Just by lurking, I’ve noticed quite a few people here are knowledgeable about war and the Middle East. That said, I have some questions about the Gulf War, if anyone wants to take a crack at them:
Was Iraq really going to attack Saudi Arabia?
Why didn’t Saddam use his chemical weapons?
What happened to all those Iraqi planes that went to Iran? The pilots, too?
Why didn’t we help the Kurds and Shiites after the Gulf War? Didn’t Bush request they rebel?
How is Kuwait doing nowadays? I know they were talking about looking into democracy after the war. Any progress on this?
My International Relations prof was big on a few of these topics:
(3) The planes are still there. This is actually something of an annoyance to Saddam, but he figured at the time that at least some small prospect of getting them back later was better than their certain destruction right then. I have no idea what happened to the pilots; they might have gotten to go home, or they might still be in (or under) Iran. Someone with more recent information might know about that.
(4) The problem with aiding a Kurdish insurrection is that they are trying to create a Kurdish state (called “Kurdistan”, oddly enough). This wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself except that part of proposed Kurdistan is in Turkey, which is a US ally and member of NATO. We’d like to support them against Saddam, but they are the same Kurds that harass the Turks, which leads to a true foreign policy roadblock.
I don’t know if anyone knows for certain. However, assuming the US made no response and left well enough alone it would have made strategic sense for Saddam to move into Saudi Arabia. Cynical reasons about protecting our oil supply aside this was one fo the reasons for the US getting over there ASAP after Kuwait was invaded.
If Saddam used chemical weapons he would have guaranteed himself a personal ass-kicking from US forces. We wouldn’t have stopped and let him remain in power as we did. Had he used such weapons what little support he still enjoyed from other Arab countries would have evaporated. Also, IIRC, Pres. Bush said that a bio or chemical attack on US forces would have been viewed by the US as equivalent to a nuclera attack and would respond accordingly. I could be wrong about that one though.
I have no idea what happened to those things and have wondered myself. My guess is the planes never left and the pilots were sent back to Iraq. Iran and Iraq were at war only a few years earlier and it wasn’t nice. Iran was in an interesting position hating the US as a matter of course and hating Iraq as a recent enemy. As a result they pretty much sat on the sidelines not sure who to root for. I would think they were happy to get free planes. It’s not as if Saddam had anything left after the war to make Iran give them back and there was no reason for Iran to be nice about it.
Pres. Bush did ask them to rebel and thinking they’d have US support they did try a rebellion. Saddam brutally put them down which had the US institute the No-Fly zones up north. Why we didn’t help more I don’t remember but it is an embarrassment. My guess is once we were done the Arab countries in the region that just barely tolerated our presence weren’t ok with having us stick around and helping rebels overthrow a government…even a government as shitty as Saddam’s.
I don’t remember but I think it is mostly back to business as usual in Kuwait. I remember then making noises about some promised reforms if they got back into power and I think most of those reforms were pretty much forgotten by the Kuwaitis and ignored by the US (who now has a military base in Kuwait).
Regarding number 3, I read somewhere that Iran still has the planes and considers them restitution for the Iran-Iraq war. I find that pretty damn funny.
I don’t think so, because if that was part of the original plan he would have done it immediately. It also shows that Saddam had very bad advice because it would have been the smart move. He would have then controlled nearly half the world’s oil and it would have been much harder to stage a war against him from say, Egypt or (even worse) Israel.
Best guess is the fear that we, quite literally, might have nuked him if he tried that. Colin Powell himself suggested this as a reason (he also said that he doesn’t think we would’ve). However, we would probably have demanded he personally be handed over for war crimes.
Don’t know. If the pilots didn’t just defect for money then maybe he somehow thought this would bring Iran into the war.
In retrospect, we should have. As soon as we saw that the Iraqis were using helicopter gunships against them we could have shot them down as part of the no-fly policy. Schwartzkoff claims they tricked him into allowing it saying they were for transporting govt. officials.
Kuwait is an oil-rich monarchy. Don’t expect radical change anytime soon.
Whether or not it was actually part of the original plan, he did place substantial forces on the Saudi border, and made very threatening noises. He also did invade Saudi Arabia, even if not for long. the Battle for Kahfji (sp?) was a strong reconisance-in-force, and Iraqi forces occupied the city for about 24 hours, IIRC. That was where the first US soldiers were captured, a couple of MPs that got lost.
Ther’s also a part dealing with the weillingness to use nuclear weapons in response to the introduction of WMD:
Interestingly enough, they also discuss the targetting criteria, including “Nonstate actors (facilities and centers) that possess WMD”. That certainly implies that terrorists with chemical and/or biological weapons can be targeted according to current doctrines.
JP 3-12 and JP 3-12.1 were published in 1995 and 1996 respectively, so they may not indicate the public stance of the United States as of 1991, but I think they’re probably close.