It should be clearly understood that the option of going all the way to Baghdad was never considered. Despite all of the so-called experts who, with twenty-twenty hindsight, are now criticizing that “decision,” at the time the war ended there was not a single head of state, diplomat Middle East expert, or military leader who, as far as I am aware, advocated continuing the war and seizing Baghdad. The United Nations resolutions that provided the legal basis for our military operations in the gulf were clear in their intent: kick the Iraqi military force out of Kuwait. We had authority to take whatever actions were necessary to accomplish that mission, including attacks into Iraq; but we had no authority to invade Iraq for the purpose of capturing the entire country or its capital.
If we look back to the Vietnam War we should recognize that one of the reasons we lost world support for our actions was that we had no internationally recognized legitimacy for our intervention in Vietnam. In the gulf the case was exactly the opposite; we had no less than nine United Nations resolutions authorizing our actions, and we had the support of virtually the But that support was for us to kick Iraq out of Kuwait, not to capture Baghdad.
If we look at the battle maps of the ground war, we can see that no Arab forces ever entered Iraq. Only British, French, and American troops fought on lraqi territory. In this book I have discussed in some detail the sensitivity of our allies concerning one Arab nation’s attacking another. I am convinced that had a decision been made to invade all of iraq and capture Baghdad,the coalition that we worked so hard to preserve would have fractured. I am equally convinced that the only forces that would have participated in those military actions would have been British and American. Even the French would have withdrawn from the coalition.
Had the United States and the United Kingdom gone on alone to rapture Baghdad, under the provisions of the Geneva and Hague conventions we would have been considered occupying powers and therefore would have been responsible for all the costs of maintaining or restoring government, education, and other services for the people of Iraq. From the brief time we did spend occupying Iraqi territory after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit-we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of that occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on.
Finally, we should not forget how Saddam tried to characterize the entire war. He was quick to proclaim that this was not a war against Iraq’s aggression in Kuwait, but rather the western colonialist nations embarking as lackeys of the Israelis on the destruction of the only Arab nation willing to destroy the state of Israel. Had the United States and the United Kingdom alone attacked Iraq and occupied Baghdad, every citizen of the Arab world today would be convinced that what Saddam said was true. Instead, they know that the armed forces of western and Arab nations fought side by side against Iraq’s aggression and that when Kuwait was liberated the western nations withdrew their military forces and went home. For once we were strategically smart enough to win the war and the peace.
Despite what we may see in Rambo films, catching and bringing to someone like Saddam is not a simple task. In Panama, a small country where we had thousands of American eyes in place even before military operations began, we still couldn’t find a guy named Noriega for quite some time. I’m not sure that even with a full-scale invasion we would have ever found Saddam in the large armed camp that is Iraq.
I will confess that emotionally I, like so many others, would have liked to see Saddam Hussein brought to some form of justice. He may still be. But to best address the question, we must consider what would have happened if Saddam had been allowed to succeed with his aggression if the GulfWar hadn’t been fought.
First, he would now control all the oil from Kuwait and perhaps from the entire Arabian Peninsula. Let ’ s not forget that prior to the war, Saddam’s threats were against both Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The only way to get to the United Arab Emirates from Kuwait is through Saudi Arabian oil-producing territory. But even if we assume that he would have limited his aggression to Kuwait, he would have sent a powerful signal to the rest of the gulf nations which they could not have ignored. They would have been intimidated in every future decision. Saddam would have achieved his stated aim of dramatically raising the price of oil, with the resultant stress on an already shaky world . Worse if he followed the patterns of the past, his greatly increased oil revenues would have gone to the strengthening of his already strong (relative to other Middle Eastern nations) military forces and the expansion of his developing nuclear and biological and existing chemical arsenals. It is not hard to imagine what this could have meant to the future of Israel and the cause of world peace.
Instead, a defanged Saddam has been forced to retreat behind his own borders.His nuclear, biological, and chemical military capabilities have been destroyed and will stay that way if we can figure out how to prevent him from getting them in the future the same way he got them in the past-from unscrupulous firms, both western and eastern, more interested in the corporate bottom line than in world peace. Saddam’s military forces suffered a crushing defeat and are no longer a threat to any other nation. Perhaps of greatest importance, because he did the unthinkable, attacked a brother Arab and subsequently lost face in a humiliating military rout, Saddam’s irrational, militant voice is no longer relevant in Arab politics. Largely as a result of this and the coalition’s gulf victory, the Middle East peace process is moving forward; Palestinians, other Arabs, and Israelis are sitting down at the negotiating table, and our hostages have been freed. Do I think it was worth it? You bet I do.
