George H.W. Bush's 'Kinder, Gentler' Legacy

By Reginald Johnson

  It’s stunning the way so many in the media and political leaders on both the left and right keep heaping praise on former President George H. W. Bush.  I hear the words “kind” and “decent” and “honorable” to describe him.  People also fondly recall Bush’s promise as he started his presidency that America would be a “kinder, gentler nation” going forward.

  Maybe the first President Bush was a kind and decent man to some, including family, friends and staff.

  But people in other countries, like Panama or Iraq, surely have a different view.  Both those nations suffered terribly at the hands of the American military, during unwarranted and brutal invasions ordered by Bush. Incredible violence was unleashed through aerial bombings and ground attacks.  Tens of thousands of people died and infrastructure was leveled. And war crimes were committed.

   One event that I will never forget was what happened at the end of the Persian Gulf War, or Gulf War I, in February of 1991. That conflict began when Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq in retaliation for Iraq’s attack on Kuwait, following a dispute between the two countries over oil rights in a border area.  Iraqi forces were quickly overwhelmed by the massive deployment of nearly 1 million US and allied troops, and a relentless bombing campaign.

   The war virtually over, Iraqi troops and civilians were withdrawing on two highways out of Kuwait, in compliance with a UN resolution. The retreating troops posed no threat.  But President Bush and his commanders had decided they would give Iraq no quarter.  What unfolded was one of the greatest war crimes in history.

   First, American attack jets bombed the columns at the front and back, leaving the middle of the convoys boxed in and unable to move. US planes then carpet bombed everything they saw. The bombardment left a horrifying carnage.

   “On the inland highway to Basra is mile after mile of burned, smashed, shattered vehicles of every description --- tanks, armored cars, trucks, autos, fire trucks ,” said the story in Time magazine on March 18, 1991.
  An L.A. Times account on March 11 read: "On the 60 miles of the coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun.”
 Joyce Chediac, a Lebanese-American jounalist who reported on the Gulf War, testified in 1991 about what she saw before a New York commission studying war crimes : "While 450 people survived the inland road bombing to surrender, this was not the case with the 60 miles of the coastal road. There, for 60 miles, every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground and it’s impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.

    "This one-sided carnage, this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater had promised that the US and its coalition partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is surely one of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history," said Chediac, whose testimony was repeated in a 2016 article in Global Research called "Twenty-Five Years Ago: The 1991 Iraq Gulf War, America Bombs the 'Highway of Death'. "

The "Highway of Death" in Iraq in February of 1991. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians retreating from Kuwait were mercilessly bombed by American forces at the end of Gulf War I. (Photo-Wikipedia)

     Chediac added, “The massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva conventions of 1949, Common Article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who are out of combat.”

   While there is dispute about how many people lost their lives in the air attacks, Chediac believes that tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were killed.

    Shortly after the massacre, the war formally came to an end. George H.W. Bush had his victory and his political ratings soared.  America showed who was boss in the Middle East and US oil interests were protected from any unwanted interference by Iraq.

   As Neil Young wrote in his song "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World," America had a "kinder, gentler machine gun hand."