Wow, I'm really really impressed by this one. There's a standard historical narrative in this country and it is quite acceptable to pretend the "forgotten bits" didn't happen, but in this Op-Ed George Schultz tries to pretend the Stuff We All Accept Happened didn't happen.
The world now has entered the third decade of crises and dangers to international peace and security created by Saddam Hussein. In 1980 he launched an eight-year war against Iran. Chemical weapons were used, and at least 1.5 million people were killed or severely wounded. In 1990 he invaded Kuwait in a war aimed at eradicating another state's legitimate sovereign existence. As he was forced out, he deliberately created environmental degradation of gigantic proportions. He has used chemical weapons against the Kurdish people in an attack on a genocidal scale, and he has sent his forces into Kurdistan to conduct widespread slaughter. He has relentlessly amassed weapons of mass destruction and continues their development. He has turned Iraq into a state that foments, supports and conducts terrorism. No other dictator today matches his record of war, oppression, use of weapons of mass destruction and continuing contemptuous violation of international law, as set out by unanimous actions of the U.N. Security Council.
Reader M.R. writes in:
In case there were any confusion, this is the very same George P. Schultz, who, in the capacity of U.S. Secretary of State, aided and abetted Saddam Hussein in this very same war, against our then arch-nemesis Iran.
For half the Saddam "crises and dangers" era, Saddam was our S.O.B., and for nearly all that time, Schultz was the point man on U.S. foreign policy, including during the USS Stark incident in which he shrugged off the death of 37 U.S. servicemen as a "shit happens" accident between friends (note that the Canadians have demanded greater accountability for the accidental bombing of their four servicemen than was afforded the crew of the Stark).
The canonical example of chutzpah is "a person who kills his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he's an orphan". This op-ed by Schultz is as good an example of chutzpah as any one is ever likely to find in real life.
His opening line, "Are we to be the Hamlet of nations[?]" is rather unfortunate as well, given a certain sense that this all about avenging his father.