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© Copyright 2002 – 2009
Michael Edward McNeil
Impearls
Item page — this may be a chapter or subsection of a larger work. Click on link to access entire piece.
Earthdate 2004-05-18
The pervasive leftist mantra that the U.S. was Iraq's major backer during the years before Saddam's Kuwait invasion (and therefore, they say, he shouldn't have been overthrown) is wildly off the mark. It's not U.S.-built Iraqi equipment that coalition forces destroyed during the first and second Gulf Wars — it's Soviet, with a leavening of French and numerous other sources — before you get anywhere near down to a contribution as small as America's. See the chart below (which one can also find here, thanks to The Command Post) for a breakdown of military aid to Iraq during the years 1973-1990; figures are from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Notice that the U.S. provided only 1% of Iraq's weaponry during this period, with American support trailing a long list of other countries: the Soviet Union (the vast majority of Iraqi arms came from the USSR), France, China, Czechoslovakia, Poland — and then the little guys: Brazil, Egypt, Romania, Denmark, and Libya — before you arrive at the U.S.'s contribution!
Even the extent to which the U.S. did support Saddam's Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war is not indicative of any deep connection. As I recall what was going on during those years (yes, I was around back then), the general feeling was “a pox on both your houses” (Iran and Iraq), with the proviso that we should at least help Iraq to the extent of preventing Iran from overrunning the country, along with next door Kuwait and Saudi Arabia — which would have left radical Islamist Iran firmly in charge with the world's energy gonads in its hands.
Thus, some assistance, mainly intelligence, was given by the U.S. to Saddam's Iraq, but not much — and as a result Iraq did survive (barely) Iran's assault. (And yes, Saddam originally started that war, but that's not when our aid to Iraq occurred, rather it was later on in the war when Iraq was on the ropes.) As to why America felt it necessary to employ surrogates, however disreputable, in waging struggles abroad during those years — even under, as leftists liked to call him, “top-gun” president “Ronald Raygun” — see the historical topic Vietnam syndrome. Grenada was more Reagan's speed, I'm afraid (but he did have the Soviet Union to contend with, and those were the times).
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