GHWB sent troops to liberate an absolute monarchy from a military dictator

[Algernon Moncrieff]

...all because we wanted to keep the price of oil stable.

From a military standpoint, it was an amazing success; the diplomatic achievement of building the coalition was impressive.

But you have to ask yourself: how were America's values of democracy and freedom advanced by that war? How many problems do we have today that we likely would not have had if we'd stayed out of it?

[Brainstormy]

1. And Shrub's revenge?

How many problems has that created? You can't overlook the chain of events that began with GHWB.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. Or to uphold the principle strong nations can't bully weaker nations.

That's why Russia needs to leave Ukraine alone.

[CentralMass]

9. Do mean Iraq invading Kuwait ?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. Yes

Can I take my neighbor's stuff because I am strong and he's weak? No, because the sovereign, i.e the law will stop me. In this instance the UN was the sovereign and they stopped Iraq from annexing Kuwait. The war was fought under a UN flag.


The principle at stake is why we are imposing sanctions on Russia for annexing Crimea.

[CentralMass]

12. +1

[UniteFightBack]

3. Was Kuwait in NATO? nt

[Cirque du So-What]

4. I'll never forget this baldfaced lie used as a casus belli:

The Nayirah testimony was a false testimony given before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990 by a 15-year-old girl who provided only her first name, Nayirah. The testimony was widely publicized, and was cited numerous times by United States senators and President George H. W. Bush in their rationale to back Kuwait in the Gulf War. In 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah's last name was al-Ṣabaḥ (Arabic: نيرة الصباح? and that she was the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign which was run by an American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for the Kuwaiti government. Following this, al-Sabah's testimony has come to be regarded as a classic example of modern atrocity propaganda.[1][2]

In her emotional testimony, Nayirah stated that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die.

Her story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International[3] and testimony from evacuees. Following the liberation of Kuwait, reporters were given access to the country. An ABC report found that "patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait's nurses and doctors... fled" but Iraqi troops "almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die."[4][5] Amnesty International reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healey subsequently accusing the Bush administration of "opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement".[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

[GulfCoast66]

5. He did it well and proper

Got the approval of Congress. Got UN Security Council approval. Built a huge coalition of diverse and often disagreeable nations. Set limited objectives. Achieved objectives and stopped the war.

Then his drunk, dumbass son and his evil puppetmaster Cheney fucked up the entire Middle East which is still, 15 years after the invasion, out of control.

[ProudLib72]

6. Ostensibly, the Shrub was giving payback for 9/11

The majority of the terrorists were Saudi. So we went into Afghanistan to "clear out the Taliban". Then we went into Iraq "to get rid of WMDs". But we had good relations with the home country of the terrorists, so Saudi was left alone. Does it make sense to you that we would buddy up to Saudi when the royal family lived in fear of the Wahhabist fundamentalists mounting an insurrection and basically allowed them a lot of leeway? For an authoritarian country, Saudi doesn't seem to maintain much control over their far right. Now MSB appears to have shifted the monarchy further to the right (even if he has allowed women to drive)

[GulfCoast66]

7. It boggles the mind.

Afghanistan I could see and most Americans supported the decision. The admitted group that planned 911 were sheltered there. And about the time it looked like we had things settled there-Iraq. Pull attention and resources from finishing up in Afghanistan.

Worse decision ever by a president.

[ProudLib72]

8. Do you remember the half hearted attempt to enter Syria?

We were stretched thin on two fronts already, and there was an announcement that we might need to go into Syria as well. That idea got swatted down quickly. I forget who is was (some top brass) said he had seen the neo-con hit list of countries. Syria was towards the top on that list. I've always been surprised that not more was made out of Shrub's wars. And, of course, the ones who were really directing the operations were allowed to retreat back into the shadows.

Now this may be tinfoil hat type thinking, but it occurs to me that MSB was a young boy during the first gulf war and a teenager during the second gulf war. What kind of impact would that have had on him? My theory is that it made him more of a hardliner authoritarian. I'll leave that to the psychologists to ponder, though, since I'm certainly no expert.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. I supported Gulf War 1 and vigorously opposed Gulf War 2.

We had Saddam in a box with the sanctions and no fly zones. He was too weak to harass his neighbors but strong enough to deter Iran.

[cynatnite]

13. Same here...

Remember his news conference? I was amazed by it.

This came back to haunt me when bush jr. wanted to invade Iraq and take out Saddam.

"Had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit - we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs for that occupation," Schwarzkopf said.