A Problem From Hell

by Samantha Power

  But the Reagan administration continued to act as though economic incentives and warm ties would influence Saddam Hussein’s regime. James Baker, then secretary of the treasury, wrote later:

  Diplomacy—as well as the American psyche—is fundamentally biased toward “improving relations.” Shifting a policy away from cooperation toward confrontation is always a more difficult proposition—particularly when support for the existing policy is as firmly embedded among various constituencies and bureaucratic interests as was the policy toward Iraq.112

  The Defense Intelligence Agency was issuing predictions that Hussein would likely try to “defeat decisively” or crush “once and for all” the Kurds, but U.S. diplomats downplayed the campaign against the Kurdish minority and hoped for the best.113

  U.S. patience would have worn thin far sooner if not for American farming, manufacturing, and geopolitical interests in Iraq. The policy of engagement was virtually uncontested at the State Department and White House. Internal memoranda thus tended to lament Iraqi repression only parenthetically: “Human rights and chemical weapons use aside, in many respects our political and economic interests run parallel with those of Iraq.”114

  One-quarter of the rice grown in Arkansas, Galbraith swiftly gathered, was exported to Iraq. Approximately 23 percent of overall U.S. rice output went there. One staffer representing Senator John Breaux of Louisiana actually appeared before Galbraith in tears and accused him of committing genocide against Louisiana rice growers. U.S. farmers also annually exported about 1 million tons of wheat to Iraq. As economist John Kenneth Galbraith, the father of the author of the sanctions package, mused to me years later, “The one thing you don’t want to do is take on the American farmer. There aren’t many left, but you’ve got to take care of them.” The administration got immediate assistance from U.S. farm and industry lobbyists who had read the Congressional Record and were horrified that the sanctions bill had slipped quietly by their Senate friends. With a hideous lack of irony, several chemical companies also called to inquire how their products might be affected if sanctions were imposed to punish chemical weapons use.

  What is both remarkable and typical about the shift in Senate sentiment toward the bill is that the senators who had voted for the sanctions bill on September 9, 1988, changed their votes without even taking the time to substantiate that a vote for the Prevention of Genocide Act would necessarily cost them the support of the special interests. Committee Staff Director Christianson recalls that this happened often on Capitol Hill:

  In many cases the Senators and their staffs overreact in terms of what they feel needs to be done to placate the special interests. They go one better. Or they anticipate a problem even before somebody has complained. They are so sensitive. They don’t say to themselves, “We vote with this lobby nine out of ten times, so we can afford to go our own way this time.” It is not a rational calculation. They feel that nothing is worth the risk of losing the support.

  Although these sources of opposition were obvious at the time, none of the bill’s critics dared argue that it was wrong to stop Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds; they “simply” argued that, “unfortunately,” the means that Senators Pell and Helms had selected—economic sanctions—and the place that foreign policy was being made—Capitol Hill—were inappropriate.

  The stories the U.S. officials told themselves are by now familiar and can be grouped into Hirschman’s futility, perversity, and jeopardy categories of justification. From the futility perspective, the Iraqi regime had already retreated into isolation and would not respond to outside pressure. What’s more, farmers and manufacturers from other countries would quickly fill the vacuum, so Hussein would end up with all the farm goods, credits, and trade he needed. From the perversity standpoint, slapping sanctions on Iraq would only anger the Iraqi dictator and make him more likely to punish the Kurds of northern Iraq. Economic sanctions would be “useless or counterproductive,” the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau argued. They would reduce U.S. influence over Iraq and allow European and Japanese businesses to help Iraq rebuild its economy.115 “If it wasn’t us,” the State Department’s Larry Pope insists today, “it would have been someone else.” France had a thriving arms business with Iraq. Germany nonchalantly sold insecticide and other chemicals to Baghdad. Britain’s commercial interests also took priority. One secret State Department briefing memo listed a set of sanctions, ranging from economic to diplomatic—for example, placing Iraq back on the terrorism list, withdrawing the U.S. ambassador from Baghdad, or suspending the military intelligence liaison relationship. The U.S. analyst concluded: “The disadvantages of all of these actions are obvious. In differing degrees, they would have a sharp negative impact on our ability to influence the Iraqi regime, and set in motion a downward spiral of action and reaction which would be unpredictable and uncontrollable.”116 U.S. diplomats in Baghdad warned, “If [Hussein] perceives a choice between correct relations with the USA and public humiliation, he will not hesitate to let the relationship fall completely by the wayside.”117

  Nowhere in the internal debates about the sanctions package can one find U.S. officials arguing that Hussein was more vulnerable to economic levers than ever before. After the war with Iran, Iraq was looking to roll over some $70 billion in debt, one of the highest per capita debts in the world. The Prevention of Genocide Act, which would have required Washington to vote against loans to Iraq at international financial institutions, could have ravaged Iraq’s credit rating and provoked a massive financial crisis that Hussein surely hoped to avoid.

  The United States had tremendous leverage with Iraq. Apart from supplying hefty agricultural and manufacturing credits, the United States was Iraq’s primary oil importer. But the Reagan administration viewed U.S. influence as something to be stored, not squandered.

  The administration and the special interests got help making their case for futility, perversity, and jeopardy from Middle East analysts. One scholar, Milton Viorst, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post entitled “Poison Gas and ‘Genocide’: The Shaky Case Against Iraq.” Nearly a full month after Shultz had confirmed Iraqi chemical attacks, Viorst urged Congress not to impose sanctions against Iraq because the punishment would be exacted for a crime “which, according to some authorities, may never have taken place.” He suggested that Iraqi radio intercepts were likely “subject to conflicting interpretations” and hinted that the United States might be adopting its new stand simply to placate Iran or to secure the release of U.S. hostages. Having spent a whole week in Iraq “looking into the question,” Viorst described the findings he had gathered from an Iraqi helicopter. He explained away the ruins of hundreds of Kurdish villages he had seen by arguing that the Iraqi army was simply denying sanctuary to Kurdish rebels. He could not say for sure that lethal gas had not been used, but even though he had been serviced and escorted by the Iraqi authorities, he felt confident enough to “conclude that if lethal gas was used, it was not used genocidally.” Without mentioning that any Kurd in Iraq who spoke to the press risked execution, Viorst noted, “If there had been large-scale killing, it is likely they would know and tell the world about it. But neither I nor any westerner I encountered heard such allegations.” He wrote, “In Baghdad, I attended a gala Kurdish wedding, where the eating, drinking and dancing belied any suggestion that the community was in danger.”118

  Opposing “Inaccurate Terms”

  The State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs had lost the fight with INR over Iraq’s culpability. But it succeeded in convincing Shultz to offend Iraq no further. “Our condemnation of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against the Kurdish insurgency has shaken the fragile U.S.-Iraqi relationship and been heavily criticized in the Arab world,” NEA head Murphy wrote. “We need to move quickly to ensure that our action is seen as anti–[chemical weapons], not anti-Iraq or pro-Iran.” “Specifically,” Murphy urged, “we should oppose legislation which uses inaccurate terms like genocide.”119 He offered no suggestions
as to how the United States might influence Iraq so that it would refrain from attacking the rural Kurdish populace. The bureau’s focus was on preservation of the U.S.-Iraq relationship.

  Shultz’s State Department heeded Murphy’s advice and framed virtually all criticism of Iraq in terms that focused on the particular weapons employed rather than the attacks themselves. Both publicly and in private meetings with senior Iraqis, Shultz described steep stakes to allowing chemical weapons use and proliferation. “For a long while this genie had been kept in the bottle,” Shultz said, explaining the diplomatic assault. Now, he added, “it’s out.”120 President Reagan used his final speech before the United Nations to propose the staging of an international conference that would nourish and reinforce the commitment of signatories to the 1925 Geneva protocol ban on chemical weapons use. His spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, stressed that U.S. relations with Iraq had warmed considerably in recent years. “We want to see those relations continue to develop,” he said. “Our position that we’ve taken on chemical warfare, chemical weapons, is in no way intended to diminish our interest in those bilateral relations.”121

  The Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs had conducted its own internal review of the genocide question and concluded that Iraq was putting down a rebellion and not committing genocide. “The Iraqi military campaign, brutal as it was, sought to reclaim territories occupied for years by rebels closely allied with, and financed, armed and reinforced by, Iran as a second front,” Assistant Secretary Murphy wrote. He insisted that since there was no evidence that Hussein intended to exterminate the Kurds, the genocide claim was far-fetched. “We see no evidence of an attempt to wipe out the Kurds as a whole,” Murphy proceeded. He has not changed his mind. “Genocide is something different,” he argues. “We knew he was doing brutal things to the Kurds, but you have to use the term ‘genocide’ very carefully, and it was clear to me that Hussein had no intention of exterminating all Kurds.” Murphy had never read the genocide convention and thus equated genocide with Hitler’s holistic campaign to wipe out every last Jew in Europe.

  Murphy’s NEA Bureau received support for this interpretation from Patrick E. Tyler in the Washington Post. On September 25, 1988, Tyler wrote a piece entitled simply, “The Kurds: It’s Not Genocide.” Although Iraq’s “massive and forced relocation” of Kurds was “horrible and historic,” Tyler wrote, “genocide, the extermination of a race of people and their culture. . . is not an accurate term for what is happening in this part of Iraq.”122 Tyler, too, ignored the legal definition of “genocide.” He also extrapolated on the basis of a superficial, strictly supervised tour of several major Kurdish towns. The article was datelined Batufa, one of many Kurdish cities untouched by the Anfal campaign. Only the rural Kurdish population had been targeted for extinction, and Tyler did not visit rural territory. The Washington Post’s Jonathan Randal testily describes the tendency of journalists inexperienced in the region to generalize wildly and irresponsibly. “All journalists seem to believe that life begins when they arrive. They get off the plane and expect to be instant experts,” he says. “The parties on the ground know when our deadlines are and play us like violins.” Western reporters saw bustling city life, but rural Kurds depended on their mountain life, which was off-limits. As one Kurdish spokesman said:

  The Kurds have a saying: “Level the mountains, and in a day the Kurds would be no more.” To a Kurd the mountain is no less than the embodiment of the deity: mountain is his mother, his refuge, his protector, his home, his farm, his market, his mate—and his only friend. . . . Kurds who settle in the cities outside the mountains—even those within Kurdistan proper—soon lose their true Kurdish identities.123

  At no point during the eighteen-month Iraqi campaign of destruction did Reagan administration officials condemn it, and they did all they could to kill the Senate sanctions package. Still, the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau continued to claim it had the same ends as the human rights advocates. “We should balance all our interests in this increasingly important country in order to achieve what we all seek in terms of [chemical weapon] restraints and human rights performance,” Murphy wrote.124 At a House hearing, he said, “Our opposition, I can assure you, is every bit as strong and outraged as your own. . . .We share the same goal, which is to end the use of chemical weaponry by Iraq [and] by any other state which has the capabilities. There is no daylight between us in what we are trying to accomplish.”125 The difference, as always, was one of “means.”

  Defeat

  When the Khmer Rouge starved and bludgeoned nearly 2 million people to death in Cambodia, journalists like Becker and Schanberg cared passionately about the place and the people, and U.S. diplomats like Twining and Quinn were revolted by the brutality of the new regime. But these journalists and diplomats had no hope that they could overcome the country’s Southeast Asia fatigue and generate an American response to KR terror. They felt their wisdom would land like a snowflake on the Potomac. Thus, although they diligently documented the horrors, they did not really lobby for U.S. engagement. Deep down, they seemed to doubt that the United States could ameliorate conditions on the ground. After Vietnam and Watergate, Americans retained little faith in the system.

  Galbraith began his crusade to have Saddam Hussein punished for genocide against the Kurds in 1988, nearly a decade after the KR ouster. In a short time much had changed on the international stage. The Cold War was thawing, and President Reagan had none of President Carter’s shyness about throwing U.S. weight around the world. But the United States was no more likely to try to curb a strategic partner’s human rights abuses, especially if doing so could harm U.S. economic interests.

  U.S. politicians were notoriously captive to special interests.126 Walter Lippmann once wrote of U.S. legislators, “They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether . . . the active-talking constituents like it immediately.”127

  But Galbraith believed that the Senate was an institution that, for all of its horse-trading, could act on principle. It need not become a “mere collection of local potato plots and cabbage grounds.”128 The Senate’s early vote for the Prevention of Genocide Act seemed to confirm that the body could do the right thing for the right reasons. But as the fallout from the bill’s initial Senate passage intensified, Galbraith began to fear the wrong result for the wrong reasons.

  The person most responsible for sabotaging the sanctions effort once it moved from the Senate to the House was Dan Rostenkowski (D.–Ill.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who would later be brought down in a corruption scandal. Influenced by the storm of protests on Capitol Hill, Rostenkowski moved to have Galbraith’s Prevention of Genocide Act “blue-slipped,” or returned to the Senate as a money bill unconstitutionally originating in the Senate.129 Rostenkowski’s argument was a weak one, but, as Lemkin had once said, “If somebody doesn’t like mustard, they will find a reason for opposing it.” Rostenkowski did not like this brand of mustard, and he killed the Pell-Helms Prevention of Genocide Act. Galbraith was stunned. “I thought the House would take this bill, mark it up, and make it law,” he remembers. “I didn’t think that business interests would kick in when such an abhorrent thing was taking place.” The Senate bill, many Congressmen said, had “gone a little too far.” For Galbraith, such euphemisms were code for criminal capitulation.

  All was not lost. The House developed its own version of the law, which supporters called “a measured response” to chemical weapons use. The House sanctions bill shifted the burden of proof away from the White House and omitted any reference to genocide. After successive rounds of ravaging in committee, the only sanctions the law retained were the ban on export-import credits used to purchase U.S. manufactured goods and the sale of chemicals that could be used in the production of chemical weapons. And lawmakers continued
to object to these because they said U.S. manufacturers would be harmed.

  Galbraith scratched the backs of those he thought could be swayed. But his aggressiveness and his single-mindedness did not charm all those who encountered him. “There was a lot of backlash against anything Peter did,” Christianson, his boss at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, remembers. “He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. They would pooh-pooh him as ‘emotional.’ Whether it was out of jealousy or because they were disdainful of his aggressiveness, he was not their favorite person.” Galbraith’s message was also not one lawmakers or State Department officials wanted to hear, as he was proposing something that promised no conceivable material gain and several prospective tangible losses. “Peter was, . . . well, Peter was Peter,” remembers Larry Pope of the State Department. “He was a pain in the neck and a real thorn in the side of our policy of engagement.”

  Whatever the Reagan administration’s objections, the half-measure soared through the House on September 27, 1988, with a huge bipartisan majority, 388–16. On October 11 the Senate approved, by a vote of 87–0, a revised bill almost identical to the one passed by the House. Although the bill was not very punishing, Galbraith thought it would signal at least some degree of disapproval of Hussein’s brutality and force President Reagan into the awkward position of deciding whether he opposed punishing Hussein enough to veto the congressional measure. On October 21, 1988, however, Galbraith learned that in a last-minute round of parliamentary maneuvering before the autumn adjournment, Representative Dante Fascell (D.–Fla.) had removed the sanctions bill from a tax bill that was certain to become law. Instead, in an effort to preserve his committee’s jurisdiction, Fascell put it into a freestanding bill that, because of its other provisions, had no chance of passage. The economic sanctions package never made it off Capitol Hill.