Why did the 'special relationship' between the
USA and Great Britain work so well during this Gulf War? Did
Great Britain have any justification for interfering in the
disagreements of two Arab States? Did Britain have a special
relationship with Kuwait? Did it have a special relationship with
Iraq?
|
Criticise the victim:
Serves her right
to be raped:
why is she so beautiful!
|
|
Kuwait has been accused of not being a
democracy and therefore not deserving protection. Was Saddam
Hussein the best qualified person to bring democracy to Kuwait?
Do you know the answers to such
questions? Are there simple answers?
If you do not know the answers, do you at least
know some facts? Are you able to argue intelligently about these
and many other questions which arise as Iraq, Kuwait, the Arab World
and Israel try to resolve their problems?
Are you at least aware of how much you do
not know and how difficult it is to interpret the facts? Or are
you simply happy that you are on the side of the angels and that, for
once, your team is winning?
If you want to argue, you have, at least,
to know some facts.
Many people do not even know much about their
own history. In a survey conducted in Great Britain, adults and
children were asked 12 simple questions about British history (Sunday
Express, London, 17 March 91, p 12f). If the test was easy, the
results were appalling. 25% of the test persons could not name
Winston Churchill as the Prime Minister who lead England during the War
against Nazi Germany. One woman did not know his name but gave a
fair description instead: 'A great big bloke'. Unfortunately the
description also applies to the present German Chancellor Kohl and to
General Norman Schwarzkopf. Which Roman General invaded Britain
with the lines 'I came, I saw, I conquered'? One person thought
it was Hitler. Others suggested Brutus and Napoleon. Only
50% had the correct answer: Julius Caesar.
If we know so little about the history of our
own country, how much less do we know about the Arabs, the Muslims,
their relations with the West and with each other! We have just
fought a risky war that seems only to concern other nations. How
can we argue about that with each other, or with people who live nearer
to the area (e.g. Arabs, Turks) if we know nothing about them? It is
useful to know something about how the other half lives.
It is useful to know something about history on
the one hand and present-day reality on the other. It is useful
to know something about a tiny little state, the Switzerland of the
Middle East, which is considered important enough to go to war about -
when there was no war about the Chinese annexation of Tibet (1950), and
no war about the Soviet invasions of Hungary (1956), of Czechoslovakia
(1968) and of Afghanistan (1979).
It is up to you to draw your own inferences
from the facts and look behind some of the unanswered questions,
which are designed to make you think or read and ask questions.
Since this war was partly about bullying, the
discussion about it should not be dominated by bullies. You
therefore should prepare yourself. This book does not pretend to
go to any depth but it gives you the most primitive tools of
discussion, bare facts and a few excursions to give you some
perspective.
Perhaps it raises more questions than it
answers. That would be very desirable, not least to help you
check your own euphoria. Libraries and book shops can help you
find the answers to the unanswered questions. You may, for
example, find it useful to look at a map of all the major states in the
Middle East, especially those which were threatened or attacked during
this Gulf War. For each, look at its boundaries in 1918.
Then check if these boundaries have changed since then. If they
have changed (and that means especially 'expanded'), find out if any
territories gained during that time were empty or if there were
residents (as there were in Kuwait). How long had these residents
been living in their villages and towns? Were they consulted when
a new power took control? How many of them are still in their
former towns? How many left? Why exactly did they
leave? Where are they now?
Through incessant television and radio
reporting, we had a vivid picture of this war. It would be useful
also to have a vivid picture of the past. This little booklet
cannot even begin to answer any of these questions. But you will
be a wiser and more compassionate person if you at least start asking
these questions.
Kuwait is a tiny country which, throughout its
history, has been much more important than its size suggests.
These are the reasons:
1 Kuwait has a
strategic location, at the furthest end of an long waterway (the
Persian Gulf). Before the arrival of air transport it not only
provided access to the sea for its neighbours but also was an important
link in long-distance routes, such as an overland route to the
Mediterranean in one direction and a sea route to India in the other,
or on overland route via Turkey to Germany and the North Sea.
2 Kuwait played a
critical role in the creation of a huge and important country, Saudi
Arabia, at the beginning of this century.
3 Today Kuwait is
important because it is one of the greatest oil producers.
Iraq is the cradle of our civilisation.
If you want to study this aspect and gain respect for it (as we should,
for should we not respect our cradle, even when it has been soiled?),
read books about the names on which we only touch. 3000 B.C. the
Sumerians inhabited Mesopotamia (the land between the rivers) and
developed the world's first system of writing (cuneiform
writing). A thousand years later Mesopotamia belonged to the
Assyrian Empire in the north and the Babylonian Empire in the
South. The Babylonians had great astronomers. They had a
number system based on '60', to which we owe our system of measuring
time. From the Bible you know about the city of Babylon (near
Baghdad) and of Niniveh (near Mosul in the Kurdish north). About
500 B.C. Babylon and Assyria became part of the Persian Empire, which
also threatened the Greeks not long before they indulged in their
adventures at Melos and Sicily (see below).
The total destruction of the invading Persian
fleet at the hands of the Greek during the Battle of Salamis (480 B.C.)
was the subject of one of the first plays still performed and read
today, 'The Persians' by the Greek playwright Aeschylos, who himself
had fought at Salamis eight years before his play was first performed
(472 B.C.). The ghost of Darius, ancestor of the defeated Xerxes,
appears in the play and predicts the miseries that will befall the
retreating survivors of the battle in retribution for the way in which
they have profaned, during their invasion, the sacred ground of Greece
[similar to the devastation the Iraqi troops wrought before they fled
from Kuwait]:
|
There
misery waits to crush them with the load
Of heaviest ills, in vengeance for their proud
And impious daring; for where'er they held
Through Greece they march, they feared not to profane
The statues of the gods; their hallowed shrines
Emblazed, o'erturned their altars, and in ruins,
Rent from their firm foundations, to the ground
Levelled their temples. Such their frantic deeds,
Nor less their sufferings: greater still await them;
For vengeance hath not wasted all her stores,
The heap yet swells: for in Plataea's plains
Beneath the Doric spear the clotted mass
Of carnage shall arise, that the high mounds,
Piled o'er the dead, to late posterity
Shall give this silent record to men's eyes,
That proud aspiring thoughts but ill beseem
Weak mortals: for oppression, when it springs,
Puts forth the blade of vengeance, and its fruit
Yields a ripe harvest of repentant woe.
Behold this vengeance, and remember Greece,
Remember Athens: henceforth let not pride,
Her present state disdaining, strive to grasp
Another's, and her treasured happiness
Shed on the ground: such insolent attempts
Awake the vengeance of offended Jove.'
(from
Aeschylos, The Persians; p 280)
|
Mesopotamia belonged, in
turn, to Alexander the Great's Empire, and its successor, the Parthian
Empire. The Romans did not hold it for long and it became the
eastern border of the Roman empire.
In the Middle Ages (637 A.D.), Mesopotamia
became part of the Arab Empire and exchanged its Greek name
'Mesopotamia' for its Arabic name 'Iraq'. After the death of the
Prophet Mohammed in 632 A.D., his successors, the Caliphs (khalifa =
successor), conquered large areas of Africa (ultimately including
Spain) and the Middle East (including Syria and Iraq). The first
three caliphs, Abu Bakr, Omar and Othman ruled from Medina. In
656 A.D. Othman was murdered by supporters of Ali, the Prophet's
son-in-law. Ali was proclaimed caliph, but after a period of
civil war, Ali in turn was murdered (661 A.D.) by supporters of
Muwayah, governor of Syria and cousin of Othman. So Muwayah
became caliph, the founder of a new dynasty of caliphs, the Umayyads,
and Damaskus became the capital of the Arab Empire.
Concealed behind the names of these caliphs, is
the struggle of two parties for the succession of the Prophet
Mohammed. Those who supported Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and the
Umayyads are called 'Sunnis'. Those who supported Ali and his
descendants are called 'Shiites'. The Arab peninsula is mainly
sunni, Iran officially shiite, Iraq a mixture of both, but a slight
majority of Shiites (55%).
A feud had been going on between the Umayyads
and the Abbas family (the Abbasids) from a time before the birth of
Islam. As the quality of the Umayyad rule deteriorated in
successive generations of caliphs, the Abbasids identified themselves
with the shiite tradition and declared that all caliphs after Ali were
usurpers. They staged a revolution, and in 749 the last of the
Umayyad caliphs was killed in Egypt. The first Abbasid caliph,
Abul Abbas, collected into one prison every living male of the Umayyad
line he could find and had them all killed. He then proceeded to
hunt down and kill all of Ali's descendants (i.e. his intention in
taking up the shiite cause had not been to reinstate Ali's line).
In Spain a member of the Umayyad dynasty survived and established there
an independent caliphate.
Mansur, the successor of Abul Abbas made
Baghdad his capital. At that time, then, the whole of the Moslem
world, including the Arab Peninsula, was ruled from Baghdad. One
of the most famous Caliphs who ruled in Baghdad, when the Arab empire
was already in its decline, was Harun-ar-Rashid (of the Arabian Nights)
(ruled 786-809 A.D.). 'Baghdad rapidly became the centre of a brilliant
intellectual and material civilization which spread over the entire
Muslim world and reached its height in the 10th century'.
In 1258 Hulagu Khan, grandson of Jenghiz Khan,
picked a quarrel with the last caliph, Mustasim, killed him, sacked
Baghdad and turned Iraq into a wilderness. In 1393 Timur the
Tatar (Timur the Lame, the hero of Christopher Marlowe's play
'Tamburlaine the Great', the first English play ever written in blank
verse) conquered Iraq, but his empire collapsed after his death.
In 1508 Iraq was conquered by the Ottoman
Turks. It was lost and reconquered several times in the wars between
the Turks and the Persians. The final conquest of Baghdad took
place in 1638, and Iraq remained in the Ottoman Empire until its demise
at the end of the First World War in 1918.
Iraq had contained both sunnis and shiites, the
sunnis in the north and the shiites in the south. The sunnis
tended to live in the cities and the shiites in the country. The
Ottomans were sunnis, distrusted the shiites (whose natural allies had
in the past been the shiite Persians) and tended to employ Iraqi sunnis
in their local administration.
At the very beginning of the War, in 1914,
Great Britain occupied Iraq, in order to 'reassure the sheikhs of
Muhammareh and Kuwait, to counter the threats of German and Turkish
penetration of Persia with consequent danger to India and to protect
the south Persian oil fields'.
In 1920, at the San Remo conference, in the
aftermath of the First World War, Great Britain accepted a League of
Nations mandate for Iraq. In 1921 Emir Faisal was crowned King of
Iraq. The mandate continued and many political complications
arose. In 1932 Iraq became a member of the League of Nations and
thus formally independent.
In 1933, King Faisal died and was succeeded by
his son, who ruled as King Ghazi I. King Ghazi I, drunk in charge
of a car, died in a car accident and was succeeded by his four-year-old
son as King Faisal II in 1939. His uncle Abd ul Ilah became
Regent. After an attempted coup-d'état in 1941, British troops
occupied Baghdad. From then on, Iraq supported the allied war
effort by sending food and materials to its neighbour, the
U.S.S.R. In 1943 Iraq formally joined the allies by declaring war
on Germany, Japan and Italy.
In 1948, Iraq took part in the Arab-Israeli
war.
From 1956 to 1957 Iraq was under martial law
introduced during the Suez canal crisis. In 1958 a union between
Iraq and Jordan was proclaimed. A few months later, there was a
revolt and King Faisal II was killed. Iraq became a republic,
whose head was the revolutionary leader, General Abdul Karim Qassim.
In February 1963, the then still small
socialist Baath party under their leader Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr staged a
coup and killed Qassim. Only nine months later, in November 1963,
the Baath Party regime was overthrown by Colonel Arif. He died in
1966 in a mysterious helicopter crash and was succeeded as president by
his brother Abdul Rahman Arif. In July 1968 the Baath party
staged another coup, with the help of the Republican Guards.
Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr became president again. One of his protégés
was Saddam Hussein, who now proceeded rapidly to build his power base
and to eliminate all his rivals until only Bakr himself was left.
In July 1979, President Bakr resigned, under pressure from Saddam
Hussein, and Saddam Hussein became president. In the same year,
the Shah of Iran was overthrown and Khomeini returned to Iran. In
the same year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
The origins of Saudi Arabia go back to an
alliance made in 1744 between a small sheikh (a political ruler) and a
religious reformer.
The Sheikh was Muhammad ibn Saud, an ancestor
of the famous King Ibn Saud, and ruler of the town of Dariyah, not far
from Riyadh.
The religious reformer was Muhammad ibn Abdul
Wahhab. Wahhab was the Luther (or perhaps rather Calvin) of
Islam, preaching an uncompromising return to the pure teachings of
original Islam.
Since in Islam religious practice and political
organisation go hand in hand, the spread of the Wahhabi doctrine and
the growth of the Saudi rule fed each other. Tribes which
accepted the Wahhabi doctrine switched their allegiance to Saudi rule,
and those tribes and sheikhdoms which rejected either one or the other
were gradually brought into the Saudi 'empire' by military force or
threat. Thus the names 'the Wahhabis' and 'the Saudis' have
sometimes been used interchangeably. This explains why, to this
day, Saudi Arabia remains a theocracy, a state in which everything is
done 'In the name of God'.
Adherents to the Wahhabi doctrine do not like
to be called Wahhabis and may retort that they are simply sunnis, i.e.
orthodox Muslims. The name 'Wahhabi' has also been used by
opponents of the movement in a derogatory way, e.g. to mean 'fanatic',
'militant', 'fundamentalist'. However, no convenient alternative
name is available, so that, in the literature, the name 'Wahhabi' is
generally used.
During the course of several generations the
Saudis conquered most of the towns, sheikhdoms and territories that
make up the two main regions of the Arab peninsula, namely Najd (from
where they came) and Hejaz, which was then part of the Egyptian
province of the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire. Eventually they
conquered the holy cities of Mecca (1802) and Medina (1806). That
was the first Saudi empire, comprising large parts of Najd and Hejaz.
In 1812 the Turks recaptured Mecca and Medina
and then began to dismantle as much of the Saudi Empire as they needed
to reach its capital, Dariyah, which they did in 1818. They
totally destroyed the town, which has remained in ruins to this
day. Then they returned to their base in Egypt. The Saudis
moved to Riyadh and made it their new capital. From there they
built their second empire, smaller than the first, consisting mainly of
Najd territory.
Northern Arabia remained largely independent of
the Saudis. The leading dynasty there was that of Mohammed Ibn
Rashid, whose capital was Hail. Rashid defeated the Saudis in the
battle of al-Mulaida in 1891. Thus ended the second Saudi empire.
The Saudi ruler Abdul-Rahman and his young son
Abdul-Aziz took refuge in Kuwait, where Abdul-Aziz was groomed for
leadership by the Kuwaiti Sheikh Mubarak. With Kuwaiti support
Abdul-Aziz reconquered his capital Riyadh, the territory of Najd and of
Hejaz. His main opponent was Rashid, who was supported by the
Turks. After capturing Rashid's capital Hail in 1921, Abdul-Aziz
assumed the title of Sultan of Najd. In 1926 he was proclaimed
King of Hejaz. In 1932 he united the two parts of his empire,
Najd and Hejaz, which now became known, after his dynasty, as 'Saudi
Arabia'. He became King of Saudi Arabia and is best known under
the name of 'King Ibn Saud'.
Limits to Saudi expansion were set by the
British who prevented the Saudis from incorporating Kuwait and other
states on the coast of Arabia into their empire or from expanding into
Transjordan and Iraq. Most of the Saudi conquests took place
before Saudi Arabia was known for its oil wealth. The British
therefore had no interest in inland deserts, whereas, as a
sea-faring nation and as the controlling power of India, they were very
much interested in territories along the coast. This
accounts for the puzzling fact that
(a) there are still some independent states on
the Arab
peninsula
and
(b) that they are all on the coast.
During the last week of the 1991 Gulf War, in
one of his last defiant speeches on Baghdad radio, in which he
grudgingly agreed to withdraw from Kuwait, Saddam Hussein showed that,
deep at heart, he is a romantic: a man fond of reading about the deeds
of great men in history. (Children today love to read about the
great deeds of Batman. But woe betide them if they jump out of
windows in the belief that they can fly.)
To his offer of withdrawal from Kuwait, Saddam
Hussein added the cryptic remark that Constantinople did not fall
during the first siege. A few thousand more Iraqi soldiers had to die
for that remark, for it meant that Saddam Hussein intended to return
and renew his attack on Kuwait when he was better prepared. The
allies therefore did not stop strafing the Iraqi troops.
Yet, the history of Constantinople does not
augur well for Saddam Hussein. Constantinople withstood numerous
sieges, by Persians, Arabs, Bulgarians, Russians and others, for almost
800 years (from 626), till it finally fell to the Turks in 1453.
Nor does history (if history really repeats
itself) augur well for Kuwait. For even though Constantinople did
not fall for 800 years, it was assaulted for 800 years, and,
after 800 years, it fell. Determinists would say it was
destined to fall.
Saddam Hussein is deeply steeped in historical
folklore, especially the glories of the Ottoman Empire (Turkish
Empire), which started about 1300 AD with Osman and survived for over
600 years until it was finally dissolved in consequence of World War I
by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. One of its constituents, then
released, was modern Iraq.
Even Saddam Hussein's battle strategies seem to
be taken from Ottoman history textbooks. In preparation for the
ground war, the 'Mother of Battles', in 1991, he placed his least
motivated, least qualified, worst fed and worst equipped soldiers 'as
cannon fodder' into the front line. This must have had a purpose.
The purpose becomes clear when we read about
the battle of Nicopolis (now: Nikopol, Bulgaria, at the Rumanian
border), which in parts sounds like a description of Operation Desert
Shield or Desert Storm.
In telling the story of the battle of
Nicopolis, I am largely following the account given by Lord Kinross in
'The Ottoman Centuries. The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire',
London 1977, p 66 ff).
Nicopolis means 'Victory City' (Greek nike
= victory, polis = city) but might just as well have been
called Hettapolis (City of Defeat) (Greek hetta = defeat),
since for each of the many battles that were won there, there was also
a battle lost - by the other side: Every silver lining has a cloud, as
a Hindu proverb says. But there is not a single city called
Hettapolis in the world. Such is human optimism.
The battle of Nicopolis was the end of one of
the last crusades, held at a time when, after the eighth crusade, the
romance and excitement had gone out of crusading and people had stopped
counting.
The western (European) powers grew nervous over
the ever expanding Ottoman Empire and felt it was time to put a stop to
it. Bayezid I (1389-1403) was in charge of the Ottoman Empire at
the time. When he came to power after the battle of Kosovo
(1389), he declared that 'after conquering Hungary he would ride to
Rome and would feed his horse with oats on the altar of St Peter's'
(Kinross, p 66). Strong stuff, and very poetic - as were the
military communiqués from Baghdad in 1991 or the shouted pro-Saddam
slogan: 'Saddam, Saddam, our boss / Go ahead and hit the Cross'.
King Sigismund of Hungary felt threatened by
the Ottomans and tried to get allies for a crusade, to put the Turks in
their place once and for all. Similarly, in 1990, US Secretary of
State, James Baker, travelled around the world trying to find allies
and elicit contributions to the war chest.
Sigismund 'met with little encouragement but
words from a succession of Popes ... The Genoese merely vied with
their Venetian rivals for commercial favours from Bayezid; while both
Naples and Milan maintained amicable Ottoman contacts.' The Iraqi
airforce shelters destroyed by American bombs in 1991 had been largely
built by British engineers, and Iraq's weapons had been largely
supplied by the Western Powers, including the Soviet Union.
Sigismund turned to France and managed to get
support from the 'intermittently mad King Charles VI'. He
promised to send a force of chevaliers and mercenaries under the
command of his young son.
The response in feudal Europe was excellent.
| 'There
rallied to his standard not merely the French force but also knights
from the nobility of England, Scotland, Flanders, Lombardy, Savoy, and
all parts of Germany, together with adventurers from Poland, Bohemia,
Italy, and Spain. For the last time in history, the finest flower
of European chivalry gathered together for a crusade as much secular as
religious in impulse, whose objective was to check Bayezid's lightning
advance and eject the Turks, once and for all, from the Balkans.
Thus an "international" army, ..., mustered at Buda in the early summer
of 1396 - the largest Christian force that had ever confronted the
infidel. It had moreover the auxiliary support of a fleet in the
Black Sea, ...': |
a fair description of
the force assembled in Saudi Arabia and in the Persian Gulf for
Operation Desert Shield.
The crusaders had
some difficulty locating the enemy. The Turks did not invade
Hungary as expected, and Sigismund's 'scouts could find no trace of the
enemy'. ... 'Still Bayezid, occupied in fact with the siege
of Constantinople, did not come.' The crusaders marched down the
valley of the Danube and passed unopposed through Serbia and into
Bulgaria. In Rahova 'the large Turkish garrison, faced with the
whole Christian army of Franks and Hungarians, surrendered, and the
bulk of the population, including many Bulgarian Christians, was put to
the sword.' These were the civilian casualties of the Gulf war.
Finally the crusaders
came to the fortress of Nicopolis. 'There was still no sign of an
invading Turkish army.' The crusaders had forgotten to bring any
siege equipment and therefore 'they sat down before the walls, hoping
to starve the city into surrender.'
|
'The Western knights, with no enemy
to fight, treated the whole operation rather in the spirit of a picnic,
enjoying the women and the wines and the luxuries they had brought from
home, gambling and engaging in debauchery, ceasing in contemptuous
fashion to believe that the Turk could ever be a dangerous foe to
them. Those soldiers who dared to suggest otherwise had their
ears cut off as a punishment for defeatism. Meanwhile there were
quarrels between the different contingents, among whom the Wallachians
and Transylvanians were not to be trusted.
For sixteen days there was still not
sign of Bayezid. But now suddenly, with his habitual swiftness of
movement, there he was before the city ... with an army reported to
Sigismund to consist of anything up to two hundred thousand men.
Sigismund knew his enemy and that the Ottoman army - well trained,
strictly disciplined, and more mobile than that of the crusaders - was
not to be trifled with. He insisted on the need for a carefully
concerted plan of action. A preliminary reconnaissance was carried out
by an experienced French knight, De Courcy, who came upon a detachment
of the Turkish vanguard and defeated it in a mountain pass, charging
with cries of "Our Lady for the Lord De Courcy!" This success
merely aroused the jealousy of the other French knights, who accused
him of vanity. Sigismund tried to urge on them the need to remain
on the defensive, to allow the foot soldiers of the Hungarians and
Wallachians to hold the first attack, while the cavalry and mercenaries
of the knights formed a second line, whether for attack or
defense. At this the French chevaliers were furious, insisting
that the king of Hungary was trying to steal from them "the flower of
the day and the honour" for himself. The first battle must be
theirs.
... So ... they charged
without thought into battle, confident of defeating the despised
infidel. "The Knights of France," records Froissart, "were
sumptuously armed. ... But I am told that when they advanced
against the Turks, they were not more than seven hundred in
number. Think of the folly, and the pity of it! If they had
only waited for the King of Hungary, who had at least sixteen thousand
men, they could have done great deeds; but pride was their downfall."
Charging uphill, they surprised and
slaughtered Bayezid's outpost. After scattering his cavalry they
dismounted and continued to charge on foot against his infantry,
pulling up as they ran the line of stakes which protected its position,
and maintaining an impetus which scattered these forces as well.
The swords of the knights ran with blood. The day, they
confidently believed, was theirs. Then, reaching the hilltop,
they came up against the Sultan's main army of sixty thousand men, much
strengthened by Serbian support, which was drawn up beyond the crest,
fresh and ready for battle. According to his usual tactics, with
which Sigismund was familiar, Bayezid had put his expendable untrained
levies in the forefront of the battle, to exhaust the enemy's
strength. Then "the horsemen of Bayezid and his hosts and
chariots came against them in battle array, like the moon when she is
new." The knights, being unhorsed and weighed down by their heavy
armour, became helpless against attack. They were totally
routed. Their horses galloped riderless back to camp. The
finest flower of European chivalry lay dead on the field of Nicopolis
or captive in the hand of the Turks.
The crusaders were still, by the
standards of the time, essentially amateur soldiers, fighting in the
past and in a romantic spirit. They had learned nothing of the
professional art of war as it progressed through the centuries, none of
the military skills of the Turks, with their superior discipline,
training, briefing, and tactics, and above all the mobility of their
light-armoured forces and archers on horse-back.'
|
How did General Norman Schwarzkopf, during his
last press briefing in Riyadh, describe Saddam Hussein: 'He is neither
a strategist nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a
tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than
that he is a great military man!'
|
'These were
lessons which Sigismund, with his Hungarians, had begun to learn
through experience. He advanced with his forces to follow up the
crusaders, but knew that once his advice was disregarded, the day was
lost. "If they had only believed me," he said, "we had forces in
plenty to fight our enemies." As he had boasted before the
battle, "If the sky fell on our army we should have enough lances to
uphold it."
Presently
he escaped ... while the survivors of his army ... fled before the
Ottomans, some reaching the ships, but thousands of others enduring
severe hardships as they trekked across the Carpathian Mountains.
Next day Bayezid, inspecting the battlefield and assessing his
casualties, ordered a general massacre of prisoners ...
"The people
that were killed that day," it is recorded, "were reckoned at ten
thousand men." Thus did the last of the crusades end with a
catastrophic defeat by the Moslems in the heart of Christian
Europe. The Sultan, content with his victory, was not tempted to
follow it up further. In a scornful farewell oration he
challenged the knights to return and risk a further defeat at his
hands.' (Kinross, p 68 f)
|
Christendom had been worried about the Turkish
threat for a long time. In 1322 Pope John XXII had ordered that a
church bell be rung daily (the 'Türkenglocke' or 'Turks Bell') and that
the old (6th century A.D.) Antiphona pro pace be said three times when
the bell sounded (Köhler, p 242). Its text is 'Da pacem, Domine,
in diebus nostris, quia non est alius qui pugnet pro nobis, nisi tu,
Deus noster.' The English version of this text is still used
daily during Evensong in Anglican Cathedrals: 'Give peace in our time,
o Lord, because there is none other who fighteth for us but only thou,
o God' and, no doubt, has been fervently prayed during the Gulf crisis.
The Turkish victory at Nicopolis in 1396 put
fear and terror into Christian hearts far and wide, and with good
reason too. For 133 years later, in 1529, the army of Suleiman I
the Magnificent managed to reach Vienna and laid siege to it after
having adopted threatening postures for some time before.
Two famous Lutheran hymns, still sung in German
churches today, were written on that occasion.
The first (from which, ad usum delphini, the
title and the offensive references to the pope and the Turks have been
removed in today's hymn books) was written in 1529 and is entitled 'Ein
Kinderlied, zu singen, wider die zween Ertzfeinde Christi und seiner
heiligen Kirchen, den Bapst und Türcken, etc.' (A children's song to
sing against the two arch enemies of Christ and his holy church, the
pope and the Turks, etc.). The text runs thus:
|
ERhalt un| HErr bey deinem Wort
Und steur de| Bapst| und Türcken Mord,
Die Jhesum Christum deinen Son
Wolten stürtzen von deinem Thron.
(Keep us, o Lord, obedient to your
word
and keep in check the murderous activities
of the Pope and the Turks,
who want to topple Jesus Christ, your son,
from his throne.) [2]
|
The second of these hymns was written at the
end of 1528 or at the beginning of 1529 and is a prayer for
peace. The text runs thus:
|
Verley un| frieden gnediglich
Herr Got zu unsern zeiten,
E| ist doch ya keyn ander nicht,
der für un| künde streitten,
Denn du unser Godt allaine.
|
It is a rhymed German version of the Antiphona
pro pace.
Use your own television
experience of the Gulf War to draw out the many parallels between the
Battle of Nicopolis and the tactics, incidents and language used on
both sides in the Gulf conflict. You have seen the stakes and
barbed wire which was to hold off the allied offensive. You have
seen the defeated Iraqi soldiers, sometimes barefooted, trek along the
road from Kuwait to Basra, often even ignored by the allies.
If the allied forces had
been as ill prepared and undisciplined as the crusaders in the Battle
of Nicopolis, perhaps Saddam Hussein could have won. But were
they ill prepared, were they undisciplined, were they without a plan?
Who has to learn which
lessons? Could the tactics of putting the expendable troops in
the front line, which were successful in 1396, guarantee a victory
against the infidels (Who calls whom 'infidel'?) in 1991, 595 years
later? Was it right to assume that, what worked in 1396, would
work in 1990, or that the international morality of pre-1945 had not
changed in 1990? And has it changed?
It was Saddam Hussein's misfortune that he was
born 600 years too late. Like a Peter Pan of the Baghdad Arabian
Nights he lived in dream land.
Saddam Hussein's story has, in fact, been told
in depth by the Spanish novelist Cervantes (1547-1616). Cervantes
was born in Alcalá de Henares (on the outskirts of Madrid), a town that
was destroyed (1000 AD), rebuilt (1038) and named by the Arabs in
Spain. Its name (al kala = Fortress) is as military as that of
Nicopolis. It also comes from the same Arabic root as 'Kuwait'
(kut = fortress, kuwait = little fortress). Cervantes spent the
years from 1573 to 1580 as a slave, having been taken captive and sold
by Arab pirates on his way from Sicily to Spain. In 1605 he
published his most famous novel, 'Don Quixote'.
Don Quixote was a man addicted to reading
knightly adventure stories: today they would be comics.
|
'... he
passed his time in reading books of knight-errantry; which he did with
that application and delight, that at last he in a manner wholly left
off his country sports, and even the care of his estate; nay, he grew
so strangely besotted with those amusements, that he sold many acres of
arable land to purchase books of that kind; by which means he collected
as many of them as were to be had ...
He gave
himself up so wholly to the reading of romances, that a-nights he would
pore on until it was day, and a-days he would read on until it was
night; and thus, by sleeping little and reading much, the moisture of
his brain was exhausted to that degree, that at last he lost the use of
his reason. A world of disorderly notions, picked out of his
books, crowded into his imagination; and now his head was full of
nothing but enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds,
complaints, amours, torments, and abundance of stuff and
impossibilities; insomuch, that all the fables and fantastical tales
which he read seemed to him now as true as the most authentic
histories. ...
Having thus
lost his understanding, he unluckily stumbled upon the oddest fancy
that ever entered into a madman's brain; for now he thought it
convenient and necessary, as well for the increase of his own honour,
as the service of the public, to turn knight-errant, and roam through
the whole world, armed cap-à-pie and mounted on his steed, in quest of
adventures; that thus imitating those knights-errant of whom he had
read, and following their course of life, redressing all manner of
grievances, and exposing himself to danger on all occasions, at last,
after a happy conclusion of his enterprises, he might purchase
everlasting honour and renown. Transported with these agreeable
delusions, the poor gentleman already grasped in imagination the
imperial sceptre of Trapizonda; and, hurried away by his mighty
expectations, he prepares with all expedition to take the field...
('Don Quixote', Chapter 1)
|
Don Quixote lived 'not long ago', i.e. in the
second half of the 16th century. By that time, gunpowder had been
invented, people no longer lived in castles, knights no longer fought
with swords and lances and no longer wore armour. Dragons had
become extinct and the world was no longer full of damsels in distress
waiting to be rescued. But Don Quixote took his comics so
seriously that he, like a schizophrenic, believed them to represent
reality and acted accordingly. He mistook a windmill for a giant,
with whom he had to do battle, and criminals who were being taken to
the galleys appeared in his imagination as victims of a cruel tyrant
from whose claws he had to rescue them, just as Saddam Hussein felt he
had to bring the blessings of Iraqi democracy to the poor oppressed
Kuwaitis.
Two hundred years earlier, a man with Don
Quixote's idealism would have been a hero or a saint. At the time
when he actually lived, the same behaviour was rated as that of a
lunatic.
If Don Quixote was born 200 years too late,
Saddam Hussein was born 600 years too late. That is the
analogy. We might therefore interpret Saddam Hussein as a
latter-day Don Quixote.
Saddam Hussein did not understand today's
reality. In his (and our) history books countries are continually
being conquered, boundaries changed, territories negotiated about and
traded for one another. But that was in the past, when empire
building was still the duty of Kings. 'A king must conquer', says
the Mahabharata. 'Nation states' in the modern sense did not
exist and there was nothing sacred about territorial boundaries.
It was a matter of what you could get away with. Like Don
Quixote, Saddam Hussein was brought up sharp against reality.
Saddam Hussein did not seem to understand why
President Bush would not negotiate about Kuwait: that today national
boundaries are sacred: nor did we, in the West, seem to understand why
(as a matter of principle) Saddam Hussein wished to negotiate.
Saddam Hussein did not understand that, unlike
in past history, in today's world, especially since the demise of the
power of the Soviet Union, he would have the whole world against him if
he trespassed across a national boundary. Had he been an Ottoman
ruler, he would have had a few states against him, but not everybody:
he would have had a sporting chance. In 1991, he thought himself
a giant when, faced with the whole world, he was in fact a dwarf.
Not only had Saddam Hussein lost touch with
reality in historical terms, he also did not know or understand how the
other half of the world lived (the more important it is that we
understand how the other half lives):
|
Oh, East is East, and West is
West,
and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently
at God's great Judgment Seat.
(Kipling: The Ballad of East
and West)
|
In England, you cannot even bargain about the
price of an apple in a supermarket. You have to pay the price
that is printed on the ticket.
Much to the naive amazement of the West, Saddam
Hussein wanted to negotiate about a national territory. And much
to the consternation of Saddam Hussein, the West would not give an
inch. Rightly (from the technical angle of negotiating), Saddam
Hussein tried one ploy after another to get negotiations going, like
Nixon he persisted to the bitter end, true to character, the character
of a man who knows from (limited) experience and his knowledge of
history that 'everything is negotiable' and that in negotiations you
have to persist. In the history of empires, indeed, countries can
change hands like goods in a supermarket and the price is negotiable.
How difficult this is to understand for either
side is shown in the following incident which happened a few years ago
in an American Supermarket in Texarkana, which straddles the border
between Texas and Arkansas.
|
'Gilbert
Summers knows all about the fragility of fixed prices. He runs a
store in Texarkana, Texas, and has done so for 20 years. He never
had any trouble with his prices until 1979. Up to then housewives
and their families loaded up the carts in his store with their weekly
shopping, waited quietly while the clerks at the checkouts totalled the
price tags, and then paid with cash, cheques or credit cards.
If there
were any 'rows' they were over delays while a price was checked because
the tag had come off, or if the clerk suspected it had been
'accidentally' changed, or a drunk had wandered in and wouldn't go
home, or a couple were fighting over an incident at last night's party.
Most of the
time the only noise was that of the cash registers, the piped music
wafting overhead, and kids screaming as they larked about. Nobody, but
nobody, ever asked to see Gilbert Summers about a price tag.
That was
until Hang Ha Dong and family moved into the neighbourhood. They are
Vietnamese refugees - the survivors of a particularly harrowing boat
voyage from Saigon to Thailand. Hang Ha Dong brought with him his
entire family - all twelve of them, including his wife's sister and her
aged mother.
He also
brought with him the habits of a lifetime - one of which is a total
incomprehension of the phenomenon of fixed prices. The first time
the Hang family (en masse) visited Gilbert Summer's store was nearly
their last.
Dutifully
they loaded up their carts with their requirements, as they had seen
the soldiers do in the PX on the US Army base where Hang and Mrs Hang
had worked as cleaners for several years. They hadn't shopped in
the PX themselves - they preferred the local market - but they had been
in it a few times, marvelling at its stocks.
When they
got to the checkout, Mr Hang picked up a tin and asked how much the
clerk wanted for it. The bored clerk checked the price and
drawled '$2.25'. Mr Hang delved into the cart and asked: 'How
much for two tins?'. The clerk looked puzzled and said,
irritably, '$4.50'.
It was Mr
Hang's turn to look puzzled and he spoke to his wife in
Vietnamese. Whatever she replied, Mr Hang told the clerk that he
would offer him $3.98 for the two tins. This was obviously a bit
much for Mrs Hang because she let forth a gale of Vietnamese at him -
and her mother joined in too. The clerk wondered what was
happening.
Mr Hang
next lifted out of the cart four string bags of oranges. The
clerk said '$1.30, each'.
'$1.05',
said Mr Hang.
'$1.30',
repeated the clerk, adding 'Can't you read? It says a
dollar-thirty on the tag. Where did you get a dollar-five from?'
'$1.10 and
that's my best price', said Mr Hang.
'$1.30',
replied the clerk.
'$1.12, if
you throw in the bag of rice at $4', said Mr Hang.
'It's a
dollar-thirty for the oranges and five-forty for the rice, as it says
on the tag.'
'But how
much for two bags of rice?', asked Mr Hang.
'Jesus!',
exclaimed the clerk, by this time losing his cool. 'Are you nuts
or something?'
He decided
to explain in simple English (he knew no Vietnamese, having spent his
army service in Colorado Springs) how the Texarkana store run by Mr
Summers operated, which he assured Mr Hang was no different to every
other store in the United States of America.
'You
have to pay the price on the tag. I have to
check it here. When you've paid, you take the goods home. Until
then they stay in the store. Got it?'
Mr Hang and
his family began speaking at once. Some to each other in
Vietnamese, picking up and turning over items to look at the tags, some
to the clerk in English, trying to get the haggle under way again.
The din
rose considerably and other shoppers crowded round to watch what was
going on (watching people shouting at each other is a common trait in
the West).
At this
point Gilbert Summers arrived at the checkout. The clerk
explained to him that he was dealing with some weird people who didn't
appear to understand how the world was organised.
'What do
you mean?', asked his boss.
'They want
to haggle over every goddamed tin of peas and packet of soup', he told
him. 'Christ, Gil, they're offering me deals left, right and
centre, for two of this and one of that, or three of this or one of the
other. I don't know what's going on. Can't they read the
frigging price tags?'
'H-o-l-d-i-t!',
bawled Gilbert above the row.
His whole
store stopped.
The
checkouts, crowded with carts and people, stopped ringing up the
dollars, which in Gilbert Summers' world made it an emergency.
He ordered
Mr Hang to take his family out of the store and not to come back.
He told the clerk to run their carts into the shelf lanes and then get
back to his desk 'pronto'.
Mr Hang
didn't move. He was clearly completely bewildered by the strange
behaviour of the Bossman. He knew about hard bargaining from the
market square at Lang Foo, but had never had a merchant snatch away his
goods and order him off!
This was
clearly a time to try another tack. He put his hand in his coat
to take out his wallet.
Gilbert
Summers, the clerk and a half-dozen others, hit the floor as if to get
through it. When they saw Mr Hang was holding his wallet and not
a Magnum revolver they got up sheepishly.
Mr Hang
shoved a piece of paper towards Gilbert. It was his honourable
discharge as a cleaner from the US Army back in Vietnam. (Hang was
using the 'returned soldier' ploy, or rather a 'Vietnamese ex-cleaner'
version of it.)
He
explained to Gilbert Summers that he had always liked the Americans and
had wanted to be in Texas ever since he had seen a John Wayne film
where everybody in it spoke Vietnamese. He had heard that Texas
was a land of opportunity where anybody could make their fortune if
they worked hard and knew that 'a dollar saved was a dollar earned'.
'Damn
right', said Summers, 'as my daddy told me, you'all work hard and live
like decent folks and you'all get by'.
'OK', said
a beaming Mr Hang, happy to have resolved the misunderstanding with
such a fine Texan as Gilbert Summers (though he didn't understand why
he spoke no Vietnamese).'Now about these oranges at $1.30. I'll
give you $1.15 if you throw in two tins of tomato soup at 35c each
...'.
It took
many months for Gilbert Summers to get used to Mr Hang and his
family. Likewise for Mr Hang, who found that if he waited until 5
p.m. each day he could get his fruit and vegetables from the Summer's
store much cheaper than they were in the morning (giving him a unique
insight into the American concept of the 'happy hour').
He also
found if he bought soup by the case he got a few cents off the per tin
price. Sometimes he sat outside the shop with his family for
hours and made trial runs inside to see if the price of tins of soup
had fallen in the past hour. Occasionally, the clerks would give in to
the Hangs just to get rid of them.
Other
times, Mr Hang chose to go in when the shop was busiest and delay the
checkout while he haggled over the price of three loaves of bread, or
fruit cake (for which Texarkana is famous), or the weekend's groceries.
Gilbert
Summers and Hang Ha Dong have got on fine since 1979. Their
families are soon to be related for the eldest Summers' boy began
courting young Miss Hang at the 1981 Thanksgiving.
She told
him that marriage was the price tag (and definitely COD only!),
but happily for the young lovers his future father-in-law had already
taught the good people of Texarkana about taking on a fixed price!'
[3]
|
[4]
A great euphoria has swept through some
countries on the allied side during the Gulf War. Like so many,
you may enjoy the feeling of being on the stronger side, which is
always a good feeling, especially when you can share it with virtually
everybody around you.
Being strong enables you to use your fists, and
that can also cause great elation - as many football hooligans know
only too well.
You can only show your strength if the other
guy is weak. Fortunately for the Allies in this war, Saddam
Hussein turned out to be weaker than he seemed, and he no longer had
his former ally, the Soviet Union, to support him and prevent any war
from even starting.
Unfortunately for the strong they often have to
inhibit the use of their fists because they lack a good moral
cause. Well, it does not usually stop them from using their
fists, but a bad conscience spoils the fun. And that is what
matters: do you feel good about what you are doing.
From the dawn of history it seems that the bad
are strong and the good are weak, and the peaceful are swallowed up by
the strong, as was intended with Kuwait, and as actually happened when
China annexed Tibet in 1950, and nobody came to Tibet's aid.
What was unique in the Gulf War is that
the other guy was not only weak but that he was also bad. If you
rejoiced in the strength of the allied forces, then you owe a debt of
gratitude to Saddam Hussein and his badness. Without his badness,
no fun for you.
| 'There was in President
Bush's pronouncements something of an understated swagger, a bit of
Clint Eastwood's deadly squint ... Bush seemed to relish playing
Dirty Harry. And how much more satisfying it was to turn his
scowl against a truly evil man in the name of principle, not
petroleum.' (Miller and Mylroie, p 228) |
This notion is not as absurd as it may seem at
first sight. In Christian theology, the first sin is that
committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, traditionally sited in
or near today's Iraq. It was so serious that Adam and Eve
themselves could not sufficiently atone for it, but that all their
descendants had to suffer in consequence, and all evil and suffering in
the world, including the present Gulf War, are due to it. It was
atoned for by the death of Jesus Christ, even though its consequences
still endure.
In the Exsultet, one of the ancient
prayers sung in Roman Catholic churches during the Easter Night Vigil,
Adam and Eve's heinous crime is therefore praised:
|
Haec nox est, in qua,
destructis vinculis mortis, Christus ab inferis victor ascendit.
O certe necessarium Adae
peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est!
O felix culpa,
quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!
|
This is the night in which Christ
destroyed the bonds of death and victoriously rose from the
grave...
O truly necessary was Adam's sin
which has been wiped away by Christ's death.
O fortunate sin, which
deserved to have such a great and worthy Redeemer!
|
Great events cast their shadows far
ahead. What happened in Kuwait and what happened to the Iraqi
army is epitomised by an event that befell the mother of western
democracy, Athens, almost 2,500 years ago.
There was a war between the city states of
Athens and of Sparta (on the Peloponnese). This is known as the
Peloponnesian War. It was described in detail by the famous Greek
historian Thucydides, a contemporary, from whose description I shall
quote at length, if only to prove that I am not inventing the close
parallels to the Kuwait war of 1990/91.
The Peloponnesian War lasted from 431 to 404
B.C. Athens and Sparta were part of 'the Greek world', as Kuwait
and Iraq are now part of 'the Arab world' or 'the Islamic world'.
Most communities (e.g. islands, cities, colonies) of the Greek world
fought on one side or the other. But, like Jordan today, there
was a little island state that wanted to remain neutral. This was
the island of Melos, nominally a colony of Sparta. The Athenians
were offended by the independent stance of Melos and felt that it would
reflect badly on their reputation as a powerful nation if they allowed
Melos to go its own way. They wanted to incorporate Melos into
their own empire.
In 427 B.C., they therefore sent a fleet of
sixty ships and 2,000 infantry men (hoplites): 'They wished to subdue
Melos, which, although it was an island, had refused to submit to
Athens or even to join the Athenian alliance. However, though
they laid the country waste, the Melians still refused to come to
terms.' (Thucydides 3, 91). Having tried in vain to intimidate
the Melians and having taught them a lesson, the fleet sailed away and
devoted itself to other military actions.
However, the Athenians, who had 'sea supremacy'
(the equivalent of today's 'air supremacy'), were sorely grieved at
having been given the brush-off by the paltry little island and were
determined to have their way. The people of Melos, similarly, no
longer felt much friendship for the Athenians.
Eleven years later, in 416 B.C., the Athenians
returned with a fleet and army that was still huge by the standards of
the time and especially when poised against tiny Melos: 36 ships, and
about 3000 soldiers (Thucydides 5, 84 ff). Two Athenian generals
met the Melian cabinet with last minute proposals designed, as the
Athenians said, 'to save your city from destruction'. They did
not attempt to use any grievances as a pretext for military action nor
did they want to hear any moral reasoning from the Melians, such as
that the Melians were neutral in the war and that they had never harmed
the Athenians. Instead, the Athenians said,
| 'you should try what it
is possible for you to get, taking into consideration what we both
really do think; since you know as well as we do that, when these
matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice
depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong
do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to
accept.' |
In other words, the Athenians enunciated the
following principle as a law of nature:
Actions are
governed by the principles of justice
only if the parties concerned are equally strong.
If the parties are not equally strong,
the stronger party prevails. |
In view of the large fleet anchored off-shore,
the Melians no longer argued about justice of the Athenians but used a
utilitarian argument:
| 'It is useful that you
should not destroy a principle that is to the general good of all men -
namely, that in the case of all who fall into danger there should be
such a thing as fair play and just dealing... And this is a
principle that affects you as much as anybody, since your own fall
would be visited by the most terrible vengeance and would be an example
to the world' |
(prophetic words which remind us not only of
what befell the Athenians on their next enterprise but also of what
happened to the Iraqi army).
The Athenians told the Melians not to
worry about the hypothetical fate of the Athenian empire.
|
'What we
shall do now is to show you that it is for the good of our own empire
that we are here and that it is for the preservation of your city that
we shall say what we are going to say. We do not want any trouble
in bringing you into our empire, and we want you to be spared for the
good both of yourselves and of ourselves. ... You, by giving in, would
save yourselves from disaster; we, by not destroying you, would be able
to profit from you.'
'We rule
the sea and you are islanders, and weaker islanders too than the
others; it is therefore particularly important that you should not
escape'.
|
The Melians brought
the possible reactions of other states into the discussion, the
neutrals and stronger protecting powers (such as the USA and the USSR
in our time).
| Melians: 'You will make
enemies of all states who are at present neutral, when they see what is
happening here and naturally conclude that in course of time you will
attack them too.' |
The Athenians were not concerned.
|
Athenians:
'This is no fair fight, with honour on one side and shame on the
other. It is rather a question of saving your lives and not
resisting those who are far too strong for you.'
Melians:
'Yet we know that in war fortune sometimes makes the odds more even
than could be expected from the difference in numbers of the two
sides. And if we surrender, then all our hope is lost at once,
whereas, so long as we remain in action, there is still a hope that we
may yet stand upright... It is difficult, and you may be sure that we
know it, for us to oppose your power and fortune, unless the terms be
equal. Nevertheless we trust that the gods will give us fortune
as good as yours, because we are standing for what is right against
what is wrong; and as for what we lack in power, we trust that it will
be made up for by our alliance with the Spartans, who are bound, if for
no other reason, then for honour's sake, and because we are their
kinsmen, to come to our help.'
|
The Athenians expect as much favour from the
gods as the Melians because their conduct is governed by a law of
nature and therefore right:
| 'It is a general and
necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can. This is not a
law that we made ourselves, nor were we the first to act upon it when
it was made. We found it already in existence, and we shall leave
it to exist for ever among those who come after us. We are merely
acting in accordance with it, and we know that you or anybody else with
the same power as ours would be acting in precisely the same way.' |
The Athenians
proceeded to demolish the hope the Melians put into their 'mother
country', Sparta. [This would be the USSR for Iraq, and the USA
or Great Britain for Kuwait.] The Spartans will not help you,
said the Athenians, because of their honour or because you are their
kinsmen. Like all other people the Spartans believe 'that what
they like doing is honourable and what suits their interests is just...
If one follows one's self-interest one wants to be safe, whereas the
path of justice and honour involves one in danger.' The Spartans
will not help you because it means risk and danger and they have
nothing to gain by it. You have nothing to offer them, even as an
ally, because you are weak and are asking for help. Think it over
while we adjourn the meeting, and remember 'that you are discussing the
fate of your country, that you have only one country, and that its
future for good or ill depends on this one single decision.'
When the meeting resumed the Melians
announced their decision:
| 'Our decision,
Athenians, is just the same as it was at first. We are not
prepared to give up in a short moment the liberty which our city has
enjoyed from its foundation for 700 years. We put our trust in
the fortune that the gods will send and which has saved us up to now,
and in the help of men - that is, of the Spartans; and so we shall try
to save ourselves. But we invite you to allow us to be friends of
yours and enemies to neither side, to make a treaty which shall be
agreeable to both you and us, and so to leave our country.' |
The Athenians broke
off the discussion and immediately began to blockade the island.
The Spartans did not come to assist the Melians. The blockade
lasted for about six months. During this time, the Melians made a
couple of successful attacks on the besieging forces. The
Athenians therefore brought reinforcements.
| 'The Melians
surrendered unconditionally to the Athenians, who put to death all the
men of military age whom they took, and sold the women and children as
slaves. Melos itself they took over for themselves, sending out
later a colony of 500 men.' (Thucydides, 5, 116). |
Correspondingly, for
some considerable time prior to the invasion, Iraq had been trying to
extort money from Kuwait and other Gulf states. (See Miller and
Mylroie for details.) The considerations which Thucydides
compressed so admirably in the Melian Dialogue were also raised during
that period.
| 'On Saturday, July 28
[1990], an American oil expert and former government official discussed
the crisis in the Gulf with a senior Iraqi official whom he knew
well. What did Iraq have up its sleeve? he asked his Iraqi
contact. "You'll see by next week", came the reply. The
expert pressed further. Was Iraq contemplating military
action? "By next week," the Iraqi said, "we will be protecting
the people of Kuwait." But what about the Americans? [cf the
Spartans in the Melian Dialogue.] The Iraqi paused. "The
Americans are a paper tiger," he said. "They won't do anything." |
The expert called the
State Department to report on his conversation. He was told not
to be concerned; the government was aware of Iraq's actions, but was
persuaded that Saddam was only blustering. He would not invade.'
(Miller and Mylroie, p 19)
On 31 July 1990, two days before the
invasion, the Melian Dialogue was re-enacted in Jeddah. Kuwait
and Iraq met under Saudi auspices 'to mediate their differences.'
|
'What happened at this crucial
meeting remains in dispute. Mohammed al-Mashat, the Iraqi
ambassador to the United States, said in effect that the Kuwaitis had
come to the meeting in bad faith, that they had been unwilling to
listen or to negotiate seriously [like the Melians]. "They were
arrogant," said Mashat. "The Kuwaitis were conducting themselves
like small-time grocery-store owners. The gap was irreconcilable,
so the meeting collapsed."
The Kuwaiti version of events, not
surprisingly, differs. According to Kuwaiti officials, the head
of Iraq's delegation opened the meeting with a list of demands.
He wanted Kuwait to cede some disputed territory and oil-pumping
rights, and to give Baghdad 10 billion. The Kuwaitis replied that
these were not negotations, but orders. Iraq told Kuwait to
consider the demands overnight [like the Athenians told the
Melians]. Having slept on it, Crown Prince Saad met one-on-one
with his Iraqi counterpart. But during the meeting, the Iraqi
developed a severe headache and retired in a huff to his room.
Saad pleaded with him not to leave, to no avail. Then Saudi Crown
Prince Abdullah tried to sway the Iraqi, who refused. "Nothing of
substance was ever discussed in Jeddah," a Kuwaiti official said.
Kuwait, he continued, had been
prepared to make concessions, if necessary. Specifically, the
Kuwaitis were prepared to write off Iraq's debt and to lease one of the
Kuwaiti islands in the gulf to Iraq, but the delegation needed further
instructions. Both sides agreed to talk further in Baghdad in a
few days.
At 2:00 A.M. the next morning, Iraqi
forces swept across the border and in the space of six hours had seized
and annexed Kuwait.' (Miller and Mylroie, p 19f)
|
As the Athenians
changed the population of Melos by killing and deporting the natives
and replacing them by their own people, so Iraq, after invading Kuwait,
killed and deported many Kuwaitis, imported Iraqis and destroyed the
public records in order to make it impossible to distinguish between
native Kuwaits and immigrants.
The meeting in Jeddah was only the last
step in a long-running dispute and, as the following observations show,
American observers seem to be judging it by the standards of Athenian
ideology:
| 'Kuwait had repeatedly
raised the debt issue as a bargaining chip whenever Iraq reiterated
demands for territory or more money after the [Iran-Iraq] war's
end. The Kuwaitis were accustomed to pressure from Iraq; after
all, the dispute over the Iraq-Kuwait border had continued, on and off,
for more than fifty years. What about your debt to us, the
Kuwaitis would politely, but firmly, reply. And what about
recognizing Kuwait's borders in exchange for forgiving the debt,
Kuwaitis would press. What was perceived as insulting Kuwaiti
intransigence infuriated Saddam. With hindsight, some diplomats
said, Kuwait might have prevented, or at least deferred, Iraqi
aggression if it had heeded its powerful neighbor. "When the lion
is hungry," a U.S. official said, "you don't tell it that there isn't
going to be any dinner." (Miller and Mylroie, p 10) |
You may disagree with
that maxime of appeasement. If you are on a sledge fleeing from a
pack of wolves, you must not throw meat at them to make them
desist. If you do, you will merely attract more wolves. The
same goes for sharks or for blackmailers.
The story of Athens or that of Iraq has not
ended yet.
Encouraged by their success in Melos, the
Athenians began to look for some bigger fry. So they turned their
attention to the island of Sicily in general and the city of Syracuse
in particular. Under the pretext of helping two Sicilian cities,
Segesta and Leontini, they sent a fleet to Sicily.
| 'It was an island of
this size that the Athenians were now so eager to attack. In fact
they aimed at conquering the whole of it, though they wanted at the
same time to make it look as though they were sending help to their own
kinsmen and to their newly acquired allies there' (Thucydides 6, 6). |
[Similarly, the
demands the Iraqis put to the Kuwaitis at the last meeting in Jeddah
were only a pretext.]
The Syracusans were no saints themselves:
'It seemed clear that Syracuse wanted to get rid of the Athenians only
for the purpose of tyrannising over her neighbours' (Bury, p
466). It seems to have been a case of the type that Luther warned
against (in 1528) when he advised that before fighting the Turks (as
'infidels') we should become better Christians ourselves:
| "So
gefiel mir da| auch nicht, da| man so treib, hetzt und reitzt die
Christen und die Fursten, den Türcken anzugreiffen und zu uberzihen,
ehe denn wir selb| un| besserten und al| die rechten Christen lebeten,
Welche alle beide stück und ein iglich| ynn sonderheit gnugsam ursach
ist, allen krieg zu widderraten. Denn da| wil ich keinem heiden
noch Türcken raten, schweige denn eym Christen, da| |ie angreiffen
odder krieg anfahen (welch| ist nicht|
ander| denn zu blut vergissen und zu verderben raten)...
So gelinget e| auch nymer nicht wol, wenn ein bube den
andern straffen und nicht zuvor selb| frum werden wil." |
Therefore I also did not like
that they are driving, inciting and encouraging the Christians and the
princes to attack the Turks and war against them before we ourselves
become better people and live like true Christians. These two
points together and each in its own right are enough reason to advise
against any war. For I will not advise any pagan or Turk, to say
nothing of Christians, that they should attack or start a war (which is
like advising people to shed blood and to destroy) ... Therefore
there is never any blessing if one knave wants to punish another and
not first better his own way of life. [5] |
This was a time when the Turks posed an acute
threat to Austria and Germany, one year before they managed to lay
siege to Vienna.
The admiral in charge of the Athenian
fleet, Nicias, had been against the expedition.
| 'The people, however,
elated by their recent triumph over Melos, were fascinated by the idea
of making new conquests in a distant, unfamiliar world; the ordinary
Athenian had very vague ideas of what Sicily meant; and carried away by
dreams of a western empire, he paid no more attention to the discreet
counsels of Nicias than to vote a hundred triremes [warships] instead
of the sixty that were asked for' (Bury, p 466). |
Even democracies can rejoice in war and indulge
in imperialism! If Nicias had been a dictator, the Sicilian
expedition would not have taken place.
The expedition set sail in 415 B.C. While
the expedition was on its way and the people of Athens were in their
euphoric and adventurous mood, Aristophanes wrote and performed his
famous comedy 'The Birds' (414 B.C.), in which he invented the term and
concept of 'Cloud-Cuckoo-Land', in which not only Saddam Hussein and
Don Quixote but also some enthusiastic western observers of the 1990
gulf war might well have felt at home.
In 414 B.C. the Athenians began to besiege
Syracuse but were not as skillful or successful as they might have
been. The siege or blockade was never complete. The
Syracusans received reinforcements, supplies and military
experts. The Atheneians were forced to send a second expedition
to rescue the first.
The Syracusans managed to lay siege to
the besieging Athenian land forces and to barricade the mouth of their
Great Harbour, thus preventing the Athenian fleet from leaving.
Unlike the differently designed Syracusan ships, the Athenian ships
were designed for the open sea and could not be manoeuvered well in the
narrow confines of the harbour. The Athenians tried to break
through the barricade. The Syracusan ships came out from all
sides and a long battle developed in the middle of the harbour, where
the Athenians were at a disadvantage. At last the Athenians were
forced back to the shore.
| 'As for the army on
land, the period of uncertainty was over, now one impulse overpowered
them all as they cried aloud and groaned in pain for what had happened,
some going down to give help to the ships, some to guard what was left
of their wall, while others (and these were now in the majority) began
to think of themselves and how they could get away safe.' |
[Cf the demoralised state of the Iraqi front
line soldiers when the ground 'battle' began.]
|
'Indeed, the panic of this moment was
something greater than anything they had ever known' (Thucydides 7, 71).
|
The Athenians now had only one hope - to escape
by land to the territories of their allies in Sicily. The
Syracusans [like the allies in the Kuwait war, with an eye in the Iraqi
Republican Guards] were determined not to let them escape, at least not
altogether, and for the same reasons. They
| 'thought it would be a
dangerous thing for Syracuse if so large an army were to get away by
land and settle in some part of Sicily from which it could wage war
against them again.' |
They therefore found a way of delaying the
start of the Athenian retreat, anticipated the route the Athenians were
trying to take [the Kuwait-Basra highway in the recent re-enactment],
set up road-blocks in strategic places and attacked and harassed the
retreating Athenian army from all sides for much of their march, which
took about a week.'
The 40,000 fleeing Athenians must have
been in a most desperate condition. They had to leave their
wounded and dead behind. They were carrying their own water and
provisions, knowing that they would not get further supplies until they
reached allied territory. Even so there was no longer enough food
in their camp. 'There were sad sights for every eye, sad thoughts
for every mind to feel... And then there was the degradation of
it all and the fact that all without exception were afflicted, so that,
although there may be some lightening of a burden when it is shared
with many others, this still did not make the burden seem any easier to
bear at the time, especially when they remembered the splendour and the
pride of their setting out and saw how mean and abject was the
conclusion. No Hellenic army had ever suffered such a
reverse. They had come to enslave others, and now they were
going away frightened of being enslaved themselves.' (Thucydides 7,
75).
As the retreating army started their march to
safety, their leader, Nicias, encouraged his soldiers:
|
'Other men before us have attacked
their neighbours, and, after doing what men will do, have suffered no
more than what men can bear. So it is now reasonable for us to
hope that the gods will be kinder to us, since by now we deserve their
pity rather than their jealousy' (Thucydides 7, 77).
|
After several days marching,
| 'the Athenians went
forward, and the cavalry and javelin-throwers of the Syracusans and
their allies came up in great numbers from both sides, hampering their
march with volleys of javelins and with cavalry charges on their
flanks... they forced their way up to the hill which had been
fortified. Here they found in front of them the enemy's infantry
ready to defend the fortification and drawn up many shields deep, since
the place was a narrow one. The Athenians charged and assaulted
the wall: missiles rained down on them from the hill, which rose
steeply, so that it was all the easier for those on it to be sure of
hitting their target.' (Thucydides 7, 79) |
[Cf the bombardment of the retreating Iraqis.]
The Syracusans then managed to separate the
retreating army. The rear part, under Demosthenes,
surrendered. Nicias, for his part of the army, was then asked to
do the same. He said
| 'he was prepared to
make an agreement with them in the name of the Athenians that, in
return for letting his army go, they would pay back to Syracuse all the
money that she had spent on the war [reparations]; until the money
should be paid he would give them Athenian citizens as hostages, one
man for each talent' (Thucydides 7, 83). |
[Like Saddam Hussein,
Nicias still tried to negotiate terms even though he was utterly
defeated and the allies were determined not to give an inch but to
trample him into the ground.] The Syracusans immediately rejected
these proposals [as did President Bush when Saddam Hussein tried to
negotiate in the week of his defeat]. So the retreat and the
attacks on the retreating army continued, and what follows is the
prototype for the carnage on the road from Kuwait to Basra.
|
'When day
came Nicias led his army on, and the Syracusans and their allies
pressed them hard in the same way as before, showering missiles and
hurling javelins in upon them from every side. The Athenians
hurried on towards the River Assinarus,
-
partly because they were under pressure from the attacks made upon them
from every side by the numbers of cavalry and the masses of other
troops, and thought that things would not be so bad if they got to the
river,
-
partly because they were exhausted and were longing for water to
drink.
Once they
reached the river, they rushed down into it, and now all discipline was
at an end. Every man wanted to be the first to get across, and,
as the enemy persisted in his attacks, the crossing now became a
difficult matter. Forced to crowd in close together, they fell
upon each other and trampled each other underfoot; some were killed
immediately by their own spears, others got entangled among themselves
and among the baggage and were swept away by the river. Syracusan
troops were stationed on the opposite bank, which was a steep
one. They hurled down their weapons from above on the Athenians,
most of whom, in a disordered mass, were greedily drinking in the deep
river-bed. And the Peloponnesians came down and slaughtered them,
especially those who were in the river. The water immediately
became foul, but nevertheless they went on drinking it, all muddy as it
was and stained with blood; indeed, most of them were fighting among
themselves to have it.
Finally,
when the many dead were by now heaped upon each other in the bed of the
stream, when part of the army had been destroyed there in the river,
and the few who managed to get away had been cut down by the cavalry,
Nicias surrendered himself... to do what they liked with him
personally, but to stop the slaughter of his soldiers... The
number of prisoners taken over in a body by the state was not very
large; great numbers, however, had been appropriated by their captors;
in fact the whole of Sicily was full of them [like the Iraqi desert
full of frightened Iraqi soldiers wandering aimlessly about], there
having been no fixed agreement for the surrender...' (Thucydides 7,
84-85).
|
The Athenian generals
Nicias and Demosthenes were put to death by the Syracusans.
| Two Syracusan generals
'would have wished to save them, but they were powerless in the face of
the intense feeling of fury against Athens which
animated Syracuse in the hour of her triumph. If a man's
punishment should be proportionate not to his intentions but to the
positive sum of mischief which his conduct has caused, no measure of
punishment would have been too great for the deserts of Nicias.
His incompetence, his incredible bungling, ruined the expedition and
led to the downfall of Athens [today Iraq]. But the blunders of
Nicias were merely the revelation of his own nature, and for his own
nature he could hardly be held accountable. The whole blame rests
with the Athenian people, who insisted on his playing a part for which
he was utterly unsuited... In estimating the character of the Athenian
people, we must not forget their choice of this hero of conscientious
indecision' (Bury, p 483). |
The famous theologian Paul Tillich has some
useful thoughts for the hour of our triumph:
| 'Wer nicht
die Zweideutigkeit in sich selbst und seinem Werk - auch dem
vollkommensten - erkennt, ist nicht menschlich reif, und eine Nation,
die nicht die Zweideutigkeit ihrer Größe gewahr wird, zeigt einen
Mangel an Reife... Die Kräfte, die für sich unzweideutige
Vollkommenheit beanspruchen, zerstören das Beste im amerikanischen
Geist, das, was einst eine Verfassung schuf, die auf der Erkenntnis der
Zweideutigkeit in aller Trägern der Macht beruht.' |
If a person
does not recognise the ambiguity in himself and his work, however
perfect it may be, he is not a mature human being, and a nation which
does not become aware of the ambiguity of its greatness displays a lack
of maturity... The forces which claim to be unambiguously perfect
destroy the best in the American spirit, that which once created a
constitution which is based on the knowledge that there is ambiguity in
all who have power. (Paul Tillich, Ges. Werke, Vol 13, Stuttgart
1972, p 429-430) |
The old world order is encapsulated in the
Melos Doctrine.
|
The Melos Doctrine
It is a general and necessary law of
nature
to rule whatever one can.
We found it already in existence,
and we shall leave it to exist for ever
among those who come after us.
|
It has been asserted, explicitly
or implicitly,
- that Saddam Hussein erred
because he played his game by the
rules of the old world order (the
Melos Doctrine),
- that he relied on strength rather than justice, and
- that he was defeated because, by the rules of the
new world order, it is not strength
but justice that wins and it was
accordingly the Americans and their
allies who had to win.
Did Saddam Hussein (Mr Badman) act in
accordance with the Melos doctrine, and the USA (Mr Goodman) did
not?
Were the Athenians wrong in asserting that the
Melos Doctrine would be valid 'for ever'? If so, when did it
cease to be valid or was it at least suspended in the one instance of
the Kuwait war. When was the new principle (justice triumphs over
strength) put into practice for the first time? During the Kuwait
war?
When the Soviets invaded Hungary (1956),
Czechoslovakia (1968), Afghanistan (1979), and when the Chinese annexed
Tibet (1950), nobody heeded the cries for help. Nobody saved the
Palestinians when they were driven out of their towns and
villages. Ben-Gurion reiterated the spirit of the Melos doctrine
in 1937 when he wrote to his son that, when the Jewish state was
created 'we will expel the Arabs and take their places' (Palumbo, p 32)
or when he said, on 19 December 1947: 'In each attack, a decisive blow
should be struck, resulting in the destruction of homes and the
expulsion of the population' (Palumbo, p 40).
On 9 April 1948, a massacre took place at the
Arab Village of Deir Yassin, west of Jerusalem. The British sent
an investigator, who reported:
|
' "Many
infants were also butchered and killed. I also saw one old woman
who gave her age as 104 who had been severely beaten about the head
with rifle butts. Women had bracelets torn from their arms and
rings from their fingers and parts of some women's ears were severed in
order to remove earrings." ...
After the
massacre, Menachem Begin sent an order of the day to the attackers of
Deir Yassin. "Accept congratulations on this splendid act of
conquest... Tell the soldiers you have made history in Israel."
' (Palumbo, p 55)
|
These were local examples for Saddam Hussein.
The fact that it is widely accepted that the
allied cause is just and that the allies won does not prove that the
Melos Doctrine is dead.
The Melos Doctrine says that the stronger party
wins, regardless of right or wrong, which was the case in
Kuwait:
1 Saddam Hussein
annexed Kuwait because he was stronger than Kuwait.
2 America and its
allies drove Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait because they were stronger
than Iraq.
If Saddam Hussein had had the backing of the
Soviet Union and if the Soviet Union had been strong enough, the
Americans would not have attacked and defeated Saddam Hussein.
The Melos Doctrine therefore still operates:
the only novelty is that in the past it was less predictable which
alliances would form and therefore which party would be stronger or
weaker, and which party would therefore prevail. With the demise
of the Soviet Union there are no longer two strongest players in the
world but only one, and the outcome of any action is therefore more
(but not entirely) predictable.
The acid test for the death of the Melos
Doctrine is not whether there is an instance when justice has won,
internationally, over injustice but: when did a weaker party win
over the stronger party because it had a just cause. When a
seemingly weaker party can go to law (e.g. intra-national = domestic
law) and win against a stronger party, the 'weaker' party is in fact
stronger because it has the law, the police and ultimately the majority
of the citizens on its side, i.e. here too the Melos Doctrine applies.
In case of the Kuwait War, we merely have to
ask:
1 Why did the allies intervene,
because they were good or because they were strong?
2 Why did the allies win,
because they were good or because they were strong?
That answer, at least, is obvious.
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