Regime Change, Literally:
Jordan's
King May Rule Post-War Iraq
by
William O. Beeman
Dissident Voice
February 23, 2003
A
recently revealed document suggests that until recently, regime change in Iraq
was considered not as a U.S. security issue, but as an Israeli one. PNS
commentator William O. Beeman looks at the ill-advised plan.
In September 2002, Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly
suggested that a post-war Iraq be unified with Jordan into a "Hashemite
Kingdom of Jordan and Iraq." The story was dismissed by many Middle East
experts as a wild rumor. However, the rumor has surfaced again, and it is given
new credence by the revelation of a document written in 1996 by Bush White House
policy makers now associated with Wolfowitz and Cheney.
The possibility that Iraq
could be ruled by the Royal Family of Jordan in the future gives new meaning to
the frequently used term "regime change."
It is admittedly impossible
to determine whether the Bush administration will ever adopt this improbable
scheme, but the fact that it is seriously discussed in the corridors of power
in Washington must make thoughtful Americans seriously question the competence
of those conducting the war effort.
In 1996, incoming Prime
Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu solicited foreign policy advice for his
government from a group of U.S. policy-makers. The document, entitled "A
Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," recommended the incoming
prime minister make a clean break with the past. The group saw Syria as the
principal threat to Israel. The policy-makers wrote: "Israel can shape its
strategic environment in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening,
containing and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing
Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq -- an important Israeli strategic objective
in its own right -- as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."
The authors of the report
included Richard Perle, now chairman of the Defense Science Board; Douglas
Feith, now U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy; and David Wurmser, author
of "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein," and
director of Middle East Studies of the conservative American Enterprise
Institute.
The surprise in this report
is the almost dismissive manner in which Saddam Hussein is mentioned. It is as
if he poses little danger in comparison to the Syrian threat. The authors talk
of his removal from power in an almost cavalier manner, and the idea that Iraq
could be simply absorbed into Jordan is an offhand remark: "Since Iraq's
future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it
would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites
in their efforts to redefine Iraq..."
The plan to
"redefine" Iraq into a Jordanian province was revised by Wolfowitz
and Cheney last year. After the death of King Hussein in 1999, they suggested
giving Iraq to Hussein's brother, Crown Prince Hassan, who had been deprived of
the throne in Amman on Hussein's deathbed in favor of his son Abdullah. This
was discussed in July 2002 in a meeting between Hassan and Iraqi opposition
leaders. Since King Faisal II of Iraq, who was deposed in 1958, was a Hashemite
and the second cousin of King Abdullah, this move was seen as having some vague
potential legitimacy with the Arab leadership.
The Hashemite plan has
numerous flaws. Most important, the Hashemites are a family rooted in what is
now Saudi Arabia. They are descendents of the sharif of the holy city of Mecca,
who was rewarded by the British for authorizing Arabs to fight their Muslim
brethren in the Ottoman Empire in World War I by having his son made king of
these two completely new nations, Jordan and Iraq. People in the region, even
Jordanians, still consider them foreign interlopers. Apparently, the plan also
paid no attention to the Kurds, Turkomen and Shiites of Iraq who would
certainly reject rule by King Abdullah or Crown Prince Hassan completely, even
if they were allowed autonomy or even separate states. Such a state would
undoubtedly fail in a paroxysm of civil discord more dangerous than the current
state of affairs.
But the most serious
political problem with the Hashemite scheme is how wildly different it is from
current strategies used to sell the Iraqi war to the world. Far from presenting
Iraq's destruction as a mere ploy in a strategy to weaken Syria, the White
House team members now present Saddam Hussein as the chief evil in the region.
White House rhetoric noticeably downplays those things that will not play well
with the American public: nation-building, the creation of new monarchical rule
instead of democratic institutions in the region and the fact that Israel reaps
the primary advantages from Iraq's elimination.
The Bush administration has
never revealed or discussed the 1996 document. Little wonder -- consideration
of American interests in the region were totally left out of it and its
subsequent manifestations. This poses the difficult question as to how
seriously those questions are being considered today.
William O. Beeman teaches anthropology and is director of
Middle East Studies at Brown University. He has lived and conducted research in
the region for over 30 years. Email: William_beeman@brown.edu.
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