How quickly we forget our history. Remember "Operation Desert Shield?" The United States sent its forces to the Middle East under the pretext that they were going to defend Saudi Arabia against an Iraqi invasion. After everything was in place, they decided that "Desert Shield" would become "Desert Storm," and these forces would be used to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.
"The U.N. has mandated an armed response to get get Hussein out of Kuwait," they said at the time, "so we must do it." The fact that the U.N. has been "mandating" Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories for years (with the U.S. and Israel often being the only opposing votes) never seemed to inspire even the mildest U.S. interest, but by gosh, this U.N. mandate must be followed!
That whole incident in the Persian Gulf was nothing more than manipulation of public opinion from the beginning. In retrospect, there are some facts related to the Gulf War that make the whole thing ridiculous from a U.S. perspective.
1. The U.S. ended up engaging in military action against one of the only Middle Eastern nations that had any degree of religious tolerance and where non-Islamic religions (with the exception of Judaism, of course) flourished. Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz, for example, is not a Moslem but is a Chaldean or Maronite Christian.
2. During this conflict, the U.S. sided with an array of Islamic nations that on any other day would be considered "intolerant." After hearing the stories about the Pentagon asking U.S. servicemen stationed in Saudi Arabia to refrain from openly showing religious medallions or other symbols (in case they offend the very people that the U.S. was supposed to be "protecting"), I didn't know whether to laugh or vomit. It was this incident in particular that made me decide that I wouldn't be so disappointed to see President Bush defeated in 1992.
3. Iraq and Kuwait had been engaged in a border dispute for years, primarily centered around the issue of directional drilling and the ownership of oil fields that straddled the border between the two nations. This became a particularly contentious issue in the late 1980s because Iraq was relying on its oil revenue to help it recover financially from its ten-year war with Iran. If anything, most Arab countries probably would have supported Iraq, since Kuwait has always been seen by these nations as nothing more than a huge pain in the ass.
I haven't "forgotten" that "history," because it was never written that way -- not accurately, anyway. I don't know what Canadian history books are like, but they don't seem to be much different than America's, unfortunately.
Let's get a take from one of the true insiders: Here's Wafic al Samarrai, Saddam's Head of Iraqi Military Intelligence at the time, from a BBC interview shown on PBS' Frontline (bold mine):
Now...what was that you were saying about "pretext?"
Q: Iraq's situation following the Iran/Iraq War.....Samarrai: Iraq left the war with Iran heavy under debts. Iraq had ambitions ...Iraq looked to build a major military power and sturdy economy. Towards the end of the Iraq/Iran war the Iraqi army stood at one million and 300,000 soldiers and had more than 4500 tanks and more than 600 combat aircrafts and many pieces of artillery. In addition, this includes the popular army. When Saddam Hussein spoke he thought that Kuwait was the salvation from the poor economic state that resulted from the war with Iran . The economic status was good if not very good, but the financial state of the power..was not providing enough sources to re-vamp the army. Iraq was also heavily in debt and this put a restraint to his research in biological and other sorts of weapon. This is what is meant by the very poor economic state. But as for individuals, they were being able to manage quite alright.
Saddam Hussein always talk about great Iraq. Great Iraq meant that Iraq should become the strongest country in terms of the army, the economy and the politics and he always looked to expand...
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Q: His Arab Neighbors....Samarrai: Generally speaking, he was not comfortable to dealings with all Iraq's neighbours. For instance, he looks at Syria and the leadership in Syria with very deep concern. He thought that intellectual threat came from Syria. He was neither comfortable with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, economically speaking. He thought and he felt that he fought for them and he did favours for them and they should pay him back. He had also a very antagonistic view towards Iran. So you can see he is not comfortable with any of his neighbours and he was quite evil. He often miscalculated situations and that's why we always suffered from this point during our war with Iran. He never thought or visualised that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will take a tough stand towards him.</font color> Even towards the very few hours before the invasion, he never thought that the allies will strike against him though we tried very hard to convince him of this.
We had reports, intelligence reports, that the Gulf States had very poor relations at the time with Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, we learned that there were very clear sensitivities in their relations. We also learned, and knew, that the relations between the Gulf States and Jordan were not at their best terms. He built his calculations on these factors and he did not expect that reactions will be severe.
Saddam, before invading Kuwait, improved his relations with Yemen, with Jordan and Egypt and he formed the Arab Cooperation Council. One of the main objectives of this was to prepare the ground for invading Kuwait or any other similar action.. and to guarantee that these three parties would not know the truth.
The relation between Iraq and Jordan was very strong but, in fact, Saddam was really watchful and quite cautious towards King Hussein.</font color>
Q: Saddam's ambition...Samarrai: I believe that Saddam did not, and would not have been satisfied with only Kuwait. Had his invasion of Kuwait been without reprisals, he would have continued to take the Eastern part of Saudi Arabia.
In his further plans, we had planned this in detail, i.e. to take the oil wells in Saudi Arabia, had we engaged in fighting and had we been able to carry on our plans.</font color>