[Texaggie79]

And for what?

Let's recognize another Nation shall we?.... KUWAIT!

And as Pres. And this. Bush would say "STRATEGERY"!

[Uriel1975]

Let's recognize another Nation shall we?.... KUWAIT!

Bzzzzt. Wrong answer. Diplomatic "Recognition" of a country is simply a declaration that they exist. It no more commits us to that nation's defense than would our "recognition" of communist China commits us to China's defense if Russia were to (for example) invade that country.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait, there was no compelling national interest in preferring the government of one undemocratic dictatorship (the Kuwaiti monarchy) to that of another undemocratic dictatorship (Hussein's Ba'ath Party). Either dictatorship would have sold us Oil (Hussein's whole motivation was a cash-grab); and even if either dictatorship had decided to refuse us Oil... we have oil. Here. In the US.

There was no compelling justification for US empire-building in the Gulf.
And the events of the last few days are largely "blowback" from that Interventionist policy.

Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed and bloody contests. The Nation prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to War the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the Nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the Liberty, of Nations has been the victim.

So likewise a passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. -- President George Washington's Farewell Address