Bush wanted to send an army to overthrow Saddam and an army to rebuild Iraq

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[size=52]Bush wanted to send an army to overthrow Saddam and an army to rebuild Iraq[/size]

[size=45]Kanaan Makiya tells Al-Sharq Al-Awsat the story of his meetings with the American leadership and preparations to overthrow Saddam's regime
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Kanaan Makiya (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat)
Washington: Ali Barada
repeats Kanaan Makiya, the Iraqi architect - even by the standards of urbanization according to Ibn Khaldun - and the liberal leftist professor and intellectual who was "expelled" by tyranny Al-Sadami, to the West decades ago, saw Ahmed Chalabi as a "distinguished aristocrat" in many ways. However, the latter “found” after the first Gulf War of 1991 the author of the book “The Republic of Fear” published in 1989, who was writing under his pseudonym “Samir Al-Khalil” in the process that began practically after the first Gulf War and ended with the overthrow of the Baath Party regime led by Saddam Hussein in These days in 2003.[/size]
[size=45]That personal fear, which Makiya analyzed, was broken after the uprising of the Iraqis, south and north, against Saddam Hussein's totalitarian regime, which Kanan Makiya describes as "exceptional" even among authoritarian regimes. For him, getting rid of the Baath regime became "a matter of morality as much as it is political." Many benefited from his vast knowledge and academic capacity, and from his investigative research approach, to present the issue of ordinary Iraqis to world public opinion, especially the American one, not only from the logic of “oppressedness” as mere victims. He presented an authentic Iraqi narrative that the Western mind can read. Similar to the "Republic of Fear", he narrated in "Cruelty and Silence" not only how the Ba'athists built the state of intelligence and the various security services after 1968, leading to Saddam's seizure of power in 1979, but also how this regime fought war after war, including the facts of genocide In Anfal and the suppression of the uprising in the south.
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Saddam Hussein during his trial with the pillars of his regime in 2006 (Reuters)[/size]
[size=45]In Kanan Makiya's words about the Iraqi opposition, whose symbols have become in power today, there is a mixture of anger and regret because they lack the "Iraqi national sense" and created a "mafia state" on the ruins of the Baathist state owned by militias and shadow chiefs. This prompted him to apologize in his book "Sedition" for his role in supporting these leaders during the nineties.[/size]
[size=45]In this interview with Kanan Makiya with Asharq Al-Awsat are the facts of his meetings with President George Bush on the eve of the Iraq war and after the fall of Saddam. As well as his meetings and impressions with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and others before and after the invasion.[/size]
[size=45]Al-Hayat: We are now in the midst of the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq war. How to restore the era before the war?[/size]
[size=45]I will not change my general opinion regarding the need to get rid of Saddam's regime. This was as much a moral matter as it was political. I consider the nature of the former Baathist regime exceptional in many respects. In the Middle East, countries share a common denominator of dictatorship. But the system that was built in Iraq, which lasted 35 years, was exceptional even among all these authoritarian regimes.[/size]
[size=45]> It distinguished the government in Iraq from the rest of the countries. Is this because of resurrection?[/size]
[size=45]- Because of the nature of the regime established by the Baath Party in Iraq in particular. Let us be clear: my book “The Republic of Fear” does not apply to the rest of the Arab regimes. As I said, the (Baath) regime was exceptional and comprehensive in the scientific sense of the word. And compared its emergence within the Arab world, on the grounds that it is similar to the German fascist regime, and similar to the Stalinist rule of the Russian Communist Party in the thirties and forties. In Iraq, the system was built through the party on the basis of the various intelligence and security services built by the Baathist state after 1968. The crucial point in the integration of building the totalitarian system came in 1979 when Saddam Hussein personally took control of the system as a whole. This is the regime that invaded and annexed Kuwait to its borders, thus changing the laws of the political game in the Arab countries as it had been practiced since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Breaking a major rule for the existing Arab regime.[/size]
[size=45]Al-Hayat: You see complete justifications for the Iraq war.[/size]
[size=45]- Yes. The political position that I took during the nineties was based on the need to get rid of this anomalous regime, which I was convinced at the time would repeat its invasion of Kuwait and its destructive wars to the fabric of Iraqi society, if it lasted.[/size]
[size=45]> Nevertheless, you admitted mistakes that you said you made in your thinking about that stage, and you even apologized for that.[/size]
[size=45]I wrote about this in the introduction to my novel, “The Rope.” My big mistake was that I underestimated the Iraqi opposition that I worked with and supported after the 1991 war. I did not imagine, for example, that there was not one of the various opposition parties and personalities with whom I got to know all of them, that there was not one among them who had an Iraqi soul or a sense of patriotism. If you notice that all the groups that became part of the Governing Council with (Paul) Bremer, not even the name of Iraq was present in their names, except for the Iraqi National Congress. My mistake was that I did not evaluate these forces at the time, and I did not feel the weakness or even the absence of their Iraqi national sense.[/size]
[size=45]> You mentioned your book “The Republic of Fear”, and you have “The Rope” (the title of the Arabic version is “Sedition”). But I also mentioned Stalin. Did this issue affect you, since you were a Trotskyist in the beginning?[/size]
[size=45]The issue is not personal. Yes, I was a Trotskyist and a socialist in my youth back then. However, my political thoughts changed during the six years I spent researching and writing “Republic of Fear.” I became a liberal in the classical sense of the word, not in its modern sense. This means that I have given priority to personal freedoms and the rejection of all kinds of cruelty in people's public life. When I mention Stalin, I do not only mean the person of Stalin, but rather the political system that he headed. In the same sense, my criticism of the Iraqi regime is not a personal criticism of Saddam.[/size]
[size=45]> Is this the argument that prompted a successful academic in the art of architecture to engage in politics?[/size]
[size=45]The 1967 war was a major turning point in my life. After that, in the sixties and seventies, I was in the same situation as a whole generation of Arab intellectuals inside or outside the Arab countries.[/size]
[size=45]Al-Hayat: I came to the conviction that Saddam must be eliminated.[/size]
[size=45]After the 1991 war, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, the superpowers became convinced that Saddam, who was their ally during the Iran-Iraq war, had become their enemy. And after the catastrophe of 9-11, she wanted to overthrow him for her own reasons. But her reasons are not mine. I have nothing to do with its causes from the September 11 attacks and other things. I start from a purely Iraqi position, even though I lived outside Iraq all this time. I always ask myself this question: What does the interest of the Iraqi people require? Let us remember that the US government fully supported Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.[/size]
[size=45]> All of these elements contributed to the formation of your personality as an Iraqi dissident.[/size]
[size=45]– I wrote “Republic of Fear” secretly under a pseudonym: Samir Al-Khalil at the time. There were 5 friends and very close to me who knew what I was doing. Among them was my wife at the time, Afsaneh Najmabadi, who was of Iranian origin and later became a professor at Harvard, and the late Mai Ghossoub, who together founded “Dar Al-Saqi”. Even my parents didn't know at first.[/size]
[size=45]> Ahmed Chalabi did not know?[/size]
[size=45]- both; Originally I didn't know him. I met Ahmed Chalabi for the first time in 1991, immediately after the first Gulf War.[/size]
[size=45]> How did that happen?[/size]
[size=45]In March 1991, the head of the Harvard Studies Center at the time, Dr. Roy Mottahedeh, invited Iraqi opposition figures. We were attended by four: Ahmed Chalabi, Hoshyar Zebari, the late Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, and myself. I was using my pseudonym before the conference. But after all the Iraqi people revolted against the regime through their famous uprising, I told them that I would attend the conference, but in my real name. At this conference, for the first time, the audience discovered that Samir Al-Khalil is actually Kanan Makiya. During this meeting, I got to know Ahmad Chalabi personally for the first time.[/size]
[size=45]> Then you became friends.[/size]
[size=45]- This is correct. Chalabi is a unique personality who is completely different from all the other opposition men. I respected him at the time and he respected me as well. I got to know many Arab leftists who were against their regimes since the beginning of my political activity in the Palestinian resistance in the seventies. I worked for ten years in the ranks of the Palestinian resistance, first in “Fatah,” then I went to the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” and finally to the “Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” where I wrote at the time for “Al-Hurriya” magazine. During all this experience, I did not meet a person of such cultural weight as Ahmed Chalabi.[/size]
[size=45]> Why?[/size]
[size=45]One of the good and important aspects of understanding his personality is that he never proceeded from being a victim, as was the Palestinian way of dealing with Western governments and personalities, which in my opinion is the reason for their failure over the past decades. In general, the "victimization" complex, which I analyzed in depth in my latest book, "On Cruelty", is very important in our political failure as Arabs. This complex exists in all the countries of the Arab East, especially in the countries of the Fertile Crescent, where everyone considers himself a “victim” in the first place and bases all his positions on this hypothesis, whether we are Shiites in Iraq, Sunnis in Syria, Maronites in Lebanon, Kurds or Palestinians. By comparison, Chalabi was an aristocrat who was incredibly intelligent and an awful reader. He managed to build relationships with anyone, including Bernard Lewis, Fouad Ajami and Dick Cheney in the United States.[/size]
[size=45]> Is this why Edward Said criticized you? I interviewed him and I interviewed Fouad Ajami. However, the apologetic tone that you mentioned in your book “Sedition” was direct about your role in the period that preceded the Iraq war. Fouad Ajami apologized in some way in "Palace of Arab Dreams" for his record...[/size]
[size=45]- both. There was a big difference between the three of us (Edward Said, Fouad Ajami, Kanan Makiya) who played a role in influencing Western public opinion and even to some extent American policy. Edward Said represents a party that started from the Palestinian cause, and only from this issue, while Fouad Ajami represented a different party adopting the American position after distancing itself from Lebanon and its internal problems. His book “The Arab Dilemma” is one of the most wonderful books written about Arab politics in the last quarter of the twentieth century, but you cannot say that it is a book that is biased towards the Arabs or to this or that Arab country. It is a purely academic book.[/size]
[size=45]> What about Kanaan Makiya?[/size]
[size=45]- Kanaan Makiya is a pure Iraqi critic in all his books, who stems from his rejection of cruelty and tyranny wherever it is found, especially in Iraq. I originally received American citizenship for the first time in my life only 8 or 9 years ago. I obtained a British passport in the eighties, after my Iraqi passport was revoked. I also had permanent residence in the United States in the 1990s.[/size]
[size=45]> I mean, you met President Bush not as an American citizen?[/size]
[size=45]- correct. I did not have an American citizenship in 2003. Later I decided to obtain an American citizenship because I decided to live in America. I was a person without a passport for a while, and then I have 3 passports (laughing).[/size]
[size=45]Al-Hayat: Regardless of your "injustice" during Saddam's era, when did the actual work with American officials begin to overthrow the regime?[/size]
[size=45]I have never been wronged in my life compared to the vast majority of the Iraqi people. Injustice is a catastrophe for a person that distorts his thinking style as well as his morals. But this is a long research topic. Let's go back to the gist of your question with a story.[/size]
[size=45]In 1993, two years after the Gulf War, Ahmed Chalabi called me after we became friends. He said: You must come to Washington, where there will be a very important meeting and I need you. The meeting would have been held in the presence of me, Ahmed Chalabi, and Martin Indyk, who was the National Security Adviser for Arab Affairs in the Clinton administration. In articles and lectures, I suggested the need for an international trial of the Iraqi Ba'athist regime. Chalabi told me that the meeting was about persuading Indyk to obtain US support for the establishment of an international criminal court for the Iraqi regime. I talked for a long time with Indyk about Saddam’s crimes, his invasion of Kuwait, and the details of Anfal, based on what I wrote in “Cruelty and Silence” which is full of Iraqi testimonies of what happened in Anfal and the mass killing of the Shiites of the south in 1991. Indyk said that if this initiative started from you, that is, you Iraqis in The opposition, we will support you, but the US government alone will not initiate such action. I agreed with Ahmed Chalabi to write an indictment of the regime purely legally, provided that it be issued in the name of the Iraqi National Congress, and on the condition that it includes a general amnesty for members of the Baath Party and those joining the army whose name was not mentioned in the report that was issued later entitled “Crimes against Humanity and the Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy in Iraq”, and it included appendices and the names of 50 people in two parts; The first is for those we have sufficient information about, headed by Saddam and other leaders, and the second part is for people we have preliminary information about their crimes, but we need further investigation because we are not sure of their responsibility in committing a crime. Incidentally, the 50 post-war American postcards are taken from this report.[/size]
[size=45]> I stayed on this friendship with Ahmed Chalabi, and built other friendships on the way from 1993 to 2003. At some point, he began working with the Americans to figure out what needed to be done to get rid of Saddam.[/size]
[size=45]Truth be told, no actual work and actual coordination took place before the attacks of September 11, 2001. Yes, Ahmed Chalabi did a very great job in influencing the US Congress to pass the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. In 2002, the Americans in the State Department established what is called “planning.” for the future of Iraq” in the form of consultative seminars, or what they called “workshops,” in which many Iraqis in exile participated. But this story is too late...[/size]
[size=45]Al-Hayat: This means that the idea of ​​completely overthrowing Saddam for the US administration took shape after the September 11 attacks.[/size]
[size=45]- certainly. Before 9/11, there were various initiatives of great symbolism, but of little real impact. There was nothing serious and actual.[/size]
[size=45]> I referred to Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as the main drivers of the war...[/size]
[size=45]- Yes, this is correct. They were the architects of the war for their own reasons and their own reading of American interests, which have nothing to do with the interest of the Iraqi people, in my opinion. The opposite was the case with the politician and the second man in the Ministry of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, the only one I respected within the US administration, who started from what I call the "Iraqi interest" to get rid of tyranny. And for the record, Wolfowitz once admitted to me his regret at not supporting the Iraqi uprising in 1991.[/size]
[size=45]> What was your impression of Condoleezza Rice?[/size]
[size=45]I've seen her several times, too. And I respect her. She is actually a teacher. But my impression was that she was a weak character, compared to figures like Rumsfeld and Colin Powell.[/size]
[size=45]Al-Hayat: Let us end with the stage in which the actual work for the Iraq war and the overthrow of Saddam began. Where do you think it started?[/size]
[size=45]In this regard, I will tell you an expressive story: On January 31, 2003, I received a request from the White House to attend a meeting with President Bush. We were 4 independent opposition members, that is, not affiliated with any party or movement in the opposition: myself, Rand Rahim, and two other people. In addition to Bush, from the American side, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and others attended. The meeting began with a short speech from President Bush, in which he started by saying: "We have decided to overthrow Saddam." This was the first time that the Americans announced to the outside world their decision to go to war. Then the American president added a sentence that surprised me at the time: “Not one army will enter Iraq, but two armies…”. I remember interrupting him in astonishment: “Two armies? I don't understand". He looked at me and added: "An army to remove Saddam, and another to rebuild Iraq." In the moment that followed this sentence, he turned to Condoleezza Rice, asking for her confirmation: “Correct?” Then she lowered her head as if she were ashamed and said in a low and soft voice while looking at the ground: “Yes.” It seems that she was ashamed to answer because she knows a truth that Bush does not know. Immediately after the meeting with Bush, I understood the situation. Gen. Jay Garner, who had served as director of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq, contacted me. In other words, he is the general of the “second army” that Bush mentioned. I walked into his room in the White House and it was empty with bookshelves also empty. He told me, "Mr. Makiya, I want you to join a group of ours to rebuild Iraq." I didn't understand exactly, so he added, "We are the team that will rebuild Iraq, and I want you to work with us." He was talking about the second army that Bush spoke of. I asked him: Who is on the team? Hariri: We are just getting started. I have a secretary for the time being, and you'd be so kind as to work with us. I told him: I cannot do that, because I am an Iraqi writer and academic, and I work with the Iraqi opposition. I am neither a politician nor an administrator, and the Iraqi interest may not always coincide with the American interest, but thank you for your invitation. The whole point of the story is that on the eve of the war, President Bush did not know that his "second army" did not exceed one general alone (with a secretary) in one empty room inside the White House. That is why Condoleezza Rice, who knew all this, lowered her head in shame.[/size]
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