Stephen C. Pelletiere has an article on the US War College site on what's wrong with the dual containment policy:
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/ssipubs/pubs99/dual/dual.htm
There's a lot of good stuff in it, especially if you don't count the recommendations section. But I thought the following passage was worth excerpting for the list. Endnotes at end.
<snip>
Bombs Away.
At present, the United States is using bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Turkey to stage air attacks against targets inside Iraq. Washington has imposed two security zones, one in the north of that country, one in the south, where, according to U.S. dictat, no Iraqi planescan fly; Iraqi aircraft caught in either of the two zones are shot down. Moreover, if Iraqi air defenses attempt to protect the planes, they are targeted.
Obviously, in the process of doing this, some destruction is wrought, not only to military sites but to civilians as well." This, in some measure is due to the Iraqis' refusal to respect the zones. They regard them as violations of their sovereignty, and provoke engagements which produce the destruction.
For the United States, the air campaign is not a high priority; Washington is barely preoccupied with keeping it going. Indeed, the campaign has been going on for so long now, it practically runs itself. As long as there are no American casualties (i.e., planes shot down), Washington is unlikely to alter its present stance of harrassing the Iraqis.
This is a mistake. The policy is having an extraordinary effect on the Iraqi people. Indeed, it is engendering intense hatred of the United States; not simply because the bombing has gone on for so long, but because it was ever undertaken in the first place.
Of all the tactics America could have chosen to use against Iraq, this one was by the far the most ill-conceived. To understand why, one must know something of the history of the country.
It was against the Iraqis that the first known use of air power as a policing instrument was recorded. 55 The British introduced the practice there in the 1920s when they had the mandate over the country. (This was before the Italians employed aerial attacks against the Ethiopians in Abyssinia, or the Germans against the Spanish at Guernica.)
At the time, bombing civilians was regarded-even among upper class Englishmen-as a "barbaric practice." 56 Not only did the British strafe and bomb Iraqi tribesmen, they deliberately burnt their crops using incendiary devices dropped from planes.57
Such was the international outcry over this that Churchill, then Britain's Foreign secretary, was forced to defend the bombing policy. He said,
<quote>
Aerial action is a legitimate means of quelling disturbances and of enforcing the maintenance of order but it should under no circumstances be employed in support of purely administrative measures such as the collection of revenue . . . (A reference to the fact that the R.A.F. was bombing Iraqis as a way of softening them up before the tax collectors appeared.)58
<endquote>
Over the years (and the British did not leave Iraq until 1958), thousands of Iraqis quit their farms in the southeast, the area hardest hit by the bombing, to gather in shanty towns in the capital of Baghdad and in other large cities. 59
These shurugis (easterners) constituted a rabble, which in time became a menace to public order. At the slightest provocation, the shurugis would erupt. Any demonstration in the capital-by students, labor unions, or whomever-would draw out the shurugis, who would then indulge in an orgy of violent destruction.60
When, in 1958, the Iraqi army pulled a coup, the shurugis erupted and effectively took it over; that precipitated the horrendous revolution (as mentioned earlier). As specialists on Iraq can testify, the country's history from 1958 to 1968 is replete with instances of mob violence, perpetrated by the lower class elements in Baghdad, Mosul, and Kirkuk.61
The descendents of the shurugis (and indeed many of the original members of the class are still living) remember the British imposed air campaign with loathing. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that it has become part of Iraq's national myth-the heroic defiance by the Iraqis of the inhuman British aerial attacks.
The United States, by replicating this precise method of control, has transferred all of that hostility to itself. Indeed, the author would argue that this has converted Dual Containment from a static to a dynamic policy-the dynamism of breakdown and, ultimately, of violent confrontation.
It is the author's view that, if this tactic is continued, the hatred aga i nst us wi I I grow to such a degree that, even were we to succeed in overthrowing the regime, we would never be able to influence the Iraqis, even were we to occupy the country.
------------- 52. See" Iraq Blames Iran for Failure of Talks on POWs," Baghdad Republic of Iraq Radio Network August 16, 1999, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, FTS199990816000545, also "Iraqi Writer Questions Iranian 'Hostile' Policy," Baghdad Babil, August 9, 1999, Foreign Broadcast Information Service FTS19990812001219.
53. See "MKO on 'Sporadic' Clashes between Muhajadin, Guards," Iran-e-Azad WWW, August 4, 1999, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, FTS19990806001140.
54. See "In Intense but Little-Noticed Fight, Allies Have Bombed Iraq All Year," The New York Times, August 13, 1999; "Eight Iraqis Killed in 19 Jul Air Raids," Baghdad Republic of Iraq Radio Network July 29, 1999, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, FTS19990729001058.
55. The best treatment of this episode is found in Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq, 1914-1932, London: Ithaca Press, 1976, p. 259 f.
56. See Sluglett, Britain in Iraq.
57. Sluglett cites as a typical raid one which was carried out over a 2-week period in 1923 and which resulted in 144 people being killed and an unspecified number wounded. Sluglett, Britain in Iraq.
58. Sluglett, Britain in Iraq, p. 264.
59. For details on this period, see Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq 1900-1963, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.