The Gulf War of 1991 / for school, by Thai Ta, 2005
The Gulf War of 1991 happened unexpectedly, yet inevitably, between Iraq and the United States and its allies from August 1990 to February 1991. It was over so fast due to the un-even military forces of the two sides. Yet, Saddam Hussein was left in power and, more importantly, with much of that power intact. A year after Desert Storm ended, it was estimated that the Iraqi army still possessed 2,400 tanks, 250 rocket launchers, 200 usable Scud missiles, along with a smaller, though much more professional force of approximately 350,000 troops (1). Twelve years later, the antagonist Saddam Hussein and his militia played out their roles again in a more controversial and costly war that is labelled “The Iraq Invasion” and lost in April 2003. It is said that history is written by the victors. That might be true in the past but no longer applies since the advent of new technologies that have ushered in the information age. Even though the media coverage during the Gulf War was limited, the abundance of books, interviews, analyses, facts and data drawn afterwards have made the picture or war clearer and more complete. This paper will focus on the causes leading to the Gulf War, with the spotlights on Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Hussein, and the Senior President Bush.
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Taking into considerations the intricate and complex relations and developments between national and world events, the two main causes leading to the Gulf War could be suggested as:
1. Saddam’s desperate predicament after the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and his underestimation of the West’s reaction to his Kuwait invasion.
2. The U.S. simply taking advantage of a perfect situation to establish and secure its presence in a Muslim territory for its own vital interest, namely oil; or the U.S. let the Kuwait invasion happen in order to proceed with its own agenda (2).
If one could approach wars like a game of chess, the Persian Gulf War was essentially played by Saddam and Bush. At one time, Saddam, a tyrant and a mass murderer who had no qualm employing biochemical weapons on Iranian troops and Kurdish opponents, was considered to be a stabilizing factor in the volatile Middle East arena. Bush, the leader of the most powerful but foreign-oil dependent country, had to act in the interest of his nation and the American people. As it turned out, in the years prior to the Gulf War, as both President and previously Ronald Reagan’s Vice-President, George Bush wanted to make a friend out of Saddam Hussein; so much so, he personally intervened for Iraq to buy equipments with military implications. Worse still, Bush championed the cause for Saddam and eventually secured about $5 billion in American commodity loans to Iraq, all the while knowing that Saddam could never repay the loans and that the money would be used to purchase more weapons (3). Even as late as July 9, 1990 , three weeks before the Kuwait invasion, the White House and State Department put pressure on the Commodity Credit Corporation (which consisted of international bankers and the U.S. Agriculture Department) to release the second installment of $500-million loan to Iraq. (Iraq had already spent the first $500 million and had been denied further loans because of falling behind on loan payments.) The unpaid loans alone cost the American taxpayers $2 billion.
But the U.S. was not Saddam’s only “friend”. France (with Prime Minister Jacques Chirac) considered Iraq to be promising, regardless of its flaws, in countering the extreme fundamentalists of Iran. The relationship between France and Iraq started after the Baathist party took over Iraq in 1968. France offered to supply weapons to Iraq, so that Iraq wouldn’t be too dependent on the Soviet Union. France even had a deal to provide Iraq with a nuclear capacity, claiming to the world that it was not for military use. (The nuclear facility named Osirak was later bombed and destroyed by the Israelis in 1981.) French arms sales topped the Soviet Union, amounting $15-17 billion, not to mention another $5 billion on commercial and individual contracts with French firms (4). Other so-called friends included Germany, Italy, Britain, some in the Far East and some in Latin America. All would later turn against Saddam in the Gulf War. For the moment, however, Saddam was counted on by the West to stop the export of the extreme Islamic revolution (5). It was exactly because of this friendly make-believe situation that convinced Saddam to invade Kuwait. He figured no one would care to interfere. But, let’s examine the prior Iran-Iraq war in the 80′s and how that disastrous debacle almost bankrupted Iraq, and thus forcing Saddam to take desperate measures.
Saddam was only number-two man when the Baath party returned to power (with the help of the CIA) in 1968. Ahmad Hasan Al-Bakr was the Iraqi president then. In 1979, Saddam officially took over control of Iraq, and in 1980, the Iran-Iraq War broke out.To the rest of the world, the motives for war seemed unclear. History now says that Saddam started the Iran-Iraq War, but in fact, it was Iran and its provocations that led Iraq down the war path. As a warning to Iran to not meddle with internal Iraqi business, Saddam ordered a very limited incursion into Iranian territory. The war escalated with 52 countries supplying weapons to Iran and/or Iraq, (29 actually supplying to both sides), according to Bill Hartung, an international arms-trade analyst (6). Saddam did not want to prolong that war, but Iran kept it going for eight years. In charge of Iran was the Islamic fundamentalist regime of Ayatollah Khomeni. Iran was eager to spread its influence on other neighboring countries by sponsoring, in particular, the Shi’ite communities in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc. The United States hated the new Iranian regime, its extreme ideology, and ruthless behaviors. So, after the failure of Operation Eagle Claw to rescue US diplomats held as hostages by Iran, the US became much friendlier toward Saddam. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” as the old adage goes. At the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq owed almost $100 billion to foreign creditors, in comparison to the $30 billion it had in foreign exchange reserves at the beginning of the war (7). Iran remains to be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism for its activities in Lebanon and elsewhere, and subject to US economic sanction. Today, its exports-partners include Japan, China, Italy, South Africa, and its imports-partners include Germany, France, Italy, China (8).
The invasion of Kuwait, to a certain extent, was inevitable. Iraqis have always considered Kuwait to be a part of Iraq. Kuwait gained its independence in 1961 from British rule. In 1963, the Baathist-ruled Iraq formally recognized the independence of Kuwait without accepting its boundaries. Years went by with the two countries sitting together in the UN and the Arab League, not questioning the sovereignty issue. Kuwait did compromise when forced to and leased some of its small land to Iraq. Six days after the Kuwait invasion, Iraq formally annexed Kuwait, declaring a total merger between the two nations. It was an act of desperation. Prior to that, Iraq was on the brink of bankruptcy. The final straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, was the deliberate oil overproduction by Kuwait. Kuwait was viewed by other countries as arrogant, but poor Iraq lost one-third of its income when Kuwait exceeded the limit of oil production set by OPEC by 20 percent, thus, driving the oil price down. Kuwait had also refused to write off Iraq’s debt, like some countries such as Saudi Arabia had done. Most Arab countries, including Kuwait, were supportive of Iraq when it went to war with Iran, lending financial supports (9). In the end, owning Kuwait would mean that Iraq controling 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies and threatening another 20 percent in Saudi Arabia. It would allow Iraq to be able to pay off its debts to foreign creditors. And personally for Saddam, his illusion of grandeur perhaps might come true at last. (Saddam had allowed himself to be identified with historic figures in the golden past such as Sargon the Great, and had even linked his lineage back to Imam Ali bin abi Talib. He styled himself as al-Hashemi, the Hashemite, and orchestrated the propaganda/rumor that he was the secret love child of the late King Ghazi and his mother Subha Tulfa. None of which was true.) For him, the prize of invading Kuwait was simply too tempting and feasible to ignore. He might have thought also that the western world would not pay much attention. There had been invasions in the Middle East that the West ignored before, such as the invasion of Lebanon by Syria in 1975-76. Besides, the real bad guy in the western eyes was Iran, Saddam might have reasoned. On this point, Saddam was not totally off the mark.
Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser, confirmed this view. This is what Scowcroft said when asked about the Bush administration’s view of Saddam in the mid-1990 (10):
We were not preoccupied with Saddam Hussein. What we hoped was to continue the policy of the Reagan Administration, which was first of all a balance between Iran and Iraq and then hoping to perhaps make Saddam Hussein a minimally useful member of the international community. After the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq had enormous reconstruction issues, and it was our hope that American business would be able to participate in that since Iraq is fundamentally a wealthy nation. We had no illusions about the character of this man at all, but we did not see him necessarily as having serious unrequited aggressive aims. We thought it was useful to try a modest carrot and show him we bore him no particular ill will, and we were prepared to have normal kind of relations with him that would be at least commercially advantageous to both sides.
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Did America have no option but to wage war against Iraq? There were conflicting accounts. Concerning the character of the Senior President Bush, there were the “weak” Bush and the “considerate” Bush. The weak Bush was itching for a fight to prove himself “when he personalized the issue as one between him and Saddam Hussein, when he swaggered and did his Clint Eastwood routine, when he said that Hussein is ‘going to get his ass kicked‘ (11).” The considerate Bush wanted multi-lateral support so that “it was not seen to be America and the West against the Arab world, and that it was not seen to be a cowboy operation,” according to James Baker, Secretary of State (12).
Opinions vary, facts remain. As Henry Kissinger once said, “Oil is too important to be left to the Arabs“ (13). When Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense, offered American help to Saudi Arabia, the Saudis had to rely on US intelligence. They were shown satellite photos which had Iraqi tanks and armored troops ready to invade Saudi Arabia. King Fahd, the Crown Prince Abdullah, the defense minister Prince Sultan examined the photos, then asked for American help. Whether the royal Saudis knew what they were looking at, or the US lied, whether it was only a matter of time that the presented scenario would happen, or Saddam didn’t have the invasion of Saudi Arabia in mind at all, again, opinions vary. One curious fact remains. Through-out seven months of the Gulf War, the Saudis continued to pour money into Baghdad, more than $20 billion. Unlike Kuwait, they never expected to be repaid. The money was intended to buy Baghdad’s friendship in the future. Of course, at the same time, they would spend billions more to buy US protection, Italian ships, French armored vehicles, British aircrafts, and so on to build up their military force (14). The continuing presence of foreign troops on Muslim soil has remained the unifying factor for jihadists and the source of tension between the ruling classes and their public in the Middle East. The US continues to be Saudi Arabia’s biggest imports/exports partner, along with Japan, China, South Korea, Germany (15). In decades or maybe years ahead, China will surpass the US as the nation with the most oil consumption, not to mention the biggest polluter. One can only imagine the war in the name of “national interests” between these two titans, should it come to pass.
Why didn’t the US finish Saddam off then? Here are some opinions. The US might not have the same kind of support if it crossed over to Iraq. That has proven to be valid considering the recent Iraq invasion by the US. Or maybe, the US hoped that the Baath party would get rid of the disgraced Saddam. That didn’t happen, of course, and Saddam actually became more popular having faced the US and survived. Maybe Saddam was left in power to control the Kurds and the Shi’ites. As a matter of fact, in the immediate postwar period, the US policy permitted Saddam to use helicopters and aircrafts to fight the Kurdish rebellion in the north and the Shi’ite rebellion in the south (16). Another indisputable fact remains. Saddam was warned beforehand not to use biochemical weapons on the US soldiers or else, (meaning nuclear retaliation), and indeed, he did not dare. It was the only line Saddam did not dare to cross.
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In dollars and cents, the cost of war (Desert Shield and Desert Storm combined) was $71billion for the U.S. and $42 billion for other contributing countries. The blood sacrifice amounted to 390 Americans and 510 allies (17). To put the casualties in proper perspectives, the Korean War cost over 30,000 lives of soldiers, and the recent failure of the Vietnam War took almost 60,000. The irony was that the Iraqi force of 250,000-500,000 men couldn’t achieve what friendly fire could, which was152 American lives. On the Iraqi side, a more reasonable estimation by CENTCOM (Central Command) put the number of civilian and military deaths at 20,000 (18). Other estimates range from 10,000 to 250,000. War toys were supplied by major countries (the Soviet Union, Germany, France, etc.). New toys were tried out, such as the nicknamed – “bunker-buster” Glide bombs, GBU-28. The unchallenged supremacy of American aerial assaults was the key of success. Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, compared the amount of bombing to that of seven atomic bombs at Hiroshima (19). Much, if not all, of Iraq’s infrastructures were destroyed. These included water dams, water pipelines, filtration plants, electrical power plants, communication system, and so on. Iraq, failing to conquer Kuwait and did little damage to Israel and the U.S, set fire to Kuwaiti oil field that could have burned for years. It must be said, however, that the biggest threat to the environment of our planet as a direct result of the Gulf War may be the use of Uranium 238 or depleted Uranium. The left-over, eager-to-be-used (otherwise expensive to store) material ended up being perfect to make armor-piercing “magic bullets” for the U.S. The down side, of course, was 4.5 years of radioactive waste lands for Iraq and cancer-related diseases for its population, not to mention tens of thousands of US veterans still suffering and dying from the “Gulf War syndrome”.
The Gulf War of 1991 was a moral booster for America after the defeat of the VietnamWar in the 70′s and set the example for a new kind of warfare ever since. Then, Americans were comfortable with the idea of coming to the rescue of a defenseless country and crushing the invading force of the evil figure. Indeed, we were proud of our “crusade”. And really, it didn’t cost much to us. I got this passage from my Religious Studies textbook (20):
The United States of America is a nation with 5% of the world’s population, and yet we consume 25% of the world’s energy. The underlying cause of the Gulf War, and perhaps most wars, seems to be GREED. And who else but the very poor and vulnerable ones that always pay the price! According to Dennis Halliday, former Director of UN Iraq Program, it was estimated that 1 – 1 1/2 million Iraqis had died since 1990 as a direct result of the economic embargo sanctioned by the United Nations (21). (With a sigh), I conclude that as long as there are greedy individuals, corporations, and nations in the world, we will never have peace on earth.
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NOTES
1. Record, Jeffrey, Hollow Victory: A Contrary View of the Gulf War, New York: Brassey’s (US), Inc., 1993, p.156.
2. Brohy, Audrey & Ungerman, Gerard (directors), Hidden Wars of Desert Storm, [film], Free-Will Productions, 2001.
3. U.S. News & World Report, Triumph without Victory: The History of the Persian Gulf War, New York: Times Books, 1992, pp. xx-xxi.
4. Bulloch, John, & Morris, Harvey, Saddam’s War: The Origins of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response, Winchester: Faber and Faber, Inc., 1991, pp. 82-83.
5. Bulloch, John, & Morris, Harvey, Saddam’s War: The Origins of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response, Winchester: Faber and Faber, Inc., 1991, p. 149.
6. Hartung, Bill, Hidden Wars of Desert Storm, [film], Free-Will Productions, 2001.
7. Finlan, Alastair, The Gulf War 1991 (Essential Histories), Oxford: Osprey Publishing (U.K.), 2003, pp.13-14.
8. CIA, The Worldfact Book: Iran, http://www.cia.gov/publications/factbook
9. Bulloch, John, & Morris, Harvey, Saddam’s War: The Origins of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response, Winchester: Faber and Faber, Inc., 1991, p.22.
10. Scowcroft, Brent, The Oral History of the Gulf War, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/
11. Drew, Elizabeth, “Washington Prepares for War”, The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions, Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1991, pp.182-183.
12. Baker, James, The Oral History of the Gulf War, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/
13. Brohy, Audrey & Ungerman, Gerard (directors), Hidden Wars of Desert Storm, [film], Free-Will Productions, 2001.
14. Bulloch, John, & Morris, Harvey, Saddam’s War: The Origins of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response, Winchester: Faber and Faber, Inc., 1991, pp. 137-138.
15. CIA, The Worldfact Book: Saudi Arabia, http://www.cia.gov/publications/factbook
16. Weigel, George, “From Last Resort to Endgame: Morality, the Gulf War, and the Peace Process”, But Was it Just?:Reflections on the Morality of the Persian Gulf War. New York: Double Day, 1992, p.30.
17. Atkinson, Rick, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993, p.492.
18. Finlan, Alastair, The Gulf War 1991 (Essential Histories), Oxford: Osprey Publishing (U.K.), 2003, p.85.
19. Clark, Ramsey, Hidden Wars of Desert Storm, [film], Free-Will Productions, 2001.
20. Albanese, Catherine L.,America Religions and Religion (Third Edition), Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999, p.459.
21. Halliday, Dennis, Hidden Wars of Desert Storm, [film], Free-Will Productions, 2001.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albanese, Catherine L. America Religions and Religion (Third Edition). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999.
Atkinson, Rick. Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.
Brohy, Audrey & Ungerman, Gerard (directors). Hidden Wars of Desert Storm. [film]. Free-Will Productions, 2001.
Bulloch, John, & Morris, Harvey. Saddam’s War: The Origins of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response. Winchester: Faber and Faber, Inc., 1991.
Atkinson, Rick. Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.
Central Intelligence Agency. The World Factbook. Available as of Oct 31, 2005 at: http://www.cia.gov/publications/factbook
Cerf, Christopher & Sifry, Micah L. (Eds.). The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions. Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1991.
Elshtain, B., Hauerwas, S., Nusseibeh, S., Walzer, M., Weigel, G. But Was it Just?: Reflections on the Morality of the Persian Gulf War. New York: Double Day, 1992.
Finlan, Alastair. The Gulf War 1991 (Essential Histories). Oxford: Osprey Publishing (U.K.), 2003.
Frontline. The Oral History of the Gulf War. Available as of October 1, 2005 at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/
Record, Jeffrey. Hollow Victory: A Contrary View of the Gulf War. New York: Brassey’s (US), Inc., 1993.
U.S. News & World Report. Triumph without Victory: The History of the Persian Gulf War. New York: Times Books, 1992.
[...] couple years ago, I wrote a term paper for my Religious Studies class, about The First Gulf War, 1991. What struck me then as now, when I hear about wars, elections, conflicts is that behind [...]
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