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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ish who wrote (152657)	11/25/2004 2:38:02 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Respond to of 281500

For one, that wasn't the role of the US in the 90's nor would it have been smart to do so. Secondly, it was not our job nor was there a reason to do so in 2003. George Herbert Walker Bush said at least one thing I agree with, the rational for NOT invading Iraq in 1991: Bush's Father Foresaw Costs of Iraq War By GEORGE GEDDA WASHINGTON (AP) - Not many people foresaw the postwar difficulties the administration has endured in Iraq. Of the few who did, two stand out, both lions of the Republican Party. One was President George H.W. Bush. The other was his secretary of state, James A. Baker. ``Incalculable human and political costs'' would have been the result, the senior Bush has said, if his administration had pushed all the way to Baghdad and sought to overthrow Saddam Hussein after the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Iraqi army from Kuwait during the Persian Gulf war in 1991. ``We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect rule Iraq,'' Bush wrote. ``The coalition would have instantly collapsed. ... Going in and thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. ``Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different - and perhaps barren - outcome.'' The senior Bush's thoughts are outlined in ``A World Transformed,'' published well before his son became president. After Desert Storm, the nation was deeply split over whether Bush was right to bring the troops home while leaving Saddam's regime intact. Baker had a similar view on the perils of a regime change policy in Iraq after Desert Storm. In a September 1996 opinion piece, he said, ``Iraqi soldiers and civilians could be expected to resist an enemy seizure of their own country with a ferocity not previously demonstrated on the battlefield in Kuwait. ``Even if Hussein were captured and his regime toppled, U.S. forces would still have been confronted with the specter of a military occupation of indefinite duration to pacify the country and sustain a new government in power. ``Removing him from power might well have plunged Iraq into civil war, sucking U.S. forces in to preserve order. Had we elected to march on Baghdad, our forces might still be there.' Other than that, the ironies continue. George H. W. Bush in part sold congress and the public on going to war on false intelligence (Iraq was said to be massing an attack on Saudi Arabia) plus other assorted lies and distortions. I agreed with going to Kuwait's aid because under international law, it was acceptable to do so. But I was under no illusions at the time that everything was as it was said to be.