On Feb. 15, 1991, as coalition bombs fell on Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, President George H.W. Bush addressed the Iraqi people. “There is another way for the bloodshed to stop,” he declared, “and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” Coalition aircraft dropped leaflets calling on Iraqis to “fill the streets and alleys and bring down Saddam Hussein and his aides.”

A few weeks later, Shiite rebels in southern Iraq and Kurdish fighters in the north rose up. At the peak of the uprising, 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces had slipped from government control. And then—nothing. The Bush administration provided no support, actively blocked the transfer of captured Iraqi weapons to rebels, and allowed Saddam to use helicopter gunships to crush the uprising. While Iraq was prohibited from flying fixed-wing aircraft, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf permitted the use of helicopters. Between 30,000 and 60,000 Shiites and some 20,000 Kurds were killed. Over 1.5 million Kurds were displaced, and thousands died from exposure, disease, and land mines.

On Feb. 15, 1991, as coalition bombs fell on Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, President George H.W. Bush addressed the Iraqi people. “There is another way for the bloodshed to stop,” he declared, “and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” Coalition aircraft dropped leaflets calling on Iraqis to “fill the streets and alleys and bring down Saddam Hussein and his aides.”

A few weeks later, Shiite rebels in southern Iraq and Kurdish fighters in the north rose up. At the peak of the uprising, 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces had slipped from government control. And then—nothing. The Bush administration provided no support, actively blocked the transfer of captured Iraqi weapons to rebels, and allowed Saddam to use helicopter gunships to crush the uprising. While Iraq was prohibited from flying fixed-wing aircraft, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf permitted the use of helicopters. Between 30,000 and 60,000 Shiites and some 20,000 Kurds were killed. Over 1.5 million Kurds were displaced, and thousands died from exposure, disease, and land mines.

Bush’s defense was remarkable in its brazenness. “Do I think that the United States should bear guilt because of suggesting that the Iraqi people take matters into their own hands, with the implication being given by some that the United States would be there to support them militarily?” he asked a few weeks later. “That was not true. We never implied that.”

This was a lie by any reasonable reading. But as U.S. President Donald Trump’s behavior so far seems to suggest, it was also part of a long pattern.

Washington’s template for betrayal was established decades earlier. In October 1956, Hungarians took to the streets of Budapest to demand an end to Soviet domination. What followed was an inspiring several weeks of resistance, but also a catastrophic miscalculation about........

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