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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (48042)	2/5/2008 4:58:26 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541368

Sadam was not an 'odious regime' to us until he invaded Kuwait. Yes he was, but we thought the regime was an odious regime that we could deal with (even if we had to hold our nose while doing it). So let's envision us doing nothing when Sadam tried to annex tiny, little Kuwait. One of two things would have happened. One is that another of the OPEC countries would have used their own militaries to protect Kuwait. Whether or not this was successful was their doing and their problem. They likely wouldn't even try. They might band together to protect Saudi Arabia (and removing the threat to Saudi was part of the reason for our intervention), but they didn't want full scare war with Iraq over Kuwait, not without the Americans on their side. Or, two, Kuwait would have become part of Iraq and the oil from the combined countries would have continued being available on the open market for purchase. We had no beef before with Sadam, so presumably we would have had not beef with him afterwards. We had some degree of beef with him before Kuwait, we would have much more afterwords even if the oil kept flowing. If we let it stand he wouldn't just control Kuwait, he would be in position to blackmail and dominate Saudi and the gulf states, and they would probably accommodate him. Than Saddam would control the price of oil. He had dreams about bringing the Middle East together under his control. Those dreams, even if we didn't liberate Kuwait, where unrealistic, but just perusing them would have caused problems. Other than Kuwait, where else has our military been needed to protect one country's natural resources from another country? It not just resources, we protected South Korea from invasion from the North, and tried to protect South Vietnam from the North. Also its not just about repelling conquerors through open war. Its mostly about deterrence. People who might think about it, would be deterred without open military action from the US, often without deployment or threats from the US. Our capabilities and record create an intrinsic threat to any would be conquerers of any country we are friendly with or rely on. And this "threat in being" helps mold the climate to reduce how much leaders would even consider wars of conquest.