Washington – The day after he ordered a cease-fire and brought the Persian Gulf War to a close, President George H.W. Bush ruminated about the status quo he had left behind in Iraq. “Still no feeling of euphoria,” he dictated to his diary on Feb. 28, 1991. Saddam Hussein, he recognized, remained a threat. “He’s got to go,” Bush concluded.
It took nearly 16 years, but he’s finally gone. And with Hussein’s execution in Baghdad, so is the chief nemesis of the Bush family, a man who bedeviled father-and-son presidents and in different ways dominated both their administrations.
No public euphoria
If there is a feeling of euphoria, or satisfaction, or perhaps just relief, neither Bush expressed it publicly this weekend. President Bush went to bed Friday night without waiting for the execution and left it to an aide to release a statement praising the Iraqi people for “bringing Saddam Hussein to justice.” His father remained silent.
But Hussein’s death removed only the man. The forces unleashed by the epic struggle remain as powerful and crippling as ever for two countries.
The timing of the execution, coming as the president searches for a new strategy to turn around a war he says the United States is not winning, could serve as a reminder of its origins. Bush has frequently cited Hussein’s tyranny to justify his decision.
Within days, though, the death toll of U.S. troops will pass 3,000, a grim milestone that will trigger further national introspection. The cost of overthrowing Hussein and ending his reign of terror continues to mount, and few in Washington hold out faith that will change soon.
Bush and other architects of the war have long maintained it was nothing personal. “I personally never thought of it that way nor did I think the president sees it that way,” said Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense, who was a key player in going to war. “When Saddam was talked about, he was talked about as a threat to the United States, not as a personal problem of the Bush family.”
Animosity evident
Yet the history of animosity between the Bushes and Hussein is hard to ignore. The relationship began as one of pragmatic friendship in the 1980s, when Hussein was at war with the main U.S. enemy in the region, Iran, and George H.W. Bush was vice president in an administration that offered him help.
But Hussein soon became too much to handle. “People came to understand him as someone who was much less stable and someone who could not be trusted,” said Craig Fuller, chief of staff to the elder Bush when he was vice president.
Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 proved a strategic miscalculation that put him and the Bushes forever on opposite sides.
The elder Bush wrongly assumed that Iraqis would overthrow Hussein, and his decision not to march to Baghdad after freeing Kuwait would haunt him and his son.
By the time the younger Bush ran for president, he appeared determined not to repeat the mistake he believed his father made with Hussein.
“No one envisioned him still standing,” the candidate told the BBC in November 1999. “It’s time to finish the task.”
