February 15, 1848: Lincoln: Pre-Emptive War Powers Make a President a King In a letter to his law partner, William H. Herndon, Abraham Lincoln disagrees with Herndon’s argument for preemptive war. “Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion… and you allow him to make war at pleasure.… The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.” [Lincoln, 2/15/1848] Entity Tags: Abraham Lincoln Category Tags: Legal Justification

1917: British ‘Liberate’ Baghdad; Author Will Draw Parallels to 2003 US ‘Liberation’ British forces invade Iraq and occupy Baghdad, ostensibly to save the Iraqis from the Ottoman Empire during World War I. In reality, the occupation is at least partly motivated by the desire to secure the Iraqi oil fields for Britain. Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude proclaims: “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. You people of Baghdad are not to understand that it is the wish of the British government to impose upon you alien institutions. It is the hope of the British government that once again the people of Baghdad shall flourish, enjoying their wealth and substance under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws.” Author and former CIA agent Larry Kolb will write in 2007: “That sounded a lot to me like the rosy assurances our own [American] leaders gave the Iraqis in 2003 not long after we flattened half of Baghdad and then drove our tanks into what was left of it. But history shows that eventually the British liberators were driven out of Iraq by pissed-off locals, the insurgency. Just as eventually British liberators were driven out of Palestine, by both Jews and Arabs. And just as Napoleon, the liberator of Egypt, had eventually been forced by the locals to abandon the Nile in humiliation. The track record of Western armies fighting local insurgencies is abysmal. If President Bush didn’t know that, surely someone on his staff should have.” [Kolb, 2007, pp. 93-94] Three years later, the British will find themselves battling a fierce insurgency in central Iraq (see Early 1920). Entity Tags: Stanley Maude, Larry Kolb Category Tags: Motives

August 11, 1954: Eisenhower: ‘I Don’t Believe There Is Such a Thing’ as Preventative War During a news conference, President Dwight D. Eisenhower answers a question about the idea of an American “preventative war” against Communism by saying the following: “All of us have heard this term ‘preventive war’ since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time, if we believe for one second that nuclear fission and fusion, that type of weapon, would be used in such a war—what is a preventive war? I would say a preventive war, if the words mean anything, is to wage some sort of quick police action in order that you might avoid a terrific cataclysm of destruction later. A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn’t preventive war; that is war. I don’t believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.” [White House, 8/11/1954] Entity Tags: Dwight Eisenhower Timeline Tags: US International Relations Category Tags: Legal Justification

1988: BBC: South Africa Sold Enriched Uranium to Iraq Iraq purchases enriched uranium from South Africa, with a “green light” from the US, according to a later claim by the BBC. South Africa has had a covert nuclear weapons program since 1973, and will continue working on nuclear devices, and perhaps supplying Iraq and other nations with uranium, until 1989, when it will dismantle its nuclear weapons program and decommission its nuclear enrichment plants. The BBC television news program Correspondent will claim in 2001 that according to Iraqi defectors, including a nuclear engineer and an assistant to Saddam Hussein’s son Uday Hussein, South Africa quietly shipped some 50 kilograms of uranium to Iraq for its nuclear weapons program. The BBC program will cite an anonymous South African intelligence official as one of its sources. “The story is true,” he will say. “About 50 kilograms were sold to the Iraqis. The Americans gave the green light for the deal.” [BBC, 9/24/2002] Entity Tags: Uday Hussein, British Broadcasting Corporation Category Tags: Alleged WMDs

October 2, 1989: Bush Signs National Security Directive Aimed at Normalizing Relations with Iraq President Bush signs National Security Directive (NSD) 26, which asserts: “Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to US national security. The United States remains committed to defend its vital interests in the region, if necessary and appropriate through the use of US military force, against the Soviet Union or any other regional power with interests inimical to our own. The United States also remains committed to support the individual and collective self-defense of friendly countries in the area to enable them to play a more active role in their own defense and thereby reduce the necessity for unilateral US military intervention.”

Policy on Iraq, Iran - NSD 26 is intended to promote the US’s outreach to Iraq as a counterweight to the “inimical” Gulf nation of Iran. The directive states, “Normal relations between the US and Iraq would serve our longer-term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East. The United States government should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior and to increase our influence with Iraq.” The directive also warns that Iraq would face “economic and political sanctions” if it continued to pursue biological and chemical weapons, and “[a]ny breach by Iraq of IAEA safeguards in its nuclear program will result in a similar response.”

Human Rights - The directive advocates making “[h]uman rights considerations” an “important element in our policy towards Iraq,” and states that Iraq should be steered away from “its meddling in external affairs, such as in Lebanon, and be encouraged to play a constructive role in negotiating a settlement with Iran and cooperating in the Middle East peace process.” The directive takes a much harder line on Iran, noting that before it can expect normalized relations with the US, it must “cease its support for international terrorism… help obtain the release of all American hostages… hal[t] its subversive activities…,” seek peaceful co-existence with Iraq, and “improv[e] its human rights practices.” [National Security Directive 26, 10/2/1989 ; Wilson, 2004, pp. 81-82] Entity Tags: Bush administration (41), George Herbert Walker Bush Category Tags: US-Iraq Collaboration, Weapons of Mass Destruction