Eine lange Geschichte des Verrats

On Feb. 15, 1991, as coalition bombs fell on Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, President George H.W. Bush addressed the Iraqi people. “There is another way for the bloodshed to stop,” he declared, “and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.”

A few weeks later, Shiite rebels in southern Iraq and Kurdish fighters in the north rose up. And then—nothing. The Bush administration provided no support, actively blocked the transfer of captured Iraqi weapons to rebels, and allowed Saddam to use helicopter gunships to crush the uprising. Between 30,000 and 60,000 Shiites and some 20,000 Kurds were killed.

Bush’s defense was remarkable in its brazenness. “Do I think that the United States should bear guilt because of suggesting that the Iraqi people take matters into their own hands, with the implication being given by some that the United States would be there to support them militarily?” he asked a few weeks later. “That was not true. We never implied that.”

This was a lie by any reasonable reading. But as U.S. President Donald Trump’s behavior so far seems to suggest, it was also part of a long pattern.

Written by Seva Gunitsky