Fairly simple. The UN and coalition war aim was to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. Had Saddam been dethroned, we would have had something similar to the insurgency of 2005 to 2007, just 15 years earlier.
This would have resulted in the immediate collapse of the coalition, and we would likely be talking today of how the overreach of Bush Senior was a great strategic mistake. We absolutely did not want to conquer and occupy Iraq at that time.
IOW, extremely limited war aims was a precondition of creating a large diverse coalition. If you don't want limited war aims and the consequent restrictions, avoid coalition warfare.
Correct in a nutshell.
Alex, you should remember under what authority any of this occurred; the United Nations.
Like most other endeavors sponsored by the U.N., there was never any specified goal of "winning".
“Fairly simple. The UN and coalition war aim was to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. Had Saddam been dethroned, we would have had something similar to the insurgency of 2005 to 2007, just 15 years earlier.”
I do not agree.
We were already into Iraq and on the way to Baghdad, smashing his army.
We could have knocked him out as easy as swatting a fly, and in the process, avoided the WMD debacle, as well as the cost in men and money in starting a whole new war.
It would have been so much easier to clean up the whole mess by finishing the FIRST war.