The 1990s: A Pivotal Foreign Policy Decade

“In the weeks immediately after the bombing [in Lebanon], I believed the last thing that we should do was turn tail and leave. Yet the irrationality of Middle East politics forced us to rethink our policy there. If there would be some rethinking of policy before our men die, we would be a lot better off.”—Ronald Reagan, An American Life, pp. 466-467

The above statement was Reagan’s conclusion regarding US interventions in the Middle East, which characterized the 1970s and 1980s, even reaching back to the US-CIA-led 1953 coup in Iran. Unfortunately, the lesson Reagan learned, at least partially, was not learned by his successors.

Iraq War I—George H.W. Bush

In terms of US foreign policy, 1990 involved a paradigmatic shift in US policy in the Arabian Peninsula—from interventionism to occupation. Many considered the Gulf War a brief, successful war—only a few months, from 1990 to 1991—but many also fail to realize that, despite previous promises, the US never left the Arabian Peninsula and, for many in the region, especially in Iraq, the war never ended.

Following the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)—during which the United States tilted heavily toward Saddam Hussein, overlooking his use of chemical weapons, while also covertly selling arms to Iran through the Iran-Contra affair (1985-1986)—Saddam Hussein’s forces soon invaded Kuwait over war debts, regional conflict, and oil. Weakened from the recent Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), which had indirectly benefited Kuwait by shielding them from Iran, Hussein decided to invade Kuwait after several disputes (and with little to no objection from Bush).

The invasion prompted the government elites of Saudi Arabia to consider inviting the US military into the region in order to drive back Hussein. This was vigorously protested and offensive to many Muslims in the region because it became viewed as a permanent foreign occupation of a Western power with a different religion, language, and culture. This invitation was part of bin Laden’s further radicalization and his messaging.

Osama bin Laden wanted Saudi royal permission to fight a jihad against Saddam Hussein and his forces. By the fall of 1990, bin Laden was concerned about Saddam Hussein’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait and the prospect that the house of Saud might invite the US into Saudi Arabia (Muslim holy lands) to drive out Saddam. Bin Laden told Khalil A. Khalil, “I want to fight against Saddam, an infidel. I want to establish a guerrilla war against Iraq.” After he was refused, he said, “You listen to America—your master!” This break between bin Laden and the Saudi elites would lead to his further radicalization, terror attacks during the 1990s, and toward the 9/11 attacks.

The Iraqi Uprising

The US did come to the region (and never left), and did drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Toward the end of Desert Storm, Bush encouraged the Shi’ite and Kurdish Iraqis to attempt to overthrow the Sunni, Arab-backed regime of Saddam Hussein, even dropping leaflets and using international television and radio ads. On February 15, 1991, Bush said,

…there’s another way for the bloodshed to stop, and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside, and then comply with the United Nations resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations. We have no argument with the people of Iraq. Our differences are with that brutal dictator in Baghdad.

However, once Bush and others remembered that the removal of Saddam Hussein would indirectly benefit Iran—thereby undoing the policy of the previous Reagan administration during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)—Bush backed off of this policy. Additionally, there was genuine concern of a power vacuum, civil war, and the “Lebanonization” of Iraq. In any case, this amounted to encouraging many people to violently overthrow their government (assuming US support) only to be abandoned, left to deal with the consequences, and even prevented. In fact, the US even allowed Saddam to use helicopters to suppress the revolts they encouraged. The Iraqis who did revolt against the Hussein dictatorship were brutally slaughtered.

This episode is key to remember during the following years where US policy toward Iraq would brutally pressure the Iraqi people to overthrow their government in exchange the US’s abandonment of crippling sanctions and regular bombing. The last time the Iraqis were encouraged by the US to overthrow their existing government regime—an incredibly risky proposition no matter the circumstances—they tried it, were abandoned, and suffered the consequences. Following Desert Storm, the US policy put the Iraqis in an unconscionable dilemma—overthrow the government or suffer the sanctions blockade, a no-fly zone, and regular bombings. Also keep in mind that this policy amounts to using coercion—either restrictively (i.e., a sanctions blockade) or directly (i.e., bombing)—against civilians to coerce political elites. How do we ourselves react when civilians are attacked because of the policies of our government? What do we title it when civilians are killed in order to coerce a government (no matter the allegedly just intentions)?

Ending the War?

Following the war, Bush stated triumphantly on March 1, 1991, “It’s a proud day for America. By God, we’ve kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all!” (So-called “Vietnam syndrome” was a term that developed which attempted to medicalize, as a sort of mental illness, an aversion to foreign wars and military interventions because of the Vietnam war.) One key difference was that, in 1975, the US actually left Vietnam—no bases, no troops, no occupation.

Unlike the Gulf War’s aftermath, where the US kept permanent bases in Saudi Arabia and maintained no-fly zones over Iraq, there was nothing comparable in postwar Vietnam. Continued foreign occupation—the greatest single predictor of suicide terrorism—plus bombings, sanctions, and a no-fly zone would characterize the remainder of the 1990s. Feldman and Pape, explain (p. 23),

It is important to recall that 1990 was a benchmark year in America’s military deployment to the Persian Gulf. Before this point, the United States had only tiny numbers of troops stationed in Muslim countries (mostly guards protecting embassies), but no tank, armor, or tactical aircraft combat units since World War II. The United States deployed large numbers of combat forces to the region starting in August 1990 to deal with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and has kept tens of thousands of combat forces there ever since; Al Qaeda’s attacks began [in earnest] in 1995. Foreign occupation also accounts for the motives of individual suicide terrorists from 1980 to 2003.

After Desert Storm, instead of withdrawing, the US maintained a semi-permanent network of air, naval, and logistics bases across the Arabian Peninsula, including about 5,000-7,000 troops in Saudi Arabia at Prince Sultan Air Base and other facilities, plus major hubs in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the UAE. This enduring presence—unprecedented in peacetime—became a focal point of regional resentment and al-Qaeda’s mobilizing propaganda.

Throughout the 1990s, al-Qaeda and affiliated militants escalated their attacks against US and allied targets, moving from isolated incidents to coordinated international terrorism. In 1990, an al-Qaeda-linked Egyptian militant assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York, followed three years later by the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six and injured over a thousand. (In the preceding case, which would have been far worse, Omar Abdel Rahman had only been allowed into the US because certain CIA officials considered him an old friend from the Afghan jihad of the 1980s.) By the mid-1990s, the group had shifted focus to US forces abroad: a 1995 car bombing in Riyadh targeted an American military training facility. In 1996, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia killed 19 US servicemen (though Washington officially blamed Iranian-backed militants, bin Laden praised the attack). The campaign expanded into Africa in August 1998, when truck bombs devastated the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing over 200 and injuring thousands. Finally, in October 2000, al-Qaeda operatives struck the USS Cole in Aden harbor, Yemen, killing 17 American sailors. Together, these operations marked the progression of al-Qaeda’s strategy of targeting US symbols and personnel, setting the stage for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Iraq War I ½—The Clinton Years

Announced in 1993 by the Clinton administration, “dual containment” referred to a US policy of simultaneously isolating and pressuring both Iraq and Iran in the Persian Gulf. This marked a shift away from the earlier US Cold War-era strategy of balancing one against the other (e.g., tilting toward Iraq in the 1980s against revolutionary Iran). With the Soviet Union gone and the US unipolar power, Washington sought to police the Gulf directly—keeping both regimes weak through sanctions, isolation, and an unprecedented US military presence in the Gulf, so that neither could dominate the region’s oil supplies or challenge US allies.

Bombings & Sanctions

While the Clinton years are often associated with “peace,” the US Air Force bombed Iraq, on average, three to four times per week, killing hundreds of innocent civilians. By 1999, over 1,800 bombs had reportedly been dropped on Iraq, killing approximately 1,400 civilians, in enforcement of the northern and southern no-fly zones.

Worse still, were the deaths and deprivations caused by the sanctions regime, not to mention the fact that the sanctions blockade served as an important source for bin Laden’s messaging. Whether or not bin Laden’s concern over Iraqi children was genuine is irrelevant. The reality is that his messaging, including the US’s deadly policies against the Iraqi people, was effective recruitment, playing on the anger, resentment, and sympathy it engendered.

The sanctions were originally intended to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, however, they remained years after the war. On the lower bound, it is estimated that approximately 200,000 excess child deaths took place due to the sanctions; on the upper bound, some estimate up to 500,000 or more.

Sanctions largely tend to affect the civilian population rather than the political elites. Further, when sanctions are imposed by an external force, this tends to entrench the loyalty of the people toward their government rather than convincing them to overthrow it; they didn’t blame Saddam Hussein, they blamed the United States. With these things known, and with the awareness of the starving innocent people, it is clear that a sanctions blockade—despite special pleading that it was aimed at the political elites in the government—is aimed at punishing the civilians because of their government. Some Pentagon officials said to the Washington Post,

People say, “You didn’t recognize that [bombing civilian infrastructure] was going to have an effect on water or sewage[?]” Well, what were we trying to do with sanctions — help out the Iraqi people? No. What we were doing with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of the sanctions….

Big picture, we wanted to let people know, “Get rid of this guy and we’ll be more than happy to assist in rebuilding. We’re not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein or his regime. Fix that, and we’ll fix your electricity.” (emphasis added)

With the memory of what happened the last time the US encouraged the Iraqi people to oust Saddam fresh in their heads, they were put in a dilemma by the US—face deprivation and possibly death from the sanctions or face death overthrowing the government. There is no magic that transforms so-called “good intentions” on the part of the US that overwrites reality and results.

When asked about the cost-benefit analysis of the sanctions policy, specifically the deaths of children, Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeline Albright infamously stated, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.” Since then, Albright has repeatedly apologized for her words, but she has never apologized for the policy and its effects. In other words, she was not sorry for what she did, or the policy of the US government that she promoted—the one that killed hundreds of thousands of children—but for the way she said it.

Likewise, in answering, “Was it worth it?” Thomas Pickering—US ambassador to the UN—said, “I believe it was worth having the sanctions on because in the end, in a strange way, they may’ve helped to produce the mindset that got rid of the weapons of mass destruction that we can’t find now.” A senior official in the George W. Bush administration even admitted,

[F]atwas from Osama…cited the effects of sanctions on Iraqi children and the presence of U.S. troops as a sacrilege that justified his jihad. In a real sense, September 11 was part of the cost of containing Saddam. No containment, not U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. No U.S. troops there, then bin Laden might still be redecorating mosques and boring friends with stories of his mujahideen days in the Khyber Pass.

As it was, the administration took what looked like the path of least resistance in making its public case for the war: WMD and intelligence links with Al Qaeda. If the public read too much into those links and thought Saddam had a hand in September 11, so much the better. (emphasis added)

Deep within (p. 376) the 9/11 Commission report, it reads,

America’s policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world. That does not mean U.S. choices have been wrong.

Michael Scheuer—former intelligence officer for the CIA and Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station from 1996 to 1999—wrote in 2004,

…[the] U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.

In other words, while the American people may have been ignorant of the foreign policy history of the 1990s to their detriment, and politicians—whether sincere or not—expressed bewilderment, many understood the direct link between foreign policy interventionism and terrorist attacks.