# Bush borrowed the 1930s while Baghdad called its hostages guests Case studies Bush borrowed the 1930s while Baghdad called its hostages guests Illustration, not an archive object - Home - Case studies - Bush borrowed the 1930s while Baghdad called its hostages guests At a glance After Iraq took Kuwait in August 1990, its government held foreign civilians at military sites and called them guests. The President of the United States WhenAugust 23, 1990ActorGovernment of Iraq under Saddam Hussein; U.S. President George H.W. BushFull record at propagandaarchive.org This page covers what the Iraqi and U.S. governments said in their own names. Kuwait's paid campaign in Washington, including the incubator story told to a House caucus, has its own page: a foreign-funded witness on Capitol Hill. ## What it said Washington. On 8 August 1990, announcing that U.S. forces were going to Saudi Arabia, President George H. W. Bush set the frame he would keep: Appeasement does not work. As was the case in the 1930s, we see in Saddam Hussein an aggressive dictator threatening his neighbors. President George H. W. Bush, statement of 8 August 1990, as recorded on the FRAME case study (W.W. Norton case-study text). At a Dallas fundraiser on 15 October he said Hitler revisited. But remember, when Hitler's war ended, there were the Nuremberg trials. On 1 November, speaking about the foreigners Iraq was holding at strategic sites, he went further: I don't believe Adolf Hitler ever participated in anything of that nature. Baghdad. Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August and barred thousands of foreigners in both countries from leaving. On 17 and 18 August the Speaker of Iraq's National Assembly said Iraq would play host to the citizens of these aggressive nations as long as Iraq remains threatened with an aggressive war. Officials called the detainees "guests." On 23 August Iraqi television showed Saddam Hussein among detained British families, his hand on five-year-old Stuart Lockwood, asking through an interpreter whether the boy was getting his milk. He told the room: We hope your presence as guests here will not be for too long. Your presence here, and in other places, is meant to prevent the scourge of war. Saddam Hussein, Iraqi state television, 23 August 1990, as recorded on the FRAME case study. Earlier, on 12 August, Saddam had answered the demand to leave Kuwait with a proposal that all cases of occupation, and those cases that have been portrayed as occupation, in the region, be resolved simultaneously, listing Israeli, Syrian and Iraqi-Iranian withdrawals before any arrangement for the situation in Kuwait. From the autumn, Iraqi statements warned of the mother of all battles, a phrase Saddam repeated on 6 and 17 January 1991. ## Who made it and why Both sets of words came from heads of government speaking openly, so there is no hidden author to unmask. What differs is the audience and the purpose. Iraq's "guests" were a shield. A later CIA assessment counted more than 1,000 Western and Japanese nationals held at about 70 sites, including air bases, weapons plants and power stations, places a coalition would want to bomb. Women, children and some nationalities were released in stages through the autumn, often after foreign politicians visited. On 6 December Saddam asked his assembly to lift the travel ban on all foreigners, and the rest left that month. The battle slogan looked inward and back: it echoed al-Qadisiyya, the Arab victory over Sasanian Persia in 636, a name the regime had already stamped on the Iran-Iraq war as Qadisiyyat Saddam. Bush was speaking to Americans, and through them to Congress, about a deployment and, later, a war. The Hitler frame gave the occupation of a small Gulf state the moral shape of the Second World War, with a ready lesson attached: those who hesitate are the appeasers of the 1930s. When Iraq announced the release in December, the administration said it proved "diplomatic and military pressure" was working. ## What it got right or wrong Iraq's word was simply false. A guest can leave. These people could not, and they were placed where bombs might fall. Putting a detained child on television and asking about his milk did not make a hostage a visitor; the British Foreign Office called the broadcast a repulsive charade, and that is a fair description. The linkage offer had the same flaw in a different form. However strong anyone's case about the other occupations it named, it never said yes to leaving Kuwait. Bush's underlying claim was true: Iraq had invaded a neighbor and was holding civilians. That is enough to state plainly. The Hitler comparison added weight, not evidence, and the 1 November remark went past what the record could bear. Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center called it an outrage, and other Jewish organizations objected. A President who has the facts on his side does not need to rank a living dictator above Hitler; doing so invites the public to stop weighing the case and start feeling it. The coalition's own psychological operations get the same scoring. The U.S.-led forces dropped millions of leaflets on Iraqi positions. One, now displayed by the CIA, offered Iraqi soldiers the chance to come over As guests of the command of the Joint Forces in the Theater of Operation with the full benefit of Arab hospitality, security, safety, and medical care (archive record). Another, drawn by U.S. psychological operations, showed Saddam as a skull under one Arabic line, Ruler of the dead! (archive record). An invitation to surrender aimed at enemy soldiers is not a hostage held at an air base. A name-calling leaflet is still name-calling. Saying both is the test this site applies to any flag. ## The war power belongs to Congress The war power belongs to Congress under Article I. A President may argue for war; that is his job and his right. The question is the kind of argument. Facts about the invasion and the detainees invited deliberation. An analogy to Hitler invited a verdict before the deliberation. On 12 January 1991 Congress did vote, authorizing force 52-47 in the Senate and 250-183 in the House. The vote was the constitutional step done properly. How much the public debate before it was shaped by borrowed history, and by Kuwait's paid story covered on the companion page, is the open question, and the libertarian reading keeps asking it. American history supplies a check on the "guests" device. In 1942 the U.S. Army ordered all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien to report for removal (the San Francisco exclusion order). Removal was called "evacuation," citizens were "non-aliens," and the fairgrounds that held families were "assembly centers." The scale was far larger, about 120,000 people, most of them American citizens, held for years. A country that has used a soft word for confinement should recognize one at once, and should say so as plainly when it is its own. ## Its legacy Iraq renamed its external radio service Mother of Battles Radio. Withdrawing Iraqi troops set hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells on fire in February 1991, and they burned for months. The working questions are simple. Can the "guest" leave, and where is he being kept? When a demand gets an answer that lists other disputes, is there a yes or no in it? When a leader is compared to Hitler, what does he actually control, and what is he actually threatening? The record of 1990 shows both governments needed someone to ask. ## Sources - FRAME case study "The 1990-91 Gulf crisis: Iraq's 'guests' and 'linkage', and Washington's Hitler analogy," for the chronology, Iraqi and U.S. statements, the CIA count, the Foreign Office remark, the Qadisiyya naming, the leaflet campaign and the oil fires. - CIA, "Putting Noncombatants at Risk: Saddam's Use of 'Human Shields'" (Federation of American Scientists). - W.W. Norton case study on Bush's August 1990 statements; Washington Post, 16 October 1990, "President warns Iraq of war-crimes trials"; JTA, "Jews deplore Bush's comparison of Saddam Hussein with Hitler." - Maclean's, 27 August 1990; Washington Post, 25 August 1990; UPI, 6 December 1990; Washington Post, 7 December 1990. - Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Diplomatic Bluebook 1991, on the 12 August initiative; Oxford Reference, "mother of all battles"; MERIP, "Bending History." - FRAME collection records "Desert Storm surrender leaflets (CIA museum display)" and "Gulf War leaflet, skull-faced figure 'Ruler of the dead'," for the leaflet transcriptions. - FRAME case study on the Nayirah testimony, for the 12 January 1991 vote totals. Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/case-studies/gulf-crisis-1990/