Fifteen years ago tomorrow, February 27, President George H. W. Bush declared that the liberation of Kuwait had been achieved.
A war born of the diplomatic incompetence of the first Bush Administration, was over, and an ill-fated uprising against Saddam Hussein instigated by the Shiites of southern Iraq was about to begin.
As Iraq teeters on the brink of civil war tonight, it is worth remembering one of the key events in how we got into our current mess.
Gulf War Synopsis
For those too young, or otherwise occupied in 1990 and 1991, a brief refresher on what led to the war.
In the early 1980s, the geniuses in the Reagan foreign policy braintrust decided it would be a great idea to incite Iraq to invade Iran (to be sure, Iraq was primed for the encouragement). The Reagan geniuses saw Iran as a threat to "export revolution" to other parts of the middle east, potentially toppling the other friendly dictators harvesting and shipping our oil supply.
So they leant covert support to Hussein, helped him develop a chemical-weapons manufacturing infrastructure, and helped finance the 8-year war that would cost more than 1 million lives - disproportionately Iranian, and disproportionately Shiites on both sides (The Iranians were almost all Shiites; on the Iraqi side, the Sunnis dominated the officer ranks, but the majority of the infantry were Shiites drafted into service).
As resources got increasingly strained, and Iraq seemed to be losing, the Iraqis, and those who supported them in our government, got increasingly desperate. One US trick to help keep Hussein going was to facilitate financial shell games through such institutions as BNL and BCCI -- leading to scandals that have completely disappeared down the memory-hole.
Another US trick to help Iraq was to get the Kuwaitis to lend $17 billion to Iraq, partly in exchange for the United States allowing Kuwaiti oil tankers to fly US flags, and sail under the protection of US forces. This was helpful in deterring Iranian attacks on said oil tankers.
After the war, however, Iraq was in bad shape and deep in debt. The Kuwaitis wanted to be repaid. Someone in Hussein's regime had the brainstorm that Iraq would be way better off if it just annexed Kuwait. This would automatically take care of that $17 billion debt, and provide Iraq with additional oil reserves worth many, many times that.
The US observed that Hussein was massing troops near the Kuwaiti border, and sent our ambassador, April Glaspie, to ask what was up. Glaspie's reported remark that the US took no position in Arab-Arab disputes may have contributed to Saddam's subsequent invasion. The US certainly did nothing to effectively deter Hussein, who invaded shortly thereafter.
The Liberation
"Central Command has just reported that the liberation of Kuwait has begun"
I will never forget hearing those words echo from a radio in my college dormitory as I walked down a hallway in January, 1991. After weeks of televised "light-shows" - explosions and tracer-rounds - on TV, coalition forces (and there really was a coalition that time) launched a ground attack on February 24. Three days later, it was pretty much over - for those of us watching from afar.
Four months later I ran into a school classmate - whom I had known since second grade - in a most unexpected place: the Minneapolis airport. We were both changing planes. I was on the way to visit some relatives before starting a summer internship. I would soon learn he was headed back to our home town on indefinite leave. He was talking a mile-a-minute and fidgeting constantly - not at all the calm and reserved kid I remembered from a few years earlier. Over dinner in an airport restaurant he recounted how he had been assigned to help clean-up the aftermath of an attack rained down on the Iraqi troops fleeing the US advance. I recall a reference to "the road from Khafji." Cleaning up - literally - thousands of charred corpses over the course of several weeks had triggered a nervous breakdown in him. He had spent several subsequent months undergoing unspecified treatments in Germany and was only now getting to come back to the US. He had no idea what the future held for him.
Besides the traumas of people like my old classmate, thousands of other US troops suffered "Gulf War Syndrome" - possibly related to the use of depleted uranium rounds, but ascribed to numerous other theories, as well.
But, to return to the time and the place where we started, on the ground in Iraq in February 1991, the main tragedy that is the focus of this diary was about to unfold.
The Uprising
During the air-campaign, President Bush had repeated called on the Shia to rise up against Saddam Hussein. Shortly after the "liberation of Kuwait" they took him up on it.
Quoting from an Op-Ed in the Washington Post a few years back:
Just 12 years ago, the Shiite Muslims who constitute a majority in Iraq and in the city of Baghdad were betrayed by the United States -- an act that may have cost them as many as 100,000 lives. That recent history -- of which the Shiites are understandably a good deal less forgetful than we -- explains why the Shiites in the south initially greeted invading American and British forces with a good deal more reserve than expected. And as the continuing turmoil in southern towns and cities makes clear, building a democratic state in Iraq over the long term will depend to a large degree on how strong and lasting a trust we can build among these people.
The suppression of the revolt did not just result in immediate casualties:
In recent years Baghdad has shortchanged the south in the distribution of food and medicine, contributing to severe malnutrition among vulnerable populations. Some 100 Shiite clerics have been murdered, including four senior ayatollahs. Draining the marshes displaced 400,000 Marsh Arabs, destroying a culture that is one of the world's oldest, as well as causing immeasurable ecological damage.
Should the US have supported the uprising? Let's consider the words of one strategic genius:
I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.
And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.
And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.
These, of course, were the reflections of the Secretary of Defense during the conflict, Dick Cheney, in 1992.
Unhappy Anniversary
The anniversary of the uprising could not come at a worse time for Iraq. We can only hope that Shia and Sunni leaders recognize the sheer depth of the downside if the current violence spirals out of control. But many people on both sides probably think they will come out ahead...
We certainly cannot hope for adept diplomatic intervention by the Bush Administration. Most of Bush's own Republican Guard has already given up hope, with many scattering frantically over the last few days to try and avoid being sucked down with W's ship. The die-hard loyalists are in crisis-mode - which for them means the energetic search for scapegoats that can be blamed for the debacle.
W, himself, given his toast to the governors tonight - that referenced his gratitude that they "brought honor and dignity to their offices" - is apparently trying to refocus his base on Monicagate. (The mind boggles that our great country could have blundered so badly as to allow these people to take charge.)
Meanwhile, Iraq teeters a match-strike away from a calamity that could make the last three years look like a mere prelude.