Human Rights and Foreign Policy: What the Kurds Learned (A Drama in One Act)

Abstract

[It is a late afternoon in January 1992. Seated in a White House conference room are a small assortment of senior officials from the State, Treasury, and Defense Departments and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), together with several members of the National Security Council (NSC) Staff. Before the meeting comes to order most of them hover around Henry Kartoffel, a jowly gentleman with a pronounced Germanic accent, who genially accepts tokens of deference bordering, in one or two cases, on servility. Opposite him at the long conference table, imperially slim, his smooth cheeks polished to a rubicund gloss by summer Vineyard winds, sits the paragon of Wasp Establishment virtue, Elliott Rectitude. The chair of a human rights organization's board and a former ambassador, Rectitude has been invited as a presumed advocate for putting human rights high on the agenda of American foreign policy.] [Smiling as usual like a man experiencing a difficult stool, the National Security Advisor opens the discussion.] NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: You will recall that after liberating Kuwait and pulverizing Iraq's armed forces, the President was the object of vicious attacks by a truly weird alliance of so-called pundits for failing to liberate the Kurds and the south Iraqi Shiites. I am surprised, frankly, that no one mentioned his indifference to the Bushmen and Hottentots too. [The Advisor's smile/grimace widens as an appreciative chuckle sweeps the room.] Never mind that we had accomplished our stated goals! Never mind that no American president had ever won so much, so quickly, at so little cost! Never mind that the great majority of Americans evinced no desire to invest American lives in the redesign of Iraq! It's all bullroar, as the President well knows! Nevertheless, he thinks that charges of moral insensitivity undermine presidential authority. Moreover, he wants to move beyond being