Las distintas percepciones recogidas

During Gulf War ceasefire negotiations in the first week of March 1991 and with US troops withdrawing after Operation Desert Strike, Iraqis staged protests against their national government. Localised protests developed into larger uprisings across thirteen cities. The unrest began in southern Iraq led by the Shiite population. Not long after, the Peshmerga led their Kurdish compatriots in northern Iraq in armed rebellion.³³ The Peshmerga have waged an ongoing struggle for an independent Kurdistan since the 1920s and used Bush’s call for Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein as motivation for their latest rebellion. Iraq’s military deployed helicopter gunships to suppress the rebels and attack civilian populations in rebel strongholds.³⁴ Western media outlets reported Iraqi troops using chemical weapons³⁵and conducting mass, summary executions.³⁶

Peters and John T. Woolley, March 1, 1991.

33. For more on the history of the Kurdish struggle and the role of this particular uprising see:

Howard Adelman, “Humanitarian Intervention: The Case of the Kurds,” International Journal of Refugee Law 4, no. 1 (1992): 5–9; Harrington, “Operation Provide Comfort: A Perspective in International Law,” 638–39; Peter Malanczuk, “The Kurdish Crisis and Allied Intervention in the Aftermath of the Second Gulf War,” European Journal of International Law 2 (1991): 114–35;

Robert Olson, “Five stages of Kurdish nationalism:1880–1980,” Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs.

Journal 12, no. 2 (1991): 391–409.

34. Dan Balz and John M. Goshko, “Situation in Iraq ’Murky’; Rebels Claim Progress in North;

Army Seen Gaining South,” The Washington Post (Washington DC), March 20, 1991, a01.

35. Patrick E. Tyler, “After the War: US Juggling Iraq Policy,” The New York Times, April 13, 1991,

36. Nora Boustany, “A Trail of Death in Iraq; Shiite Refugees Tell of Atrocities by Republican Guard,” The Washington Post (Washington DC), March 26, 1991, a01.

The violence of the uprisings and the brutal government response led 40,000–100,000 Shiite refugees to flee across the border into Iran with a further 37,000 arriving in Saudi Arabia. More than 1.4 million Kurds entered Iran with a further 450,000 travelling towards the mountainous regions between Iraq and Turkey.³⁷ By 18 March 1991, Iraqi state media carried reports the uprising in the south were crushed,³⁸ however Western media continued featuring reports of massacres by the Iraqi military in the north and south of the country.³⁹

In this section I outline how Bush’s Gulf War rhetoric, because it was based on constructing a particular relationship between moral responsibility, victory and exit strategy justifications, affected exit strategy options in the subsequent humanitarian intervention. In particular, the deteriorating human rights situation in Iraq under-mined Bush’s framing of the Gulf War as a combined battlefield and moral triumph.

The Iraqi government committing atrocities against the Kurds created domestic pressure on Bush to gird his Gulf War victory by keeping troops in Iraq to deal with the humanitarian crisis rather than withdrawing them as initially promised.

Despite the worsening humanitarian crisis in March 1991, Bush’s public statements about American foreign policy in Iraq were preoccupied with Gulf War victory justifying American troop withdrawal. America’s Gulf War victory was a boon for Bush’s domestic popularity. On the day Bush declared the war officially over, his Gallup presidential job approval rating was 86 percent,⁴⁰ up from 58 percent immediately prior to the war.⁴¹ Almost a third (30 percent) of Bush’s comments about Iraq in March 1991 were about the US winning the Gulf War and he used the word ‘victory’ 14 times in 18 verbal texts during this time. Bush declared

37. Peter W. Galbraith, Refugees from War in Iraq: What Happened in 1991 and What May Happen in 2003, MPI Policy Brief 2 (Migration Policy Institute, February 2003).

38. Jonathan C Randal, “Kurds Report Uprising in Northern Iraq; Arab Leaders Meet in Damas-cus,” The Washington Post, March 6, 1991, Jonathan C Randal, “Iraq Says Rebellion Toll High;

Papers Print Photos of Bodies, Damage in Southern Cities,” The Washington Post, March 18, 1991, Dan Balz, “Bush Criticizes Iraq’s Use of Helicopters on Rebels; President, Mitterrand Confer in Martinique,” The Washington Post (Washington DC), March 15, 1991, a37.

39. Nora Boustany, “Refugees Tell of Turmoil in Iraq; Troops Recount Allied Onslaught,” The Washington Post (Washington DC), March 4, 1991, a01.

40. Gallup News Poll, “Presidential Job Approval Rating Interactive Chart,” August 9, 2018.

41. Ibid.

unequivocally America “won the war”,⁴² and “crush[ed] Saddam’s war machine”.⁴³ Bush gained political capital from the perceived success of the Gulf War creating opportunities to pursue other aspects of his foreign policy agenda, such as the Middle East peace process. Preserving the integrity of Gulf War victory was also important for Bush’s reputation as he headed into the 1992 presidential election campaigning season.

Bush framed US victory as important for its own sake but also because it was consistent with other US foreign policy expectations of exceptionalism and fighting evil. Bush focused on Saddam Hussein’s abject evilness,⁴⁴ contrasting it with American righteousness evident in Bush’s willingness to defend innocents from tyranny. Hussein was a “villain”,⁴⁵ “the village bully”⁴⁶ who had committed “war crimes”,⁴⁷ “tortures and insidious crimes”⁴⁸ in Kuwait that were “just sickening”⁴⁹ and “threatened the future of our children and the entire world”.⁵⁰ By contrast the US was a “humble nation”,⁵¹ a “beacon for democracy”⁵² and a “lamp of liberty”.⁵³ Americans had “selflessly confront[ed] evil for the sake of good in a land so far away”,⁵⁴ “lift[ing] the yoke of aggression and tyranny from a small country that many Americans had never even heard of, and we ask nothing in return”,⁵⁵ acting

42. George H. W. Bush, Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Cessation of the Persian Gulf Conflict, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, March 6, 1991.

43. Bush, Remarks at the Community Welcome for Returning Troops in Sumter, South Carolina.

44. Lordan, Case for Combat: How Presidents Persuade Americans to Go to War , 240; Hurst,

“The Rhetorical Strategy of George H. W. Bush during the Persian Gulf Crisis 1990–91: How to Help Lose a War You Won,” 381–82.

45. Bush, Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Cessation of the Persian Gulf Conflict .

46. Bush, The President’s News Conference on the Persian Gulf Conflict ; Bush, Interview With Middle Eastern Journalists, See also.

47. Bush, The President’s News Conference on the Persian Gulf Conflict .

48. Bush, The President’s News Conference on the Persian Gulf Conflict ; Bush, Question-and-Answer Session With Reporters in Bethesda, Maryland , See also.

49. Bush, The President’s News Conference on the Persian Gulf Conflict .

50. Bush, Radio Address to United States Armed Forces Stationed in the Persian Gulf Region.

51. George H. W. Bush, Remarks to Veterans Service Organizations, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, March 4, 1991.

52. Bush, Interview With Middle Eastern Journalists.

53. Bush, Question-and-Answer Session With Reporters in Bethesda, Maryland .

54. Bush, Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Cessation of the Persian Gulf Conflict .

55. Ibid.

“without arrogance”⁵⁶ and “not gloating”.⁵⁷ Bush unambiguously framed the Gulf War as a case of ‘us versus him’:

It’s right and wrong. It’s good and evil. He’s evil; our cause is right.⁵⁸

Having argued America’s actions in the Gulf ensured Winston Churchill’s vision had come to pass, a new world order where “the principles of justice and fair play. . . protect the weak against the strong”,⁵⁹ it was difficult for Bush to justify America not having a responsibility to the Iraqi people suffering under Hussein’s tyranny. The deteriorating human rights situation threatened to undermine Bush’s Gulf War victory and with it the president’s argument the new world order had

“passed the first test”.⁶⁰ Nevertheless, in March 1991 Bush argued against a US military response to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq because it risked a quagmire.

Analogising with the Vietnam War, Bush justified non-intervention on the grounds US troops would be “sucked into the internal civil war inside Iraq”.⁶¹ More than three-quarters of Bush’s comments about his exit strategy were thus about US troops withdrawing from Iraq (78 percent). Maintaining the integrity of America’s Gulf War victory as a symbol of the viability and virtue of the new world order, however required America to respond to war crimes perpetrated under the noses of US soldiers. Bush’s Gulf War discourse focused on the moral rightness of the war and this constrained the options he had to implement his planned exit strategy.

Keen to avoid a Vietnam Syndrome relapse, Bush paradoxically risked triggering one:

now military victory in Iraq had been achieved without a morally clear outcome.

Bush’s unwillingness to support Hussein’s latest victims raised doubts in the wider public discourse about America’s commitment and ability to defeat evil. In the aftermath of the Gulf War we can see the rhetorical tension Bush experienced between sticking to his exit strategy based on military victory and fulfilling America’s other

56. Bush, Remarks at the Community Welcome for Returning Troops in Sumter, South Carolina.

57. Ibid.

58. Bush, Interview With Middle Eastern Journalists.

59. George H. W. Bush, Proclamation 6257—For National Days of Thanksgiving, April 5-7, 1991, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, March 7, 1991.

60. Bush, Radio Address to United States Armed Forces Stationed in the Persian Gulf Region.

61. George H. W. Bush, Question-and-Answer Session with Reporters in Hobe Sound, Florida, ed.

Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, April 3, 1991.

moral responsibility expectations. While Bush talked of US “accomplishment”,⁶² other contributors to American domestic discourse had different ideas about what it meant to ‘get the job done’ in Iraq. Elite media commentators echoed Bush’s view the Vietnam Syndrome was now “buried in the Persian Gulf”.⁶³ The New York Times, for example, published 53 opinion pieces and editorials in March 1991 about the Gulf War victory and what it meant for future US foreign policy, 32 after Bush announced the US ceasefire and seven of which dealt predominantly with the Vietnam Syndrome. For its part The Washington Post published ten opinion/editorial pieces and The Wall Street Journal five articles on the topic over the same period. However media commentators disagreed with Bush that the US should not “interfere in the internal matters of Iraq”.⁶⁴ The overwhelming view was moral consistency demanded America help Iraqis rising up against Hussein.⁶⁵ Even commentators such as Leslie Gelb who, together with his Times’ editors, initially opposed US involvement in Iraq,⁶⁶ changed their views by the beginning of April 1991. Gelb argued intervention was potentially disastrous but failure to help the Kurds was worse.⁶⁷

Commentators in the Post and Journal were similarly unconvinced the attacks on Iraqi rebels were beyond US interest or responsibility given Bush’s demands for Hussein’s removal, as well as the fact US forces controlled a fifth of Iraq’s airspace and had previously established a protected area for Shiites in southern Iraq.⁶⁸Journal editors called for Bush to keep US forces in Iraq “until his work is done”, which they

62. Bush, The President’s News Conference on the Persian Gulf Conflict .

63. Doy S. Zakheim, “The Gulf War’s Aftermath Is the Vietnam Syndrome Dead?; Happily, It’s Buried In the Gulf,” The New York Times, March 4, 1991, See also Leslie H. Gelb, “Policy Monotheism,” The New York Times, March 17, 1991, Editorial, “A Mean Army, Made Leaner,”

The New York Times, March 30, 1991,

64. George H. W. Bush, The President’s News Conference With Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu of Japan in Newport Beach, California, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, April 4, 1991.

65. A. M. Rosenthal, “A Second US Victory,” The New York Times, March 22, 1991, William Safire, “Follow the Kurds to Save Iraq,” The New York Times, March 28, 1991, Flora Lewis,

“America Deserts the Rebels Cynically,” The New York Times, April 3, 1991, Tom Wicker, “A Confused Strategy,” The New York Times, March 30, 1991,

66. Leslie H. Gelb, “A Unified, Weak Iraq,” The New York Times, March 20, 1991, Editorial,

“The Quicksand in Iraq,” The New York Times, March 20, 1991,

67. Leslie H. Gelb, “Iraq: Drawing the Line,” The New York Times, April 3, 1991,

68. Paul A. Gigot, “Bush’s ‘Stability’ not so Appealing if You’re a Kurd,” The Wall Street Journal (New York), March 29, 1991, 10; David A. Korn, “Don’t Ignore Iraq’s Kurds; It’s Wrong, and It’s Shortsighted Policy,” The Washington Post, March 7, 1991, a23; Mary McGrory, “Bush’s Peace Problems,” The Washington Post, March 26, 1991, a02; Jim Hoagland, “Monumental Folly,” The Washington Post, March 29, 1991,

defined as securing Iraq and the stability of the Middle East.⁶⁹ Although these were more expansive obligations than Bush had initially set out for the military operation, they were consistent with Bush’s narrative about the Gulf War as an example of American moral authority shaping the post-Cold War order. Despite ostensibly

‘winning’ the Gulf War, Bush’s domestic audience was increasingly unwilling to accept the operation was ‘over’, let alone just and morally uncomplicated. Bush’s response to the Iraq crisis was a matter of political interest to his constituents. A Pew poll published on 19 March 1991 revealed 72 percent of Americans were closely watching the Gulf War aftermath.⁷⁰ Having earlier legitimised the Gulf War using emotions and moral evaluation, it was difficult for Bush to convincingly change tack and legitimise his decision not to intervene in Iraq because rational, ‘strategic’

considerations like maintaining Iraq’s territorial integrity to balance Iran, should now determine US actions in Iraq.

The question here, which also arises in subsequent interventions examined in this thesis, is why Bush was unwilling or unable to exercise the discursive power of his office and alter the narrative in favour of these more ’strategic’ considerations. The evidence suggests that these other justifications are not as powerful as those made earlier on the moral grounds, especially when presidents have intensified, doubled-down or hyperbolised those initial moral justifications. Thus in Iraq Bush became constrained by this earlier rhetoric and the normative expectations that underpinned it; these were the standards against which victory and success would be judged.

Mainstream media voices called for intervention as incumbent upon the US but Congress did not similarly pressure the president to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Instead, the House of Representatives and the Senate passed a series of resolutions commending Bush and the US military for their Gulf War victory.⁷¹ Two

69. Editorial, “George Bush’s Elbe,” The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 1991,

70. Times Mirror, “G.O.P. Collects Big War Dividend Survey, Mar, 1991,” March 14, 1991, Interviewing conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates 14-19 March 1991 and based on 2, 028 telephone interviews. Accessed August 11, 2018.

71. William S. Bromfield, “H.Res.95 - Commending the President and United States and allied military forces on the success of Operation Desert Storm,” Passed/agreed to in House, 102nd Congress, February 28, 1991, Robert J. Dole, “S.Con.Res.13 - A concurrent resolution commending the President and the Armed Forces for the success of Operation Desert Storm,” Agreed to in

resolutions introduced in March 1991 called on the UN to try Hussein and other members of the Iraqi government for war crimes, but these were isolated to alleged crimes committed inside Kuwait, not against the Iraqi people.⁷²

On 2 April, America’s NATO ally Turkey closed its border to Kurdish refugees, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.⁷³ On the same day the Turkish Ambassador wrote to the UN Security Council president requesting the Council “adopt necessary measures to put an end to this inhuman repression being carried out on a massive scale”,⁷⁴ a direct reference to the Council’s Chapter VII powers and mass atrocity prevention language characterising discussion of this and similar crises. Kurdish leaders appealed to the US, Saudi Arabian, UK and French governments for support but most of America’s Gulf War allies rejected the idea they had an ongoing moral responsibility in Iraq.⁷⁵ Like his American counterpart, UK Prime Minister John Major devoted much of his post-Gulf War rhetoric to discussing the UK’s contribution to victory and emphasising troops would be withdrawn immediately from the region.

Only France attempted, unsuccessfully, on 3 April 1991 to have the UNSC “say something” about the “unjustifiable violence in both the south and the north,

Senate, 102nd Congress, February 28, 1991, Pete V. Domenici, “S.J.Res.97 - A joint resolution to recognize and honor members of the reserve components of the Armed Forces of the United States for their contribution to victory in the Persian Gulf,” Passed Sentate, 102nd Congress, March 20, 1991,

72. Jim Ramstad, “H.Con.Res.81 - Calling upon the United Nations to take all appropriate steps to try Saddam Hussein and his subordinates for all war crimes,” 102^nd Congress, June 6, 1991, Jim Saxton, “H.Res.100 - To urge the establishment of an international military tribunal to prosecute war crimes arising out of the Persian Gulf conflict,” 102^nd Congress, March 18, 1991, John McCain,

“S.Res.69 - A resolution calling for the establishment of an international tribunal with jurisdiction to judge and punish the war crimes committed by the political and military leadership of Iraq,” 102^nd Congress, February 28, 1991, Areln Specter, “S.Res.71 - A resolution to encourage the President of the United States to confer with the sovereign state of Kuwait, countries of the Coalition or the United Nations to establish an International Criminal Court or an International Military Tribunal to try and punish all individuals, including President Saddam Hussein, involved in the planning or execution of Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity as defined under international law,” 102^nd Congress, Introduced 1991, George W. Gekas, “H.R.1336 - War Crimes Act of 1991,” Introduced, 102nd Congress, July 8, 1992,

73. Mahmut Bali Aykan, “Turkey’s Policy in Northern Iraq,” Middle Eastern Studies 32, no. 4 (1996): 343–66.

74. United Nations Security Council, Report of the Security Council: 16 June 1990–15 June 1991.

Official Records: Forty-Sixth Session Supplement No. 2 A/48/2 (New York: United Nations Security Council).

75. Malanczuk, “The Kurdish Crisis and Allied Intervention in the Aftermath of the Second Gulf War,” 119.

where the inhabitants of Kurdish origin have once again been tragically attacked”.⁷⁶ The French Foreign Minister Rolad Dumas went so far as to say the international community had a “duty” to intervene.⁷⁷ The US, USSR and China opposed France’s efforts arguing it would set a precedent for UN involvement in a state’s internal affairs.⁷⁸ Instead the UNSC concentrated on codifying the Gulf War ceasefire and demarcating the border between Iraq and Kuwait, as well as requiring Iraq pay reparations and destroy its weapon of mass destruction (WMD) and other military capabilities.⁷⁹ Bush’s view against intervention had initially dominated public discourse but domestic and international pressure on the president to respond more concretely now increased.⁸⁰

On 3 April 1991 The Washington Post published an opinion poll in which 55 percent of surveyed Americans thought the US should not have ended the Gulf War with Saddam Hussein still in power.⁸¹ Almost half of those surveyed (45 percent) thought America should help the rebels. Of these, 78 percent favoured targeting helicopters and 68 were in favour of giving the rebels weapons. But while 71 percent wanted to send US military advisers to help the rebels only 42 percent favoured ground troops.

On the one hand this indicated some trade-off in the public imagination between fulfilling America’s moral responsibility to the Kurds and protecting American soldiers but it also indicated a willingness to reinforce the Gulf War victory.⁸² On the same day that poll was published, Bush gave a press conference in which he reminded Americans the uprisings were not America’s responsibility because US forces “did not go there to settle all the internal affairs of Iraq” and US soldiers were

76. UN Security Council, Provisional Verbatim Record of the Two Thousand Nine Hundred and Eighty-Second Meeting S/PV.2982 (New York: United Nations Security Council, April 5, 1991), 94.

77. James Cockayne and David Malone, “Creeping Unilateralism: How Operation Provide Comfort and the No-Fly Zones in 1991 and 1992 Paved the Way for the Iraq Crisis of 2003,” Security Dialogue

77. James Cockayne and David Malone, “Creeping Unilateralism: How Operation Provide Comfort and the No-Fly Zones in 1991 and 1992 Paved the Way for the Iraq Crisis of 2003,” Security Dialogue