What are you talking about?
TheUS didn’t invade Japan, it just nuked the civilian population.
It was occupied, and they didn’t invite us in. I’m not seeing a difference.
Imagine Iraq in March, 2003. SH surrenders, and the US rolls in. What changes?
What do you think happened after the nukes were dropped? The US Navy went home? No, they occupied Japan for a year or two, and made them a nation of pacifists who like baseball and pro wrestling.
And pizza. But with squid on it.
And tentacle porn.
No, that dates back to 1814.
I love the Dope. Ask a question about Iraq, and in a few posts you get the history of Tentacle Porn.
As is, I thought Stormin Norman wanted to go all they way and was really annoyed that it did not happen.
I still think that with massive forces already in-country and “within sight” of Baghdad, with a huge coalition already in place and fighting, and with the war having the blessing essentially of the entire world that if we had taken Baghdad and captured/killed Saddam that we would have avoided all of the problems since 9/11. Sure it would probably have tweaked most of the coalition, but the war was already underway, and it was the furtherst thing from a quagmire. The enemy was reeling on every front, with pressure from all sides, and their forces were surrendering en mass or being destroyed in place. The majority of the fighting was over within 72 hours as it was, and even with diplomatic protests I doubt the armies of the coalition would have just stopped in place should we have continued on - armies tend to move to the sound of the guns, after all. By the time the diplomats got their complaints sorted out I think the war would have been over and Baghdad secured.
IMO of course, but it certainly wouldn’t have been anything like 2003, and we wouldn’t have needed a 2003 because there wouldn’t have been a 9/11 because we wouldn’t have had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia for almost 10 years, pissing off Bin Laden and his cohorts (probably). I don’t think BinLaden gave a flip one way or another about Saddam. But the dynamics of the region would have been so completely changed if we had seized Baghdad that history from that point forward would have been radically different, so it’s impossible to predict the outcome.
Conquestum interruptum! 
I don’t think so. Cannon fodder die.
The “huge coalition” was cool with kicking SH out of Kuwait, but not so cool about going to Baghdad. The US might have had to go it alone, or whip up a “coalition of the willing” to do so.
Would Bush the Elder have made the same mistake of disbanding the army – and the police :eek: – as Bush the Lesser did?
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s my understanding that Iraq under Saddam had two different systems: a court system and police that generally followed the law as written, and a separate secret police and special courts that enforced Saddam’s will. “Political” cases were handled on a completely different track than ordinary criminal cases. Similarly, the Republican Guard and not the regular army was primarily “entrusted” to carry out internal warfare against Saddam’s enemies.
If this was so, then one of Bush II’s big mistakes was blithely condemning all of the police/judicial/army apparatus as hopelessly corrupted by Saddam and thus having them dissolved. (Of course, that mistake goes hand-in-hand with not having enough troops on the ground to replace the regular police. Accepting for argument’s sake Bush the Younger’s belief that the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators, did he think the ordinary everyday criminals would take a holiday? 
:rolleyes:) Beyond the obvious [del]to most people[/del] fact that a nation needs a police force, Iran was still next door, so it’s not like Iraq’s large army existed only to attack Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. 
Had Bush disbanded the secret police and Republican Guard while keeping the regular police and army in service (the latter in its barracks) under close supervision by the U.S. military, followed by measured clean-up and weeding-out efforts once the situation was more settled, then Iraq might well have not descended into chaos. Perhaps Bush the Elder was subtle or well-advised enough to not make the same mistake had he ended up in the same situation in 1991?
Which is why I proceeded to say that since they were already in the fight and advancing to the “sound of the guns” that by the time the politicians and diplomats had time to tell them to knock it off it might already have been over. Things were moving VERY fast in the final hours before a halt was called, after all, and we know how notoriously bad battlefield communications can be, intentionally or otherwise.
How long were the POWs from 2003 kept in captivity after “mission accomplished?” POWs are not normally kept as POWs for the longest time after hostilities have ceased. Doing so is a violation of conventions going back to the Hague 1898 - Annex to the Convention REGULATIONS RESPECTING THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND
There would have been international and domestic outrage if a couple hundred thousand Iraqi POWs were kept prisoner after the end of conventional hostilities, and it would also have done wonders to stoke the fires of opposition to the occupation by Iraqis.
Iraq came somewhat close to losing control of parts of the country, not all of the country. Notably these parts were the Kurdish north and the Shia south. Also note that the countries that eventually sent troops to Iraq before they backed out did so only after the occupation of Iraq was a fait accompli, they had no desire to send troops to invade Iraq. It’s hard to imagine the situation being different in 1991; perhaps they would have sent some troops before leaving in disillusionment after the US had already occupied Iraq. It’s extraordinarily difficult to imagine they would have gone along with the US to Baghdad. Like Scowcroft said, the British would probably have gone along with us, but other than that we’d have been going it alone. You also have to figure in the feeling of rank betrayal the coalition would have felt when the US decided to ignore the resolutions that it had gotten through the UN and decided it was going to invade and occupy Iraq when it had specifically asked for and got authority from the UN only to eject Iraq from Kuwait. The amount of ill will this would have generated would make the ill will towards the US in 2003 pale in comparison.
Indeed. The blessing the war had was to forcibly eject Iraq from Kuwait, there was no blessing to go to Baghdad, depose Saddam and occupy Iraq. The US deciding unilaterally to do so would have come as quite a bombshell to the coalition, there hadn’t even been any discussion of doing so. The coalition was nowhere near “in sight” of Baghdad unless you’re counting satellite photography; they were over 300 miles from Baghdad, just over the Iraqi border with Kuwait.
It’s amazing that all these scenarios of a 1991 occupation of Baghdad don’t take into account the Iranian leadership, and what it would think about the ‘Great Satan’ being on its front doorstep, and taking account of what happened 2003-11 Iran regularly supplied various Shia militias with weapons to attack US Coalition troops. So bearing that in mind, even if it happened in 1991, Iraq would of inflamed the Sunni Shia divide sooner which would again heighten those tensions across the region which we’re witnessing now.
I think those bear the hallmarks of a quagmire.
This is from a fictional work (Frederick Forsyth’s The Fist of God) but I think the analysis is (as the British would say) spot on.
"The Kurds would certainly use the opportunity, so long denied, to opt for secession and the establishment of their own republic in the north. A weak central government in Baghdad based upon agreement by consensus would be impotent to prevent such a move.
The Turkish reaction would be predictable and furious, since Turkey’s own Kurdish minority along the border areas would lose no time in joining their fellow Kurds across the border in a much invigorated resistance to Turkish rule.
To the southeast, the Shi’a majority around Basra and the Shatt-al-Arab would certainly find good reason to make overtures to Teheran. Iran would be sorely tempted to avenge the slaughter of its young people in the recent Iran-Iraq war by entertaining those overtures in the hope of annexing southeastern Iraq in the face of the helplessness of Baghdad…
…Farther north, the Arabs of Iranian Arabistan would find common cause with their fellow Arabs across the border in Iraq, a move that would be vigorously repressed by the Ayatollahs in Teheran.
In the rump of Iraq we would almost certainly see an outbreak of intertribal fighting to settle old scores and to establish supremacy over what was left…
…(O)ne can look forward to a major civil war in the rump of the Iraqi heartland, four border wars, and the complete destabilization of the Gulf. The refugee problem alone would amount to millions."
This is from a book published in 1994. Forsyth also takes a look at some alternatives:
"The only other viable scenario is for Saddam Hussein to be succeeded by another general or senior member of the Ba’ath hierarchy. But as all those in the present hierarchy are as bloodstained as their leader, it is hard to see what benefits would accrue from the replacement of one monster by another, possibly even a cleverer despot.
The ideal, although admittedly not perfect, solution must therefore be the retention of the status quo in Iraq, except that all weapons of mass destruction must be destroyed and the conventional weapons power so degraded as to not present a threat to any neighboring state for a minimum of a decade."
There is this pertinent wisdom as well:
“It is simply not possible for the United States to impose humanity on a worldwide scale unless it is prepared to enter into permanent global war.”
Iran in 1991 was a lot more weaker than the Iran of 2003.
Iran was alot more ideological in 1991 than in 2003.
As XT pointed out, the 1991 coalition was based around the idea of restoring the governing regime in Kuwait not overthrowing the governing regime in Iraq. Other local regimes could support the first goal but would oppose the second. If we had tried to shift the goalposts in mid-war, we would have run into a lot of opposition and it would have been claimed that we had just used Kuwait as a cover to get our foot in the door so we could establish our own empire in the Middle East. Nobody would have ever trusted us after that.