Perspective: The Saudis detested Saddam Hussein but opposed the invasion and America’s vision for a post-Hussein Iraq
. Hussein uncovered the plot and executed 80 Iraqi officers. The CIA began to lose faith in the coup effort.The Saudis continued to push Washington to get rid of Hussein. However, Clinton’s foreign policy team balked for the same reason that Bush’s advisers had demurred in 1991. They wanted Hussein gone, but feared destabilizing Iraq to the advantage of Iran. Over time, the Clinton team resigned itself to Saddam’s continuation in power.
The 9/11 attacks put Hussein’s removal back on the agenda and in the sights of George W. Bush. Many of Bush’s advisers thought U.S. policy toward Iraq had become too passive and used the terrorist attacks to pursue a more hawkish approach. Given its previous failures, the CIAThe Saudis were alarmed by the plan to invade Iraq.
The Saudis were aghast when the Americans, post-invasion, launched a complete overhaul of Iraq’s political system. As Iraq’s Shiites came to power via democratic elections in 2005, Saudi Arabia’s then ruler, King Abdullah,that the country had been lost to Iran’s influence. Abdullah felt deeply betrayed by the Americans, whose Iraq project he found inexplicable.
In short, the overthrow of Hussein, when it finally happened in 2003, caused the Saudis to lose considerable faith in their American ally, exacerbating a rift between the two that started with 9/11 and that has deepened ever since.For the Americans, Saudi hostility to post-Hussein Iraq hindered efforts to stabilize the country. The success of the younger Bush’s Iraq project depended, in part, on its Arab neighbors, most especially Saudi Arabia, accepting the new Iraq.
This history reminds us that there was no good way to get rid of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leader was a menace, but the cost of his removal was an atrocious set of wars. Iraq, the rest of the Middle East and the United States are still recovering from those wars today — a full 20 years later.
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