But that fate would not have stopped on the Peninsula. It would have gobbled up Jordan, Egypt, Libya... down across Africa.
We’re talking about a massive occupation and swap-out of governments to become one massive nation.
During the process that effort would expend it’s energy to develop WMDs and seek more territory.
Why allow that to happen? It wouldn’t be good. It seems to me a stable region with governments in place is a much safer world.
DoughtyOne: But that fate would not have stopped on the Peninsula. It would have gobbled up Jordan, Egypt, Libya... down across Africa.
Not really.
Remember that from 1980 to 1988 Saddam faced off against the Iranis. The Iranis were weakened from sanctions, from lower oil production, from culling of top military ranks. And the Iraqis were supported by Gulf money and American weaponry
But Saddam was still unable to win. After 8 years, the borders did not move an inch
While he could easily walk into Kuwait or Qatar,
Egypt? -- ha, ha! They had a much stronger military than him
Libya? - Ghaddafi was mad and would have bled Saddam far -- Saddam's understanding of logistics was poor (the Iran iraq war and Gulf war one showed that)
And we knew this in 1990. He was a tinpot dictator