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SADDAM HUSSEIN TAKES ON THE WORLD!
By William Terdoslavich
It’s not easy being a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur.
In the 1970s, Saddam was a street-smart thug who had clawed his way up the ranks in the Iraqi Ba’ath Party. Now number two, he served President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr faithfully, being an especially ruthless go-to guy who got things done. Of course, this talent came in handy when Saddam got rid of Hassan al-Bakr in 1979, along with his followers.
Now Saddam Hussein was number one. He wanted to be a great man leading a great nation. But Iraq could not be great if its access to the sea remained constricted. Geography was Iraq’s first enemy. It’s only port, Umm Qasr, is connected to the nation’s second city, Basra, by a single waterway, the Shatt al-Arab. This waterway also demarcated the Iraq-Iran border. Throughout history, either Iran or one of Iraq’s predecessor states (Ottoman Empire, “Arabistan,” and others) might claim the entire waterway up to the farther shore, instead of sharing it.
Iraq claimed the Shatt al-Arab all the way to the Iranian shore, a claim Iran never recognized. While the Shah of Iran was in power in the 1970s, he successfully bankrolled Iraqi Kurds into rebelling against Iraq, and thwarted an Iraqi armored thrust into Iran. The 1975 settlement of this war called for the Iraq-Iran border to run straight down the Shatt al-Arab. This provided no cushion protecting access between Basra and Umm Qasr.
Four years later, Iran was being convulsed by a revolution that ousted the shah and saw his eventual replacement by Ayatollah Khomeini. Iranian revolutionaries had already seized the US embassy in Tehran, holding about fifty Americans hostage. The Iranian army was being purged of its pro-American elements. And Iran’s main oil fields were just across the Shatt al-Arab in Khuzistan province, which had a largely Arab population that was not too keen on Iranian rule. The Iranian theocracy was all chaos and probably incompetent. The time looked good to steal Khuzistan, fair and square.
Saddam Hussein then ordered his army to attack. The date was September 17, 1980.
Bad Guys vs. Bad Guys
The resulting Iran-Iraq War did not go off exactly as planned. Instead of collapsing, Iran rallied. Instead of taking Khuzistan, the Iraqi army got stuck. Though the Iraqi army was decently equipped, it was poorly trained and had some problems executing operational plans. It was hard to say what bogged down the Iraqis first, the swampy ground or their lack of initiative.
The five-division Iraqi attack was further blunted by hordes of untrained Revolutionary Guards, backed by depleted Iranian army units. The Revolutionary Guards made good cannon fodder, staging frontal assaults on Iraqi positions, World War I–style. Any penetrations would then be exploited by what few tanks and APCs the Iranian army could field.
And so the Iranians pushed the Iraqis out of Khuzistan to the very threshold of Basra, Iraq’s second city. The modest Iranian navy wiped out the even more modest Iraqi navy. Iran now controlled the Persian Gulf, cutting off Iraq’s ability to export oil to pay for its war.
By 1982, Iraq was on the ropes. The Iranians regained Khuzistan and now were close to taking Basra. The Iraqi army managed to put up a good defense, keeping the Iranians at bay. The stalemate lasted until 1986, when the Iranians launched a surprise attack across the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, taking the swampy Al Faw Peninsula. Iraq’s access to the Persian Gulf was now cutoff.
Saddam Hussein finally had to trust his generals and allow them to fight the war as they saw fit. The generals resorted to “scripting” operations, basically giving very detailed orders to units that had to be followed to the letter in order to complete an operation. Once the end of the script was reached, attacks ceased and a new script was drawn up.
By 1988, Iran finally shot its bolt trying to take Basra for the last time. In a series of five scripted attacks, the Iraqi army expelled the Iranians from the Al Faw Peninsula (flanking the Shatt al-Arab), the area around Basra, and the hill country to the north along the border. The Iraqis also fired salvos of Scud missiles on Tehran to demoralize the Iranian people and “persuade” Ayatollah Khomeini to seek peace, which he did. The result: the same border as before the war, plus a small sliver of Iranian territory. You might as well have given Saddam Hussein a free T-shirt for “winning.”
The Eagle Is No Chicken
The eight-year war left Iraq with a one-million-man army, thousands of tanks, hundreds of combat aircraft, and an experienced officer corps. Okay, so maybe fighting a bigger nation was not the way to go, but how about picking on a smaller one? Kuwait was right next door. It had a tiny army and air force. It sat on a lot of oil. And Bubiyan Island flanked Umm Qasr to the west. Seizing this island would gain some buffer territory to protect Iraq’s only outlet to the sea.
So in August 1990, Saddam Hussein attacked again! The well-scripted invasion sent all eight divisions of Iraq’s Republican Guard into Kuwait, overrunning the tiny nation in hours. The plan was to stick the world with a fait accompli. Just hunker down and wait for the West to come crawling to the negotiating table. Saddam Hussein would dictate terms, keep Kuwait, and double his share of the world’s oil supply. The resulting higher price of oil should help pay for more arms purchases and an upgraded nuclear weapons program.
But Iraq’s army was now just north of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, in fact too close for comfort. And this provoked a response from the United States. Hussein committed about five-sixths of his army to holding Kuwait. US president George H. W. Bush worked the phones to cobble together a global alliance against Iraq. It took six months for the US to ship two mechanized corps, plus two marine divisions, to Saudi Arabia. Add to that the division-sized contributions from France, Britain, Syria, and Egypt. The Saudi army was all in. Six US aircraft carriers deployed to the region. The USAF showed up with more than 1,100 aircraft.
In January 1991, the US and allied warplanes began bombing Iraqi frontline units and destroyed Iraq’s air defense system. Baghdad was bombed. Roads and bridges leading to Kuwait were slammed. The Iraqi air force barely resisted. This was followed in February by a four-day-long ground offensive that punched northward into Kuwait while swinging two corps west into the desert, north into Iraq, then east to cut off retreating Iraqi units. This plan was partially successful, destroying about half the Iraqi army.
US war plans were limited to liberating Kuwait. That kept the alliance intact, but also left Saddam Hussein in power as a frustrated dictator who excelled at starting wars he could not win.
What Could Have Been Better?
Not having Saddam Hussein around would have been a hundred times better, period. But that would still have left Iraq constrained by geography, its only port always vulnerable.
The more rational strategy would have been to avoid the Iran-Iraq War entirely. If Iran was crippled by revolution, it would probably stay that way. Hussein could have resorted to covert means to stir up the Arabs of Khuzistan against Iran, and maybe they would have asked Iraq for protection. An invitation to stay is far more politically effective than an invasion. And he would still have gotten his protective buffer for Umm Qasr.
Let’s say that did not happen. What alternative could Saddam have pursued? Iraq did have a slow-moving nuclear weapons program, replacing the one lost to an Israeli air strike back in 1981. Had Saddam waited until he’d had an atomic bomb in hand, he could have taken Kuwait anyway and been more likely to keep it. The US is very cautious about militarily confronting nuclear states. Containment and/or economic sanctions would have resulted, and sanctions don’t last forever . . . unless you keep making mistakes.
Then again, maybe the actual outcome was a hundred times better than what could have been. Saddam Hussein was a dictator strongly influenced by his ego and his yes-men, more likely to act before thinking. Maybe that incompetence was a hundred times better than a rational ruthless dictator commanding a nuclear-armed Iraq, eventually taking over the Middle East.