I know superficially it’s similar. A Bush in the White House, a war against Iraq/Saddam. In retrospect do you feel like the contemporary era of “trouble in the Middle East” began in 1990 with Desert Storm? Or was the context too different and it feels coincidental we went back 10 years later?
Basically, no.
Trouble in the Middle East had started, I think, during the Carter administration or just before. It wasn’t a new nor novel thing.
Saddam Hussein’s attempt to expand his territory was a pretty straightforward military outing with tanks and infantry and so on. It’s barely comparable to ISIS’s attempt to take territory, since they’re forging more of a guerrilla war, and not at all comparable to the post-9/11 terrorism.
Pretty sure it pre-dated the Caesar administration.
Desert Storm continued a long American tradition of propping up dictators who advance stability and U.S. interests. The war was started to prop up friendly dictators in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The war was terminated (prematurely?) to avoid toppling the stable dictator Saddam Hussein.
There was no such rationale for the 2003 invasion. The only chance for competent government to fill the void was outlawed soon after the “victory” by confused right-wing Ameriocan ideologues. Even the CIA-sponsored 1953 coup in Iran at least installed a dynasty which had recently ruled Iran for decades.
We can appreciate and debate the merits of Realpolitik. (I’ve wondered if the Middle East might have joined the enlightened liberal world had the democratically-elected, very popular and secular Mohammad Mosaddegh not been overthrown by the CIA.) But I hope we can all agree that Realpolitik is preferable to RealCrazy.
Ah yes, that must have been at the same time as the Romano-American Wars.
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Since you are asking for how they felt I believe I am qualified to answer. I was in the Army for both (active duty for the former National Guard for the latter). They felt completely different.
The point of Desert Storm was to rain destruction down from on high and leave.
The post-9/11 approach was to send in occupying troops to get shot at.
The post-post-9/11 approach is, of course, to send in the drones.
Two steps forward, but with one step back in the middle.
Not really, the operational objectives were not the same is all.
Desert Storm was about making a regular army on friendly soil turn back. Which is easy : you just have to fuck it up until it either decides to leave or ceases to exist.
OIF was about invading a country with an offensive army and setting up a whole new regime. Which cannot but involve *actually *holding territory and shit, not just drive-by bombing it.
If tomorrow Obama decided to make Mexico the 51st State by force (the better to invade Texas with the help of his ISIS allies that massing in Michoacán as I speak, naturally :D), drones wouldn’t cut it either.
I always felt like the post 9/11 invasion was W’s desire to finish what his daddy had started. Maybe I’m just a little cynical that way. But the day he claimed victory in the Presidential race, I had no doubt that we’d be back there.
There has been “trouble in the Middle East” for as long as I’ve been aware of such issues, and the roots of said trouble were in place long before I was born.
I was a little kid in the late 70s, but I understood the Iran hostage crisis, and things carried on from there through the 80s: the civil war in Lebanon (including the bombing of the US Marine barracks), Kadaffi’s steady stream of annoying antics, Sadat’s assassination, aircraft hijackings/bombings, an airport and a discotheque being shot up, the Iran/Iraq war, ongoing trouble between Israel and the Palestinians - all of these things preceded Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the resounding US-administered ass-whoopin’ that followed, and the strife has merely continued from there.
People in Iran would probably tell you that their problems started long before the hostage crisis.
That’s kind of my point, though: the lesson is, don’t pick stuff requiring those operational objectives; don’t set out to make Mexico the 51st State by force, or to set up a whole new regime in Iraq; just pick missions where, as you say, “just have to fuck it up until it either decides to leave or ceases to exist.”
That’s the can-do spirit of Desert Storm, and now – not the overreach in between.
Decades ago there was a good movie about the lives of Midwest high school kids, one of whom was into competitive bike racing, where one of the more droll characters said something about his life like, “things are generally fine, except for the recent troubles in the Middle East.”
I think of that line a lot, especially when I’m more than usually despondent about the situation there; it’s funny and a triumph of screenwriting. Sort of like (sort of) how Hitchcock gave his female stars a certain look, which he said would prevent the characters looking dated.
ETA: Breaking Away ?