This week, Saddam Hussein goes on trial for his campaign known as Anfal, Arabic for “the spoils of war” to exterminate Iraqi Kurds. Over six months in 1988, at least 50,000 Kurds were killed, many of them victims of the mustard and nerve gas rained down by Iraqi planes. Tens of thousands more were tortured or saw their villages turned to rubble, their fields and rivers and infants poisoned by the chemical attacks.

Genocide, nothing less, was Hussein’s goal. At the time, the world, including the US, did little to stop it. Hussein was America’s ally of convenience against Iran. It would be yet another tragedy of this war if Americans came away believing that they have no responsibility and no means for stopping genocide. That was not the lesson in Iraq in 1988. And it should not be the lesson today in Darfur. Iraqi citizens need a full accounting and a full understanding of their past. We fear that some Iraqi Kurds are already heralding the proceedings as a long-delayed chance for revenge.

Iraq’s central government is also fanning ethnic divisions rather than trying to unify the country. Iraqis are too angry with Americans. And they are too suspicious of each other to consider whether they may also bear some responsibility for the past — or for ensuring that such horrors never happen again. Those are the spoils of the Iraq war.