Saturday’s front page Washington Post story ‘leaking’ word that the White House would soon name former Secretary of State James. A. Baker as yet another ‘special envoy’ to Iraq to assist Paul Bremer will send shivers down the spines of every Iraqi old enough to remember the American betrayal of 12 years ago.
Right after the first Gulf War ended in March 1991 – with Saddam’s forces expelled from Kuwait – the first Bush administration made all sorts of heady promises to the Kurds in northern Iraq and the Shiites is southern Iraq about imminent American support. These Iraqis came to believe that they would be protected against Saddam’s thugs and murderers. The two no-fly zones were created in part to protect the people under them. Soon enough these anti-Saddam Iraqis felt emboldened to oppose the Baath Party hierarchy; after all the all-powerful Americans had just whipped these forces in Kuwait, devastated Baghdad’s command and control, and promised to protect those who courageously stood up to Saddam.
But guess what happened?
The Americans cut and ran.
Led by Secretary of State James Baker and President George H.W. Bush, the administration literally reneged on all our pledges of aid and protection.
And do you know what happened next?
Saddam’s butchers – personally led on the ground by his two sons – rolled north and south and conducted widespread murders, mass killings and brutal executions too gruesome to recount here.
The mass graves being uncovered almost daily by our GI’s are the result of that American abandonment.
As the Wall Street Journals’ excellent writer, Paul Gigot, points out today on a visit to Iraq, the Iraqi people he meets are not hoping for the American troops to leave soon; they are deathly afraid the troops will leave too soon.
According to Gigot, the Iraqis are scarred and traumatized by Saddam’s thirty years of brutal rule: torture, rape, murder, abductions and indiscriminate cruelty. Our wonderful American troops are the protection from that. But, fear Iraqis, what happens if the GI’s leave? Will the Baath Party thugs – perhaps under the thumb of a ‘new’ Saddam – return? Would the world allow such a regime all over again?
1991 is only 12 years ago and indeed the world – especially the Americans – stood by while the anit-Saddam uprisings were allowed to happen by the broken promises of Baker and Bush.
And now another Bush wants to send Baker back to Iraq?
This is one old Bush hand who must not be brought out of retirement.