blow against the invaders who had ravaged their homeland for no purpose.
There were, as in all wars, moments of dark comic relief. We would gather around TV screens in the newsroom, for example, to listen to Saddam’s information minister, Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf, making ridiculous claims as he addressed the media every day.
According to him, Saddam’s army was on the verge of victory; the reality was exactly the opposite. The much-touted American campaign of “shock and awe” had resulted in the melting away of the Iraqi military, who offered no resistance. It was later revealed that Iraqi soldiers simply gave up their uniforms and chose guerrilla warfare by joining Daesh or Al-Qaeda.
The region continues to suffer the consequences of that war: an increase in terrorism; political instability, and the creation of breeding ground for radicalism. In virtually all ways, the consequences were much worse than the war itself.
Arab News was well placed to report on the war and its after-effects, and is proud to continue the same tradition of dedicated and responsible journalism to this day.
- Siraj Wahab is managing editor of Arab News. During the invasion of Iraq, he was a senior member of staff, having joined the newspaper in January 1998.
