Was Iraq a Sovereign Nation?

[PhiPsiRuss]

I just read this off a Phi Psi bbs. It was posted by a doctoral candidate in international affairs.

This is factually in error. Iraq was not a sovereign country.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991 and provoked the world community into acting, the U.S. lead U.N. coalition beat back Iraqi forces a ceasefire was imposed on Iraq and in return for allied restraint (U.N. forces did not march to Baghdad), Iraq agreed to meet certain terms in order to return to official standing in the international community. In effect, Iraq had conditional sovereignty, conditional on meeting the terms of the ceasefire agreement, which included weapons inspections and complete declaration of all weapons.

Iraq did not comply with the terms of the ceasefire agreement and a de facto state of war was again in effect. One of the most powerful myths of modern times is that the Gulf War ended in 1991. Iraq continued to use military forces to thwart allied forces and repress minority populations in Iraq, so the U.S. and Great Britain imposed no-fly zones over 2/3 of the country to prevent Iraq from doing that. A country which only controls 1/3 of its airspace is not a sovereign country. This situation existed for much of the 1990's and lead up to the current war in Iraq. The current Iraq war was ten years in the making and was by no means pre-emptive.

So, let's be clear, George Bush did not invade a sovereign country, he invaded a country already at war with the international community and the U.S.

Saddam had personally authorized a assassination attempt against President G.H.W. Bush. When a foreign leader decides as an act of state to assassinate a sitting or former U.S. president, that is an act of war. If George W. Bush had only that as a reason for invading Iraq, it would have been enough.

George Bush did not ignore the will of the U.S. Congress nor did he create anything new in promoting regime change in Iraq. The policy of regime change was the law of the land, enacted by the U.S. Congress during the Clinton Administration in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Bush lawfully followed through to a logical conclusion the efforts started under Clinton. The U.S. Congress later voted to fully support the invasion and occupation of Iraq under President Bush.

George Bush did not ignore the will of the United Nations. The U.N. resolutions passed after the Kuwait invasion were still in effect as Iraq had violated the ceasefire agreement, a state of hostility still existed between Iraq and the Coalition. It was up the U.N. to enforce existing resolutions, something that countries with financial interests in maintaining Saddam in power (like France and Russia) did not want to do. Bush's effort to secure additional Security Council resolutions had more to do with securing allied cooperation in the rebuilding of Iraq than they had to do with establishing legitimacy for continued action. If anything, a crisis of legitimacy was created because the U.N. refused to follow through with existing resolutions on Iraq.

All of the statements in the original text cited below are false, with the exception of the military occupation, which is of course true, a civilian occupation is a much more difficult thing to pull off.

I didn't address opinion (either of U.S. citizens or of the world community) because opinion has no legal standing. The will of U.S. citizens is expressed by their elected officials, as we are a republic, not a direct democracy. The Congress of the U.S. fully supported the war in Iraq. As for world community,there is no such thing. The U.N. is a private treaty organization that represents the will of dues paying members only and not all countries in the world (kind of like a large fraternity), and even here, we are talking about a subset of U.N. members, the Security Council representing 15 members, who in this case, imposed their will in explicit terms upon Iraq in the 1991 ceasefire agreement. The will of the U.N. was clear from the start, it was only the details and implementation of the will of the U.N. that was being debated.

A myth is being created in this election year that the Iraq war was not legitimate, it is a lie, it is intentionally deceptive, and it does a disservice to our shared history, to say nothing of the men and women who have given their lives in the war. We must not allow electioneering to blur the facts of history. One final fact of history, Iraq only regained full sovereignty this week, on paper at least, whether they can keep it is another story.