by Nomad
Part 3- Reagan: Between Iran and Iraq
I will now conclude this examination of Reagan’s foreign policy, specifically his handling of two Middle-Eastern nations, Iran and Iraq, and the bloody war between them.
In this post, we shall see how Reagan’s diplomacy failures and hypocrisies would take a disastrous turn and lead to scandal.
Crossing the Line
Let's begin with a quote:
Let's begin with a quote:
They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.-- Ronald Reagan
The executive decision to begin arming and providing military intelligence to Saddam Hussein, despite an American pretense of neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war, had, by 1983, become more complicated when reports confirmed Hussein’s use of outlawed chemical weapons(CW) on the battlefield.
As early as November 1983, US officials were aware that top secret memos confirmed that Hussein had been using CW. Furthermore, they suspected the source of those weapons to be a US foreign subsidiary
But even then, it wasn’t so much of a moral question or even a legal one. It was a matter of public relations. According to a New York Times article in August, 2002, Col. Walter P. Lang, a senior defense intelligence officer at the time, explained that D.I.A. and C.I.A. officials “were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose” to Iran. “The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern,” he said. One veteran said, that the Pentagon “wasn’t so horrified by Iraq’s use of gas.” “It was just another way of killing people _ whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn’t make any difference.”
(Compare that with the mock outrage against WMD that helped launch the Iraq Invasion and occupation.)
