Saddam Hussein: Kurdish Extermination

Abstract

I am Seth Carpenter-Nichols and I graduated from IPFW as a History major in December 2016. I became a History major in the Spring 2014 semester and I actively participated in each of my history classes. Even now that I have graduated, I still expand my knowledge on history. I always had a deep passion for history since I was in elementary school. My expertise in history consists of United States Presidents, World War II, world dictators, and the Cold War. I had the honor of participating in last year’s History Conference, when I presented my paper on President Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. I am glad that I was able to return to this year’s History Conference with a paper on Saddam Hussein and the Kurds. I chose to write about the mass murder of the Kurdish population by Saddam Hussein because it is one of the worst acts of mass murder in the Middle East and the modern world. Saddam’s power was at full strength in the Middle East, and there was nothing to stop him. The real interest, however, was not that Saddam was able to kill the Kurds, but that he was able to get away with it. The United States government knew what was happening to the Kurds but did nothing to stop it for several years. What I discovered in my research was that greed and stability came first over basic human rights. That is the real tragedy overall in my paper