History Memes

Explanation: During the Gulf War, the Western-organized coalition against Saddam's invasion condemned, in no uncertain terms, the unlawful invasion of Kuwait and Saddam's dictatorial regime. It drove back and utterly dismantled the Iraqi military, and announced that Iraq's people should overthrow Saddam's regime, and rejoin the international community.

The Iraqi people responded in great numbers - a grand coalition of the oppressed rose up, calling for democracy, and for a time looked poised to actually overthrow Saddam.

Unfortunately, Saddam's "Republican Guard" remained loyal, and heavily outgunned the rebels. The rebels knew this, but were hoping on support from either the US, which had so recently trounced Saddam, or Iran, which many rebels shared a religious and political affiliation with. Neither side lifted a fucking finger to help, and Saddam got to pursue not just one, but multiple internal genocides in 'retribution' for the rebellion.

The US would refuse, as it would later turn out, because the priorities of HW Bush's administration included maintaining a whole Iraq to 'contain' Iran - they had hoped to spark a coup with their rhetoric, not a revolution. So the fuckwits sat by and let tens of thousands of Iraqis get massacred; by some counts almost 200,000.

Iran would fail to assist the uprising for several reasons, but one more prominent speculation is that they refused because of the influential position held in the rebellion by the Kurds. A significant Kurdish minority lived in Iran's own lands who might get 'uppity' if an autonomous - or God forbid, sovereign! - Kurdish polity was established.