The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
–Albert Camus, THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS
As the world reacts to President Obama’s announcement of a multi-front air and ground proxy war—on the one hand, bombing ISIS inside Iraq and Syria, and on the other, ramping up arms and training for the vaguely defined Syrian “opposition”—we as a nation should reflect upon the Myth of Sisyphus.
Let’s Roll…
I joined the Marine Corps as an idealistic eighteen-year-old in 2000, with a firm resolve, as I enthusiastically told my recruiter shortly before leaving for boot camp, to “fight evil in the world”—a resolve rooted more deeply in my veins after the 9/11 attacks. Slogans such as “let’s roll!” echoed in my ears, and my fervor for “the mission” influenced others to follow my path of military service. While stationed in Quantico providing post-9/11 “first responder” security to headquarters assets in the area, I became close friends with a young local college student, also just out of high school, and I encouraged him to join up.
My friend embarked on multiple tours of duty within a short two years as a Marine infantryman, and was killed by an IED in Iraq on his third tour prior to his twenty-first birthday. He understood little about the place of his eventual death, as had been clear during our brief visits together as we reconnected between his deployments. We were never encouraged to learn about the history of Iraq or the Arab world, or to ask too many questions for that matter. “Let’s roll” was enough for us as we set out to “win hearts and minds.”
Uncovering Absurd Contradictions
As the power of such simple platitudes faded, I began to investigate for myself the history of U.S. involvement in the region: this search began in the library of Marine Corps University at MCB Quantico and led to my traveling to Syria upon completion of active service.
Few Americans know of the absurd contradictions of our foreign policy in Iraq and other places over the past few decades, yet I found that many Iraqis and Syrians knew the history well. The United States, through covert support of the Iraqi Ba’ath in the 1960’s and 1970’s, sponsored Saddam’s rise to power as a way to combat perceived communist influence and populist national movements in the Middle East. Throughout that time, the CIA-supported Ba’ath engaged in “cleansing campaigns” which involved door-to-door death squads offing Washington’s enemies based on questionable lists provided through covert liaisons.
Upon Saddam’s rising to the presidency in 1979, and while the Iranian Revolution drove forward just across the border, the United States encouraged Saddam to invade Iran, kick-starting the most devastating war in the region’s history. Most Americans still haven’t seen the easily accessible archive footage of Reagan’s then special envoy to the Middle East, Donald Rumsfeld, shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983, in what was clearly a warm and cordial visit.
Saddam would go on, during the course of a war that took over a million lives (1980-1988), to frequently employ chemical nerve agents against Iranian troop movements; later into the war this occurred with the assistance of the CIA and DIA. By the time of the 1988 gas attack against the Kurds of Halabja, U.S. covert assistance to Iraq’s military was established and routine.
And yet, Saddam soon became the new super-villain of the 1990’s and 2000’s, the very image of evil incarnate in the world—though his dictatorial and brutal rule had undergone no change from when he was the CIA’s man in Baghdad—only American perceptions of him did. The United States had helped to create the monster that in 2003 it was telling young men and women to travel across the world to destroy. Ironically, one of the main moral justifications for going after “the evil tyrant” was his gassing of the Kurds of Halabja.
Uncovering such an absurd contradiction of recent history made me feel like Sisyphus in Albert Camus’ famous essay. Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to his fate of pushing his boulder up the hill, must ever repeat the same process after it inevitably rolls back down the hill; he eventually becomes conscious of the futility of his action. We can imagine such tragic Sisyphean moments of realization in the minds of hundreds of thousands of veterans as they watched ISIS tear through places like Fallujah and Northern Iraq over the course of this past half year.
The Rock is Still Rolling
And yet, ISIS too, is a monster the United States helped to create.
Instead of two decades for the contradictions to come full circle, as was the case with the creation and destruction of Saddam Hussein, ISIS has gone from friend to monster within only two years. The U.S. armed forces, told by the White House of a minimal three-year long campaign to destroy ISIS, have barely recovered from the now seemingly futile burden of wars in post-Saddam Iraq and forgotten, ongoing Afghanistan.
As if the absurdity of the task of a renewed Iraq campaign mandated by the “gods” in Washington weren’t enough, we will now bomb ISIS locations in Syria while increasing the training and equipping of Syrian rebels. If there are military members and veterans out there, still not conscious that “there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor,” then I suggest watching the above video. The video gives insight into the Sisyphean task ahead of us as a nation: a never-ending cycle, old-yet-new, already set up for futility and failure.
Amazingly, the video, titled, “US Key Man in Syria Worked Closely with ISIL and Jabhat al Nusra,” has not yet had widespread distribution, even though it has been authenticated by the top Syria expert in the U.S., Joshua Landis, of the University of Oklahoma, and author of the hugely influential Syria Comment. Using his Twitter account, Dr. Landis commented (8/27): “in 2013 WINEP advocated sending all US military aid thru him [Col. Okaidi]. Underscores US problem w moderates.”
The video, documenting (now former) U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford’s visit to FSA Col. Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi in Northern Syria, also shows the same Col. Okaidi celebrating with and praising a well-known ISIS commander, Emir Abu Jandal, after conducting a joint operation. In an interview, the U.S. “key man” at that time (2013), through which U.S. assistance flowed, also praises ISIS and Al-Qaeda as the FSA’s “brothers.” The video further shows Okaidi proudly declaring that al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda in Syria) makes up ten percent the FSA.
I can think of no greater absurd foreign policy path to follow than to continue arming one wing of Syria’s rebels (only until very recently directly allied with the new “enemy”), while at the same time bombing another, and all the while declaring the necessity of continued “war on terror.”
Albert Camus concludes the myth thus, “I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again.”
This is the best summary of what I had already surmised in our foreign policy in recent years. What do you call it when the contradictions start to come so fast? A kind of vicious spiral? Yet imagine being so loyal you no longer see them? You become one of the ideal citizens of Big Brother, completely hooked on a daily news feed which will tell you how to react to enemies. The madness at the center is never confronted, except by the most radical of those who are antiwar. But madness it surely is.
I found the United States and NATO supporting the wrong side more often than not . Worse yet I have found Putin to be more a man of peace than we are .
Get your history right. Saddam became a US enemy when he invaded Kuwait.
ISIS became a US enemy when it pursued its own goals (creation of Caliphate) instead of our goals (overthrow of Assad). This became clear when it expanded outside of Syria.
He does have the story right
Thanks for your comment.
I think you are misreading the purpose and intent of my article.
Of course I understand that Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was a turning point, but his sudden image transformation as “evil tyrant”/”Hitler”/”international terrorist” ad absurdum…, based largely on actions that had always defined his regime, was manufactured for public consumption once his usefulness for Washington ran out (similar I think, to what we are seeing now with ISIS: only 6 months ago much of the population had never heard of ISIS, now it’s the threat of all threats!…my main point here generally is perception management of the public, not systematic analysis).
There’s much evidence to suggest that Saddam thought the U.S. would give him a free pass on Kuwait (the April Glaspie affair and all that…), and this makes sense considering the quiet Washington approval and assistance given him against Iran during the 1980’s.
-Brad Hoff
If you are keen on history andrewp111, then you will know that in the aftermath of WW1, the British and French imposed on the M.E. the borders we now recognise. The people in that neck of the woods had no input into where those borders were drawn.
At that time an Anglo-American oil exploration company discovered oil in southern Iraq (Mesopotamia), western interest were best served by creating The Kingdom of Kuwait, simply because there were existing port facilities providing convenient oil tanker access (Kurdistan also had oil reserves, but with difficult transportation).
Kuwait came into existence in 1922 (Kingdom is a western name, alien to Arab speakers, if it`s a Kingdom, it`s a western creation).
Saddam was simply attempting to correct a western imposed situation that the US was, in 1919, heavily involved in, the Kuwait “Kings” are willing compliant puppets, reliant on the US to maintain their power.
For what it`s worth, ISIS is a quite natural response to western manipulations in the Middle East, resentment to the west is standard amongst the Arab population, it`s not an “Arab Spring” we are seeing it`s an Arab revolution, no different from the French and Russian revolution, and no less bloody!.