Introduction to Geopolitics

thawra
(revolution) against 
tharwa
(wealth) (Long, 2004, p. 29).
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97
Figure 4.5
Saddam Hussein: benefactor of the Arab world.

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President George H.W. Bush’s efforts to establish a UN approved, but US-led,
coalition to oust Iraq from Kuwait provided another rhetorical angle for Hussein. 
As US troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia, Hussein began to portray the conflict as
a religious one; Islam was under threat from Zionism and colonialism. This clever move
by Hussein added the plight of the Palestinians into his message, painting a picture of
his geopolitical code as a defense of the most downtrodden of all Arabs, rather than a
grab of oil reserves. Also, it turned the coming conflict with US forces into a defense
of Islam against a new “crusade” with, of course, Hussein and the Iraqi people at the
vanguard. Hussein was portraying Iraqi geopolitics in terms of pan-Arab social justice,
the long-awaited stand against Zionism, and a defense of the Islamic religion.
On December 10, the Iraqi Ba’thist party released the following communiqué, which
leaned heavily toward the secular language of Arab nationalism:
Masses of our militant Arab masses, the Arab Socialist Ba’th Party, which
considers this pan-Arab confrontation the Arab nation’s battle, calls on you to
entrench military cohesion . . . [and] to assert the reality of the dialectical
relationship between Iraq’s steadfastness and the inevitability of its victory in
the crucial battle on the one hand and the intifadah of the occupied territory
and the liberation of Palestine . . . on the other.
(Quoted in Long, 2004, p. 92)
On August 24, Baghdad Radio gave a special broadcast entitled “Muslim Unity
Needed” in which the following geopolitical claims were made:
From the religious point of view a Muslim cannot ask for help from a non-
Muslim under any circumstances but the infidel Saudi ruler asked for the
protection of Israel and the US which are both not only non-Muslim but also
hold a grudge against Islam. It is the same old imperialist ways of intervention
in an occupation of others’ territories. The world cannot forget the American
crimes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki nor can the world forget the lesson taught
to the Americans in Saigon, Vietnam, and Korea where the American’s poison
gas and napalm proved to be of no effect.
(Quoted in Long, 2004, p. 106)
Iraq’s forces were defeated overwhelmingly by the number and technical superiority
of US-led forces. While a ticker tape parade welcomed home the commander General
Schwarzkopf, coalition forces were slow in reacting to Hussein’s brutal efforts to cling
on to his authority. Uprisings in Shia areas in the south and Kurdish regions in the north
were suppressed brutally. In the wake of disturbing pictures of Kurdish refugees, the
coalition eventually acted through the imposition of “no-fly zones” that constrained the
geographic reach of Hussein’s regime.