10 ms·

I think listening to the news to figure out what goals anyone has is a pretty lost cause. The news anchors will say things that have no bearing on reality. Pe

I think listening to the news to figure out what goals anyone has is a pretty lost cause. The news anchors will say things that have no bearing on reality. People they interview will say things that have only slightly more bearing on reality, maybe. I agree that keeping troops in place after the war was a bit questionable. Though one does need to answer the "OK, we kick Iraq out, what keeps them from coming back?" question. Which was answered in a ham-handed way, if at all. Keeping troops in Kuwait maybe made sense. Keeping troops in Saudi... one of the ostensible goals was in fact to prevent an Iraqi invasion of Saudi, not just to kick Iraq out of Kuwait. I do think in retrospect this was a bad idea. It's harder to tell how it looked at the time, and in particular what the Saudi government was telling the US government.

jessaustin 9y ago
Kuwait's position, of a rich weak nation with no military alliances bordering a hungry strong one, was somewhat untenable. It is folly to fight a war for a short-term benefit. If spanking Saddam and then leaving would so obviously result in his invading Kuwait again, then the decision to deploy was effectively a decision to deploy indefinitely [0]. That was also folly. One can forgive impermanent mistakes, however. In retrospect, withdrawing troops soon after they repelled Iraq and then encouraging fracking in USA would have been a better decision. It was certainly discussed at the time, and Korea was certainly mentioned in those discussions. The reason we didn't "choose" to do that, is that military-industrial complex would have made much less money in that case. That's always true, however. An ineffective military that is always fighting is an eternal fountain of money for them. [0] One supposes that another option would have been to disrupt the governance of Iraq such that it would stop invading Kuwait, but later experience suggests that could also have had its drawbacks...

jessaustin 9y ago

Kuwait's position, of a rich weak nation with no military alliances bordering a hungry strong one, was somewhat untenable. It is folly to fight a war for a short-term benefit. If spanking Saddam and then leaving would so obviously result in his invading Kuwait again, then the decision to deploy was effectively a decision to deploy indefinitely [0]. That was also folly. One can forgive impermanent mistakes, however. In retrospect, withdrawing troops soon after they repelled Iraq and then encouraging fracking in USA would have been a better decision. It was certainly discussed at the time, and Korea was certainly mentioned in those discussions. The reason we didn't "choose" to do that, is that military-industrial complex would have made much less money in that case. That's always true, however. An ineffective military that is always fighting is an eternal fountain of money for them. [0] One supposes that another option would have been to disrupt the governance of Iraq such that it would stop invading Kuwait, but later experience suggests that could also have had its drawbacks...