[lbo-talk] Two Takes

H. Curtiss Leung hncl at panix.com
Sun Apr 13 12:52:16 PDT 2003


Brad wondered:


> Yep. It's still unclear to me whether Bush I was sure the Iraqi
> people would do it by themselves anyway, or wished Saddam left in
> power to be a problem for the Irania theocrats, or whether Bush I
> listened to the Saudis and the Saudis believe that all Arab regimes
> must be preserved...

Scowcroft and Bush themselves said it was a goal of Gulf War I to leave Saddam in power with as much of his military intact to keep Iran in check. See their memoir, _A World Transformed_. For example, here's Scowcroft, writing of their plans in October '90:

The over-all strategic-political objectives were set out

in the UN resoutions: principally to eject Iraq from Kuwait

and restore the Kuwaiti government. But beyond this were

strategic military objectives for the coalition forces, and

our own war aims--what outcome the United States wanted to

see. These went hand-in-hand. Foremost among these was to

reduce the Iraqi military as much as possible, starting with

an air campaign. From a military standpoint, this would

"soften them up" before any coalition ground campaign to push

the Iraqi army out and liberate Kuwait. Destroying as much

of the Iraqi military machine as possible would have other

benefits as well. One was to reduce the threat Saddam

posed to his neighbors. The trick here was to damage his

offensive capability without weakening Iraq to the point that

a vacuum was created, and destroying the balance between Iraq

and Iran, further destabilizing the region for years. (pp. 383-384

in my paperback copy)

Regarding the uprisings, see Bush and Scowcroft's join comments on pp 489-490 in the paperback. After the seizefire, the Iraqis requested of Schwarzkopf that they be allowed to use helicopters to communicate with various regions of the country since regular communications were down. Schwarzkopf OK'd this, and the Iraqis used their helicopters to put down the uprisings in the south. Dick Cheney and Colin Powell were against countermanding Schwarzkopf's order on the ground that to do so would be to "appear to be undercutting Schwarzkopf, and the helicopters did not allow him to do much that he could not also do-- albeit with greater effort--with artillery."

You can't make this stuff up, kids. And I'm not sure I'd want to be able to.



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