Gen. COLIN POWELL: The only issue that came
up is, "Should we do something about the Iraqi
helicopters?" It had never been one of our
objectives to get involved in this kind of
civil uprising between factions within Iraq
and the Iraqi government. And so it was not
clear what purpose would have been achieved
by getting ourselves mixed up in the middle
of that.
NARRATOR: [April 6, 1991, Houston, Texas]
A week after the Iraqis attacked the Kurds,
the president went home to Houston to celebrate
his victory. But the television images of
the Kurdish exodus were making that victory
ring hollow. The president asked James Baker
to see how the situation could be defused.
JAMES BAKER: We did not want to take on the
responsibility for having to create a safe
haven there. And if it was going to be enforced,
it wasn't going to be enforced by others.
It was going to have to be enforced by- by
Uncle Whiskers. And we really didn't want
to do it.
NARRATOR: [April 8, 1991, Northern Iraq]Baker's
aides suggested a visit to the Kurds.
JAMES BAKER: As we were flying along, we all
of a sudden saw a whole sea of people camped
out in the mountains. And this was early spring,
when it was quite cold. We landed there and
then we took four-wheel-drive vehicles up
the mountain. There were 50,000 to 75,000
people in this little valley. Every piece
of ground had a little tent or a makeshift
shelter on it and they'd cut down all the
trees for firewood. And they were drinking
out of the mountain streams and some were
barefooted.
NARRATOR: Baker was able to spend only seven
minutes on the ground before security men
hustled him away. But he saw and heard enough
to be sure this was not just a humanitarian
nightmare. It also had the potential to become
a political disaster.
JAMES BAKER: I called the president from the
airplane and told him I'd never seen anything
like this and there are a lot_ that a lot
of people were going to die if we didn't do
something and do something quickly and that
he needed to_ to really break_ break whatever
china was required in order to get it done.
Pres. GEORGE BUSH: [April 16, 1991] I have
directed the U.S. military to begin immediately
to establish several encampments in northern
Iraq where relief supplies for these refugees
will be made available in large quantities.
NARRATOR: Once the safe havens were established,
the Iraqis backed off, raising questions about
how much suffering could have been avoided
if decisive action had been taken earlier.
The men who planned the war feared what they
called a "ragged ending," a quagmire like
Vietnam or a stalemate like Korea. They had
been completely surprised by what actually
happened: two rebellions brutally suppressed
by an Iraqi military which threw in its lot
with the humiliated Saddam and kept him in
power. This was a ragged ending no one had
seen coming.
[March 14, 1991, Kuwait City] Two weeks after
the liberation, the emir of Kuwait returned
to his country. The allies had fought a war
for Kuwait and its oil and against the tyranny
of Saddam, but the promises of a greater democracy
in Kuwait would come to little.
On the streets, the priority was revenge.
Hundreds of Kuwaitis had died during the occupation
and now vigilantes picked up suspected collaborators
on the flimsiest of evidence. The PLO leader
Yasser Arafat had supported Saddam Hussein
and now all Palestinians were under suspicion.
Many were tortured, hundreds disappeared and
400,000 were eventually driven out of the
country.
[June 8, 1991, Washington, D.C.]But for the
American military, its stunning victory over
the Iraqis and over its own demons seemed
complete.
Gen. COLIN POWELL: I was just thinking, as
I sat in the stands watching Norm and the
guys walk by, "This is incredible. We have
come a far piece from the early 1970s when
we came home to a state of being ignored."
We had come a long way to rebuild the armed
forces of the United States.
Gen. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF: I was in Vietnam
twice and I couldn't help but just think to
myself, "This is the right way to come home
to your country," and it tended to exorcise
a lot of ghosts and a lot of wounds that all
of us over in Vietnam carried with us.
Gen. FREDERICK FRANKS, Commander, VII Corps:
After it was all over, my wife and I walked
over to the Vietnam Memorial and talked to
some of the Vietnam veterans who were there.
And I said to them, "Hey, this one's for you,
too."
NARRATOR: [June 10, 1991, New York City] If
the victory in the Gulf buried America's Vietnam
syndrome, it also resurrected war as a means
of achieving national objectives and it demonstrated
that America's generals would again have a
tremendous influence on how those wars would
be fought.
BERNARD TRAINOR, Author, The Generals' War:
The war showed that Colin Powell is an enormously
conservative man who was reluctant to use
military force as an active instrument of
foreign policy and diplomacy.
The war, as it unfolded, was in keeping with
his concept of what warfare should be and
the so-called "Powell Doctrine," with an objective
in getting in very quickly with overwhelming
force, if you have to use that force, but
reluctant to use it, in the first instance,
but if you use it, use it in a big way and
then pack your bags and come home.
That's exactly the way the war was fought
because he was the major influence on the
decision-making process and he has to share
the glory of what was good about the war and
he must also share some of the burden of where
things did not work out exactly as they should
have.
Gen. COLIN POWELL: We can grind our teeth
forever as to whether we should have fought
a day or two longer. We can grind our teeth
forever as to who was for sanctions, who wasn't.
But we ought to recognize the significant
achievement that Desert Shield/Desert Storm
was. President Bush said, "This will not stand";
that did not stand.
RICK ATKINSON, Author, Crusade: In retrospect,
I think it's clear that Bush rose above the
limitations of character and vision for the
first time and, as it turned out, the only
time in his presidency, to become a really
extraordinary man.
Pres. GEORGE BUSH: I can report to the nation
aggression is defeated. The war is over. Because
the world would not look the other way, Ambassador
Al-Sabah, tonight Kuwait is free.
RICK ATKINSON: George Bush's vision of the
new world order was that countries could unite
in common purpose for the benefit of all mankind.
But it wasn't World War II. It's hard to argue
that he was Franklin Roosevelt.
Pres. GEORGE BUSH: And this I promise you.
For all that Saddam has done to his own people,
to the Kuwaitis and to the entire world, Saddam
and those around him are accountable.
RICK ATKINSON: By demonizing Saddam, Bush,
in fact, planted the seeds of discontent in
the country, in the same way that Lieutenant
George Bush in 1945 would have felt dissatisfied
had the real Adolf Hitler still been in power
in Berlin and the Japanese warlords still
been in power in Tokyo.
Pres. GEORGE BUSH: May God bless this great
nation, the United States of America. Thank
you all very, very much.
NARRATOR: Despite his enormous popularity
at that moment, two years later Bush would
be decisively defeated for reelection. Saddam
Hussein's survival seemed to emphasize the
American recession and Bush's timid domestic
agenda. "Saddam's got his job," read one bumper
sticker, "How about you?"
RICK ATKINSON: He performed after the war
in ways that, in many ways, were entirely
predictable. Bush came back to earth when
the war ended and there Bush, I think, will
remain.
NARRATOR: Saddam Hussein is still in power,
still claiming that his survival was his victory.
But his invasion of Kuwait had turned to dust
and his dreams of dominating the Middle East
have vanished. The Gulf war left the Iraqi
armed forces broken. U.N. teams are still
dismantling its nuclear and biological weapons
programs and sanctions cripple the economy,
but Saddam is still defiant.
MARGARET THATCHER: There is the aggressor,
Saddam Hussein, still in power. There is the
president of the United States, no longer
in power. There is the prime minister of Britain,
who did quite a lot to get things there, no
longer in power. I wonder who won?
Gen. BRENT SCOWCROFT, National Security Advisor:
We did. We did. As long as we are alert and
observant, Saddam Hussein is not a threat
to his neighbors. He's a nuisance. He's an
annoyance. But he's not a threat. That_ that
we achieved.
Gen. COLIN POWELL: And I can also tell you
that, in due course, Saddam Hussein will not
be there. And when that happens, all this
interesting second-guessing will seem quite
irrelevant.
NARRATOR: It took seven months to extinguish
the oil wells which burned across the battlefield.
The war had changed the balance of power in
the Middle East and ignited the peace process
between Israel and its Arab neighbors. But
with time, its promise as the herald of a
new world unity that would confront the moral
outrages of our time has faded.
RICK ATKINSON: I think that the notion that
the Gulf war was being fought for a new world
order was, in fact, intended to obscure the
fact that it was being fought for very much
the old word order: cheap petroleum, benign
monarchies. There was no new world order that
came out of the Persian Gulf War. In fact,
I think that's proven to be mostly a pipe
dream since then.
