THE PERSIAN WAR

The Persian War

The Persian War

The invasion of Kuwait by 140,000 Iraqi troops and 1,800 tanks on 2 August 1990, eventually led to U.S. involvement in war in the Persian Gulf region. Instead of repaying billions of dollars of loans received from Kuwait during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq (1980-1988), Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein resurrected old territorial claims and annexed Kuwait as his country's nineteenth province.

President George H. W. Bush feared that Saddam might next invade Saudi Arabia and thus control 40 percent of the world's oil. Bush organized an international coalition of forty-three nations, thirty of which sent military or medical units to liberate Kuwait, and he personally lobbied United Nations Security Council members. By November the UN had imposed economic sanctions and passed twelve separate resolutions demanding that the Iraqis withdraw. Bush initially sent 200,000 U.S. troops as part of a multinational peacekeeping force to defend Saudi Arabia (Operation Desert Shield), describing the mission as "defensive." On November 8, Bush expanded the U.S. expeditionary force to more than 500,000 to " ensure that the coalition has an adequate offensive military option." Contingents from other allied countries brought the troop level to 675,000. UN Security Council Resolution 678 commanded Iraq to evacuate Kuwait by 15 January 1991, or else face military attack.

What Saddam Hussein had hoped to contain as an isolated regional quarrel provoked an unprecedented alliance that included not only the United States and most members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) but also Iraq's former military patron, the Soviet Union, and several Arab states, including Egypt and Syria. The Iraqi dictator must have found Washington's outraged reaction especially puzzling in view of recent efforts by the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush to befriend Iraq. Off-the-books U.S. arms transfers to Iraq were kept from Congress from 1982 to 1987, in violation of the law. Washington had supplied intelligence data to Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war, and Bush had blocked congressional attempts to deny agricultural credits to Iraq because of human rights abuses. The Bush administration had also winked at secret and illegal bank loans that Iraq had used to purchase $5 billion in Western technology for its burgeoning nuclear and chemical weapons programs. Assistant Secretary of State John H. Kelly told Congress in early 1990 that Saddam Hussein acted as "a force of moderation" in the Middle East. Only a week before the invasion Ambassador April Glaspie informed Saddam Hussein that Washington had no "opinion on inter-Arab disputes such as your border dispute with Kuwait."

Bush and his advisers, without informing Congress or the American people, apparently decided early in August to use military force to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. "It must be done as massively and decisively as possible, " advised General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Choose your target, decide on your objective, and try to crush it." The president, however, described the initial deployments as defensive, even after General ...