Sins of the Father

Robert Gates, the nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of State was the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser during the failed 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War that may have led to the mass murder of 100,000 Shiite Iraqis:

On Feb. 15, 1991, President George H.W. Bush called on the Iraqi military and people to overthrow Saddam Hussein. On March 3, an Iraqi tank commander returning from Kuwait fired a shell through one of the portraits of Hussein in Basra's main square, igniting the southern uprising. A week later, Kurdish rebels ended Hussein's control over much of the north.

But although Bush had called for the rebellion, his administration was caught unprepared when it happened. The administration knew little about those in the Iraqi opposition because, as a matter of policy, it refused to talk to them. Policymakers tended to see Iraq's main ethnic groups in caricature: The Shiites were feared as pro-Iranian and the Kurds as anti-Turkish. Indeed, the U.S. administration seemed to prefer the continuation of the Baath regime (albeit without Hussein) to the success of the rebellion. As one National Security Council official told me at the time: "Our policy is to get rid of Saddam, not his regime."

The practical expression of this policy came in the decisions made by the military on the ground. U.S. commanders spurned the rebels' plea for help. The United States allowed Iraq to send Republican Guard units into southern cities and to fly helicopter gunships. (This in spite of a ban on flights, articulated by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf with considerable swagger: "You fly, you die.") The consequences were devastating. Hussein's forces leveled the historical centers of the Shiite towns, bombarded sacred Shiite shrines and executed thousands on the spot. By some estimates, 100,000 people died in reprisal killings between March and September. Many of these atrocities were committed in proximity to American troops, who were under orders not to intervene.

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.

The first Bush administration's decision to abandon the March uprising was a mistake of historic proportions. With U.S. help, or even neutrality, the March uprising could have succeeded, thus avoiding the need for a second costly war.

The obvious question is, "Did Bob Gates have a hand in shaping Bush's call for rebellion?"

If so, would he also partially responsible for failing to support the rebellion, leading to one of Saddam's greatest genocides? I do not know the answers to these questions, but they must be asked before he is confirmed as the next U.S. Secretary of Defense.

While I sincerely hope that the sentiment expressed on Austin Bay's blog that the Gates nomination may political prep for "prosecuting the war even more vociferously," I think that Mr. Gates and the present Bush Administration owe to it to us and the Iraqi people to explain in detail what role, if any, he played in an Administration that instigated, and then failed to support, the 1991 uprisings.

The administration of Bush '41 failed Iraq once when we cried for them to stand up for their freedom. The same personnel who failed Iraqis in 1991 should not be given the opportunity to do so again.

Update: It's up behind an annoying subscriber wall, But Allah says that the Wall Street Journal is on the same page.

One reason the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki has had such a hard time dismantling Shiite militias is because Shiites fear that it’s only a matter of time before the U.S. abandons them again and they will have to confront the Sunni Baathist insurgency on their own. If President Bush wants to reassure Shiites on this score and about Mr. Gates, he should announce that the recent efforts to appease the Sunni terrorist political fronts in Iraq have failed.

We presume Mr. Gates will be grilled about these and other issues during his confirmation hearings. He should be.