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In the summer of 2003, I was a newly promoted captain in the 82nd Airborne trying to convince an Iraqi Shiite university professor to take more of a leadership role in the emerging district council we were establishing in Rashid, the southern portion of Baghdad. While U.S. forces had taken control of the Iraqi capital to celebrations and the toppling of statues, there was still an air of uncertainty about the future. Saddam Hussein had not been captured yet, and there was a fear he would return to power if America lost interest in transforming Iraq. Those we were asking to stand up and stick their necks out had questions—namely, could they count on Americans to help them rebuild Iraqi governance?
As we sat in the sweltering heat, the professor recounted to me that his father and older brother had risen up against Saddam in 1991 when asked to by President George H.W. Bush—part of a larger uprising by Shias and Kurds in the aftermath of the Gulf War—only to have those populations suffer massive casualties in a brutal crackdown by the Ba’athist government, while the U.S. largely sat idly by and observed. Eventually, these led to Operations Provide Comfort, Northern Watch, and Southern Watch to enforce no-fly zones and provide humanitarian aid—but the damage was done. Tens of thousands of civilians lay dead. This professor went on to say we had done the same thing to the Czechs in 1968 and the Hungarians in 1956.
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