A war is a feud
between two leaders. The science of sociology combined with history reflects
this simple fact that people generally avoid hostility and find ways to settle
conflicts in a peaceful manner. Reading through war documents, we realize that
the rulers of so called democratic countries go through so much fabrication and
unending explanations and struggles in order to convince people to participate
in wars. In dictatorships, people have no choice anyway. And, there are
multitude of reasons why leaders of a country ignite a war to begin with. At
the very beginning of the revolution in Iran, Khomeini had showed his true
identity to people, and Iranians realized that he was not the soft hearted
human loving religious man he claimed to be before the collapse of the old
regime, but a hard headed theocrat who did not have any love for his country or
people, and a brutal dictator. As people started demanding their rights at the beginning
of the post-revolution Iran, he realized that a war was the best thing to keep
the society under his leash. He started egging on Saddam Hussein, as it is
documented. Saddam, another brutal ruler, received American blessing and
support to start his aggression: “During
Iraq’s epic struggle against the Ayatollah Khomeini, the United States of
course had more than spoken to Baghdad. Washington- choosing Iraq as lesser
evil against Shiite extremism- was responsible for huge amounts of weaponry,
military training, sophisticated technology, satellite-photo intelligence, and
billions of dollars reaching a needy Hussein, who was also lavishly supported
by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, they being concerned that Iran’s anti-monarchist
sentiments might spread to their own realms. Indeed, there is evidence that
Washington encouraged Iraq to attack Iran and ignite the war in the first
place. And during this period on American support of Hussein, he was certainly
the same odious, repressive, beastly thug as when he later came under American
moralistic rhetorical fire. Similarly, absent Washington’s prodding, the UN did
not condemn Iraq’s invasion, nor did it impose any sanctions or lay down any
demands. Even as it officially banned arms sales to either combatant, the US
secretly provided weapons to both. The other bête noire of the region, the
Ayatollah, received American arms and military intelligence on Iraq during the
war, so as to enhance the ability of the two countries to inflict maximum
devastation upon each other and stunt their growth as strong Middle-East
nations, (P. 332).” It is worth repeating this fact that Khomeini also went
to Iran as the leader of the revolution with American blessing, and the aim of
the war for the west was to destroy Shah’s ammunition stockpile.
