Column: Our Life and Times
March 1999

U.S. war on Iraq, death of King Hussein

The permanent U.S. war on Iraq and the response to the death of Jordan's King Hussein both demonstrate that we live in an era of U.S. imperial arrogance, nowhere more than in the Middle East. "Not since the Persian Gulf War in 1991—and before that, Vietnam—have American forces engaged in such routine combat in such a sustained way over such a prolonged period," wrote the NEW YORK TIMES on Feb. 21.

As against March 1998 when massive opposition at home and abroad forced the U.S. to call off planned air strikes on Iraq, the war of winter 1998-99 is not even being debated, let alone seriously opposed. Liberal and Black politicians have given Clinton a pass on Iraq because of the far Right's impeachment coup attempt.

Establishment newspapers have relegated the attacks on Iraq to the inside pages, even after the U.S. admitted that a missile had hit a civilian neighborhood near Basra. Antiwar groups and the Left have verbally opposed the bombing, but since December have not tried to organize substantial protests.

Virtually unreported by the corporate media is the fact that eight years of U.S.-UN economic sanctions continue to strangle the Iraqi people at a cost of up to 500,000 lives to date. The U.S., which stood by as the Iraqi peoples' uprising of 1991 was crushed, now claims that it will aid the opposition to the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein. As we go to press, his forces appear to have assassinated another prominent Shiite cleric, also crushing the protests that ensued.

The media circus over the death of Jordan's King Hussein was in sharp contrast to the silence over Iraq. Every major and minor world ruler paid their respects at the funeral, while even a left-liberal journal like The NATION editorialized that "he was the greatest Arab leader of our age" (March 1, 1999).

It is true that Hussein was willing to make peace with Israel and that his rule was not as brutal as that of the present governments of neighboring Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or Syria. But will he truly be remembered as greater than Egypt's Nasser who helped to liberate his country from British domination? Or than Iraq's Qasim, who overthrew Hussein's British-installed cousin in 1958, distributed land to the peasantry and reached out to both the Shiites and the Kurds, only to be overthrown in a CIA-backed coup by Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party?

The truth be told, Jordan's King Hussein, for many years also on the CIA payroll, ruled over an impoverished nation whose unemployment rate stands today at 27%. So little has been done to promote women's rights that even Hussein's widow was not allowed to attend the all-male funeral.

Although the monarchy and the army are based among the Bedouins, fully 60% of the population is Palestinian. They have not forgotten Black September in 1970 when the royal army killed thousands of Palestinians. Economic and political problems have deepened in the 1990s due to the embargo on Iraq, Jordan's largest trading partner, and to the massive expulsion of Jordanian Palestinians from the Gulf States in 1991.

Due to intransigence by Israel's Netanyahu, no tangible benefits have accrued from the 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Like the oil sheikdoms of the Gulf or Saudi Arabia, but without even the oil, it would seem that the new King Abdullah has a far more precarious hold on power than Jordan's boosters are willing to acknowledge.