Bush's Arab Arms Sale: A Few Thoughts

In the midst of the 2008 Presidential Election it is easy for real news to slip through the cracks in the main stream media. On President Bush's recent sightseeing trip to the Middle East, he managed to offer some $20 Billion worth of American advanced weapons systems to the blood brothers of some of our worst enemies. Eventually, this might prove to be a very bad idea.

Of course, the administration touts this weapons sale as a positive step in our ongoing conflict with Iran. In the geopolitical paradigm of Cold War era strategy, it makes since: the enemy of our enemy is our friend. Unfortunately, as the Bush Administration has learned time and time again, Cold War era thinking does not work in the Middle East.

Included in the weapons systems proposed for sale are some of our gems, systems that have been proven to be effective in battle. The systems include: patriot missle batteries, smart bomb kits, and the Navy's Littoral Combat system (a naval weapons system devised around the Navy's global littoral defense strategy as the next generation of US Navy strategy).

History proves that meddling around in that region, particularly by arming "friendly" factions and nations, has not always served the United States well. Here is a brief history of American arms transfers to the Middle East.

In the 1970's, in an effort to quell the Soviet military advance and occupation of Afghanistan, the United States armed the Afghani rebel group, not quite famously known yet as The Taliban. Fortunately, this strategy had some initial benefit as American arms helped turn Afghanistan into the Russian Vietnam. The losses sustained by the USSR in Afghanistan, no doubt, hastened the eventual self-destruction of the USSR.

However, in the long term, this arms transfer has proven to be a bad strategic move for the United States. Throughout the 1990's, and until the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, the Taliban used the weapons and money obtained from the United States to reign over Afghanistan. As we know today, the Taliban has presided over one of the most anti-democratic, oppressive, and most religiously fascist governments in the history of the modern world.

In the 1980's Iran and Iraq were engaged in a vicious war. Iran was not a friend of the United States at that time. In the late 1970's, the secular government of Iran under the Shah, which had been propped up by the United States, was overthrown by the Ayatollah Khomeini. In the process of seizing control of the country, the Islamic radicals took control over the US Embassy and took 66 hostages. Although the hostage crisis was resolved (largely by the United States agreeing to sell arms to Iran) the diplomatic ties between the US and Iran were virtually severed.

During the course of the Iran/Iraq war, the Reagan Admistration decided that our dog in the race was to be Iraq. Iraq was secular; our hope was that the secular government of Iraq would prevail over the sectarian government of Iran. The President of Iraq at the time was none other than Saddam Hussein. The Reagan Administration sold arms, and other supplies, to Iraq so that Iraq would win the war. The war turned out to be a stalemate and although hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians died, there was no clear victor.

In the early 1990's, the short sighted policy of arming our "friends" in the Middle East would once again turn around and bite us in the ass. The world's attention was once again turned to the Middle East as Iraq took unprovoked and aggressive military action against Kuwait. The concern was that Saddam was attempting to build Iraq as a military hegemony over the Middle East region. The United States, under the first Bush Administration, was not about to let Saddam take control over the world's oil supply. Bush took aggressive action in the Gulf War. The Coalition forces, under the command of General Norman Schwarzkopf, drove Iraq's forces back from Kuwait in the most successful military campaign since Patton drove his 3rd Army through France and into Germany, and in the process saving the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne.

Despite the resounding military success of the Desert Storm campaign, it might never have been necessary if the US didn't help arm Saddam's army a few years earlier in the Iran/Iraq war. In 1990, Saddam had the 4th largest military in the world, acquired with a little help from Uncle Sam.

We know the story after that. In 2002, the United States invaded Afghanistan which was being defended by the very group that was propped up by American arms and support a few decades earlier.

We will have to wait for history to determine whether the current arms sale being proposed is another in a long line of short-sighted, eventual failures of foreign policy. The problem will be isolating this event from the many other foreign policy failures of the United States since the end of the Cold War.

Do we really want another 4/8 years of Bush, Clinton, Bush... foreign policy? Awareness is the key to prevention.