It’s been 30 years since the Gulf War, celebrated at the time as a great American victory. Officials in GHW Bush’s administration never stopped praising themselves for it. Samuel Helfont takes a more jaundiced view, & it’s not hard to see why. [thread] tnsr.org/2021/02/the-gu…
A “precision” air campaign that struck many more targets than it needed to; ideas for the postwar period that assumed Saddam Hussein’s departure with no plan to make this happen; reactive diplomacy that led Gulf War allies to distance themselves from the US.
The aftermath of the Gulf War included a protracted American military commitment in the Middle East to contain the regime that had lost the war — a goad to extremists & excuse for American policy makers to defer thinking about what a post-Cold War world order would look like.
Ultimately, the GW Bush administration responded to the frustrations of containing Saddam Hussein by overthrowing him — trading one military commitment for a much larger, more costly one. Helfont argues persuasively that the seeds of US policy then were planted in 1991. [end]
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