In light of the shocking advances of the Islamic State, the sense that Iraq is coming apart at the seams despite the huge toll of lives and treasure squandered over more than a decade, it’s clear that George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was the most fateful foreign policy blunder ever made by an American leader.
What’s remarkable, however, is that critics of George W.’s actions overlook the fact that it was his father, George H.W.Bush, who, in 1990, set the stage for his son’s disastrous moves 13 years later.
It was Papa Bush, after all, who sent American troops half way around the world to launch the First Gulf War–an error of tragic proportions; responsible in its own way for much of the horror that afflicts the Greater Middle East (and America) to this day.
Ironically, it happened just as the U.S. seemed about to become king of the global roost–the greatest military power the planet had ever known. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was no power around to challenge U.S. hegemony. It was left to America to blight its own future.
(I wrote about this in my book, “Web of Deceit, The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W.Bush.”)
What is also extraordinary about the First Gulf War is that–like the outbreak of World War I—it was all so unnecessary–the result of feckless leadership, inept diplomacy and shocking miscalculations by both leaders–Saddam Hussein and George H.W. Bush.
Saddam’s ignorance can be understood: a brutal dictator, surrounded for the most part by sycophants, the Iraqi president knew little of the outside world. George H.W. Bush on the other hand, had been Ambassador to China, head of the CIA, had an impressive stable of experienced advisors and could draw upon the U.S.’s vast intelligence capacities.
The problem, however, in the summer of 1990 was that Bush and his top aides were obsessed by the disintegrating Soviet empire. They were largely oblivious to the political storm that was brewing in the Gulf between Saddam Hussein and the leaders of Kuwait.
Saddam had just “won” an incredibly bloody nine-year war with Iran, only to find himself in a mounting feud with his immensely wealthy Gulf neighbor, Kuwait. Saddam’s charges against the Kuwaitis were not at all unreasonable.
For starters, they were beggaring Iraq’s ravaged economy by manipulating the price of oil. They were also demanding that the bankrupt Iraq pay back huge loans Kuwait had made to help finance Baghdad’s sanguinary war against Iran.
As Saddam saw it, by attacking revolutionary Iran, he had been defending Kuwait’s interests as well. But now that Iran was defeated and Iraq was bled white, the Kuwaitis wanted their money back.