| Sumario: | Once set in motion, refined, honored, and glorified, the machinery of murder developed its own impetus. After accomplishing its task faithfully in Kurdistan, it sought new territories where it could exercise its newly acquired skills. Is it not possible to view the invasion of Kuwait, and the killing of the civilians there, as the application of the Iraq domestic style of rule to foreign policy? Could it be construed as a modern skill, efficiency, and capacity that seeks to fulfill its mission in territories outside Iraq? A close examination of the language, symbols, and circumlocutions used in Iraq's propaganda war to justify the occupation of Kuwait might reveal that the Kuwaitis were described as yet another kind of weed to be removed from the BaX^thist vision of a united Arab world under that particular leadership. 1 International Herald Tribune. 7.10.1988, emphasis added. 2 London Review of Books, 7 March 1991,. 3 In 1988, Edward Said wrote the following lines: “In education, politics, history and culture there is at the present time a role to be played by secular opposition intellectuals, call them a class of informed and effective wet blankets who do not allow themselves the luxury of playing the identity game... but who more compassionately press the interests of the unheard, the unrepresented, the unconnected people of our world, and who do so not in the X^jargon of the authenticity' but with the accents of personal restraint, historical scepticism and committed intellect.' See Edward W Said, ”Identity, negation and violence,“ in New Left Review, 1988 no. 171,. 4 Ofra Bengio, Saddam speaks on the Gulf crisis: a collection of documents. Tel-Aviv: The Moshe Dayan Centre for Middle Eastern and African Studies. The Shiloah Institute, Tel-Aviv University, 1992,. 5 Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds, New York; Human Rights Watch, July 1993. 6 Middle East Watch, Bureaucracy of Repression: The Iraqi Government in Its Own Words, New York: Human Rights Watch, February 1994. 7 Frederick Axelgard, New Iraq? The Gulf War and implication of U.S. policy. New York: Praeger with CSIS, 1988. 8 For example, Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq since 1958. London: Kegan Paul International, 1987. 9 For example, Samir al-Khalil (pseudonym for Kanan Makiya), Republic of Fear. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989. 10 For the first attempt, see particularly part one in Kanan Makiya, Cruelty and silence: war, tyranny, uprising, and the Arab world. London: Cape, 1993. 11 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985 student edition,. 12 Emphasis added. 13 Emphasis added. 14 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. 15 Bauman, 1989,. 16 Bauman, 1989,. 17 Bauman, 1989,. 18 Recall Edward Said's attempt to create uncertainty about the events and Viorst's justification of repression by describing the Kurds as those 'who fought at Iran's side.” 19 How much may Washington have known about the Kurdish genocide as it was happening? Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by MEW and the National Security Archive throw scanty light on this contentious issue. One Defense Department cable, dated 19 April, 1988, notes that “an estimated 1.5 million Kurdish nationals have been resettled in camps”; that “approximately 700-100 villages and small residential areas were targeted for resettlement”; that “an unknown but reportedly large number of Kurds have been placed in X^cowncentration' (sic) camps located near the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian borders”; and that “movement by the local population throughout the north has been severely restricted.” The long section that follows is heavily deleted. [Genocide in Iraq, note 19] How much did the Saudi, the Kuwaiti and the Jordanian authorities know about the mass graves near their borders? In a document titled “Guidelines for U.S.-Iraq Policy,” prepared by the Bush transition team in January 1989, the new administration outlined its intention to develop relations with Saddam's Iraq. “It is up to the new Administration to decide whether to treat Iraq as distasteful dictatorship to be shunned where possible, or to recognize Iraq's present and potential power in the region and accord it relatively high priority. We strongly urge the later view.” Even though they described Iraq's human rights records as “abysmal,” Bush's foreign analysts concluded that “in no way should we associate ourselves with the 60-year Kurdish rebellion in Iraq or oppose Iraq's legitimate attempts to suppress it.” As quoted in James A. Bill and Robert Springborg, Politics in the Middle East. New York: Harper Colllins College Publishers, 4th Edition,. 20 Bauman, 1989, and Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and the “Jewish Question.” Princeton“ Princeton University Press, 1984,. 21 These lines of argument are drawn on Bauman.
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