25 Years after the Gulf War
By Mowahid Hussain Shah
On September 11, 1990 – 11 years to the day before the devastating 9/11 attacks on America in 2001 – President George H. W. Bush addressed a joint session of the US Congress. Iraq had invaded Kuwait the previous month. The elder Bush demanded Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait, applauded the creation of an international coalition to counter Iraq, and declared the objective of a “new world order…freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure.”
Instead of a New World Order, it is New World Disorder.
The bombing and invasion of Iraq, which commenced on January 17, 1991, abetted by the Arab Establishment, was a lopsided massacre. At least 20,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed, while losses of US and coalition forces were less than 350. It opened a Pandora’s Box of unforeseen consequences. Desert Storm became a Desert Trap.
Iraq has been the cradle of world civilization and, with its iconic cities of Baghdad and Karbala, also the hinterland of the Muslim world. Already the Mideast had not absorbed Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It was unrealistic to expect its soil to absorb yet another occupation.
The carnage is far from over. A United Nations report, released on January 19, disclosed that nearly 20,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the past two years.
More than 37 years after the September 17, 1978 Egypt-Israel Camp David Accords, there is a growing insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula and, 26 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Russia has reasserted its military presence and influence in the Middle East.
25 years ago, on January 23, 1991, General Colin Powell, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proudly proclaimed that the military strategy against Iraq was “very, very simple. First, we head it off and then we kill it.” Did it?
The threat today is more deadly, more asymmetrical. The mayhem against soft targets has now spread to far-flung places, such as Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in sub-Saharan Africa.
Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates conceded as much before CBS News, on January 18, that the US had more leverage tackling a government than a non-state actor.
Today, there are structural, institutional, and historical impediments to having a fair discourse about Middle East issues in the United States. Socrates had said; “The life which is unexamined is not worth living.”
The rise of scapegoat demagoguery and dishing out a diet of vastly exaggerated lies and intolerance operates to slow the flow of US power, exposing its limits.
Yet, in situations grim, there are glimmers of good and hope. Landmark deals with Cuba and Iran testify to the value of persistent diplomacy and negotiations, instead of succumbing to the siren call of military threats. Narrowly-focused groups in the US, fueled by what Jane Mayer of the NewYorker calls “Dark Money”, have a vested stake in instigating and perpetuating confrontations.
They need now to be shown the results and confronted with the threshold question: has the US use of force in the Muslim world made America stronger and safer?
