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Over 2100 years ago, the historian Polybius, (as opposed to the Freeper Polybius) pointed out that all wars have a beginning, a cause and a pretext.
The beginning is the actual execution of the war plans that were already planned and decided on so it, in effect, comes last. The cause is the actual reason that war was resorted to and therefore comes first. The pretext is the excuse or the “spin”, if you will, used to justify the decisions that have already been made in regards to the war.
In the Gulf War, these factors were actually as follows:
1. Cause The threat of the West’s oil supply by Iraq.
2. Pretext To free Kuwait.
3. Beginning Operation Dessert Storm.
Operation Desert Storm was not fought to “liberate Kuwait”. It was fought to protect a vital American interest, the Persian Gulf oil supplies and to destroy the war making capability of the Iraqi Army. Whoever controls such a large percentage of the world’s oil supplies can dictate the health of the United States., European and Japanese economies with the stroke of a pen before his morning coffee. ( For those who are old enough, remember the gas lines and stagflation of the 1970’s after the Yom Kippur War.) Allowing Saddam Hussein to wield such power was simply not acceptable.
Even if Kuwait had been populated by nothing but sand fleas, the U.S. would have “liberated” it just the same. The only thing that would have changed was the pretext given to the “No Blood For Oil” crowds that drove 400 miles on the Interstate to attend their protest rallies.
Therefore, an unfortunate aspect of the Gulf War is that President Bush had to play games with not only American but also with world public opinion.
The “liberation of Kuwait” was not the cause of the war but only the pretext. The American and world public, however, no longer understands the Realpolitik of vital national interests. Vital interests now have to be sugar-coated in pretexts. The same bleeding hearts that are the first to decry that the “current economic boom does not include the (insert the name of preferred victim group)” are the first to cry “No blood for oil”.
The pretext of the Gulf War was to “liberate Kuwait” and President Bush tied his hands by framing it in such terms. At the time, I thought that this was a foolish tactic and, if I were President, I would have “told it like it was”. However, the fact remains that President Bush was successful in forging an international coalition and a “tell it like it is” President Polybius might have been a total failure.
Under the circumstances, the goal of the Gulf War was to mortally wound Iraq’s military capability to control the Persian Gulf oil supply. Such a goal would be accomplished by destroying the offensive capabilities of the Iraqi Army. That goal was accomplished.
As I noted before, just three years before thr Gulf War, Iraq had just finished a military aggression that left 300,000 of it’s Iranian neighbors dead and another 500,000 wounded. Since the Gulf War, not a single Iranian, Kuwaiti or Saudi has died defending the soil of his native land against an invading Iraqi Army.
Why? Because the U.S. destroyed the Iraqi Army’s offensive capability in the Gulf War. If the Iraqi Army had been allowed to retreat without harm, that Army would have again turned to aggression once the U.S. ground forces left the Theatre but now emboldened by U.S. timidity.
Wars are not won and nations are not “conquered” by capturing enemy capitals. They are not won by “getting Hitler” or “getting Saddam”. If that were the case, Napoleon would have won his Russian campaign with his capture of Moscow. Wars are won by the destruction of the enemy’s army. In the American Civil War, the early battle cry was “On to Richmond”. The Union won the war when U.S. Grant pursued a strategy that ignored the capture of Richmond and sought, instead, to bleed the Army of Northern Virginia to death. Likewise, Japan surrendered before a single square foot of the Japanese home islands had been captured by American infantry. Japan surrendered when the U.S. could pursue a policy of destruction with complete impunity.
Likewise, Iraq surrendered when the U.S. was in a position to destroy whatever percentage of the Iraqi Army it chose to. Iraq was, indeed, “conquered”. In his auto-biography, General Schwarzkopf states that he considered forcing the Iraqis sign the cease-fire agreement on the deck of the USS Missouri to make it perfectly clear that the agreement was a surrender.
General Schwarzkopf also relates in his autobiography that the surrendering Iraqi General asked why U.S. forces had crossed into Iraqi territory, as part of their envelopment, when Iraq had already agreed to retire from Kuwait. Even this Iraqi General failed to distinguish “cause” from “pretext”. The goal of the Gulf War had been articulated by General Powell very clearly before the ground phase began. Powell said, “We are going to surround the Iraqi Army. Then we are going to kill it.”
The terms of the cease-fire were, indeed, dictated terms to a “conquered” nation. The terms were, “You agree to this or we will continue killing your Army by the tens of thousands.” As General Schwarzkopf said the day of the signing of the cease-fire, “ This is not a negotiation. I am here to tell them exactly what we expect them to do.”
The percentage to which the Iraqi Army was “killed” was a political decision. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the cease-fire decision and my reaction was, “Why the h*ll is Bush stopping now?”. But, again, I was not President and it was not my responsibility to weigh the risks of a totally disarmed Iraq needing U.S. defense against Kurds, Shiites, Iranians, etc., etc.
If a defense had been mounted, and what did Saddam have to lose by mounting such a defense, the capture of Baghdad would have been a very bloody affair. Not for the U.S. but for the civilian population. In order to capture a defended urban center, you have two options. You can fight building to building like the Germans did at Stalingrad, the Russins did at Berlin and the U.S. did at Manila and destroy the city or you can blast the city with artillery and air power as the Russians did to Grozny last year and, again, destroy the city.
In either case, civilian casualties would have been staggering and the U.S. public has no stomach for such things. And rightly so. The city of Baghdad did not invade Kuwait. The Iraqi Army did. If a political decision to completely destroy the Iraqi Army had been made, not a single Iraqi tank would have escaped from the killing fields of the Kuwait Theatre.
In regards to Iraq “destroying it’s weapons of mass destruction”, it must be pointed out that weapons can be re-built in a very short time. Believing that Iraq is not developing weapons of mass destruction because Saddam claims to have destroyed them is as naïve as believing that the German battleship Bismarck never existed because Germany was prohibited from building battleships by treaty and they Germans claimed that they were not building any.