The nice thing for a political junkie like me is that I have finally seen some history complete itself. I can apply old news stories to current events then sprinkle them with some historical knowledge ‘cuz now I’ve read more than two books on a bunch of subjects. Yet, this is also a source of extreme frustration (something to get used to, my older friends tell me). I keep finding myself screaming (louder than usual) at some Morning Addition or CNN Special Report, “DUH! Where have you people been living? In a cave on the moon?” There are many of these situations and they grow, unfortunately, by the number of points on my blood pressure gauge. The Iraq War has been a 5+ year long scream, and folks, my voice is getting horse . . . .
According to Wikipedia, in 1986 Saddam Hussein began Operation Anfal, an anti-Kurdish and genocidal campaign. Between 1986 and 1989, Ali Hasan al-Majid, a cousin of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and better known by his nickname, “Chemical Ali”, conducted an ethnic cleansing campaign which included the use of 1) ground offensives and areal bombing of civilian areas, 2) systematic destruction of some 2,000 villages, which are described in Iraqi government documents as having been "burned," "destroyed," "demolished" and "purified,", 3) mass deportation and disappearances of tens of thousands, concentration, as well as 4) the use of the widespread use of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and the nerve agent GB, or Sarin, against the town of Halabja as well as dozens of Kurdish villages, killing many thousands of people, mainly women and children. Human Rights Watch estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were killed. Some Kurdish sources put the number higher, estimating 182,000.
At the end of the Gulf war, in 1991, the U.S. and other international parties provided no-fly zones (NFZ) to guarantee the safety and humanitarian assistance to the Kurdish population in northern Iraq (as well as to the Shi’tes of the south). These had various code names (Operation Provide Comfort, Operation Northern Watch) but continued without break. During December 1998, Iraq announced it would no longer respect the no-fly zones and resumed its efforts in shooting down Allied aircraft. Saddam Hussein offered a $14,000 reward to anyone who could accomplish this task, but no manned aircraft were ever shot down by Iraq. Airstrikes by the British and Americans against Iraqi anti-aircraft targets continued sporadically over the next few years. Despite illegal resupply of French and Russian surface to air missiles to Iraq, the NFZ operations had the effect of reducing Iraqi ability to counter air strikes prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Since the Iraq War, Kurds have a “semi-autonomous region”, code word for “heading toward independence”, and celebrate relative peace while their Iraq brothers and sisters have to worry if they will make it back from the local market.
As far as I am concerned, the Kurds deserve this because they may not have died as they did in 1986-89 had not the U.S. been friends with Hussein in the first place. A Michael Dobbs December 30, 2002 Washington Post article reminds us
“High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally.”
“The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait . . . . included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors . . . .”
We owed the Kurds because if we hadn’t bought Hussein as our answer to the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis to reinforce our, as Dobb aptly puts, “Middle Eastern domino theory” (can anyone say Vietnam mental math?), maybe, just maybe we wouldn’t have Kurdish blood on our hands in ’86. This is just another example of choosing one dictator over another then gaming the U.S. public with debate club style reasons and partial truths rather than doing the right thing.
And again, under this president, we still can’t do the right thing. Should George W. have come to me and said, “We need to go back to Iraq, finish the job and set the Kurds free-we owe them.” I would have enlisted myself. Instead we got half-baked ideology substantiated by half-baked lies that most 1st graders wouldn’t use to get out of a time out. The shame of this administration is that there was a good reason to invade Iraq and they were too stupid to spin it right (and they call Karl Rowe a political genius?) and finally do something amazing in the history of American foreign policy~something that ain’t self-centered.
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