Why did the US stop short of finishing the job during the 1st Gulf War?

Why did the US stop short of finishing the job during the 1st Gulf War? They had just routed the Iraqi military and could have taken out Saddam Hussein with a much more internationally acceptable justification than the one they used a decade later.

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

LifeStraw Water Filter for Hiking and Preparedness

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

  1. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Because they realized ousting Saddam would cement Iran as the regional power
    A decade later they sort of forgot that

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      I am curious about the alternate timeline where the US engaged Iran and told then to take over Afghanistan (at times part of Persia) after we flattened AL Queda in Tora Bora. IRGC actually fought alongside SOCOM at Herat and CIA had considered it but Washington has a hate boner for Iran that I find incomprehensible since they are like the only Muslim country with zero ties to 9/11 or any of the Arab Israeli wars and most of their conflicts have been against people we also don't like.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Didn't Iran actually proposed a reconciliation with America shortly after 9/11? Could you imagine a joint US-Iran invasion of Iraq?

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          Yes. They saw it as the perfect time to realign since we had just been powerfricked by our Saudi and israelite allies. They knew that was the third rail but that the US might open to have Iranians as our bag men in AFG and Iraq, where both countries had very similar objectives. The US has used Iran as a cut out in dozens of shady ops for decades so it wasn't without precedent. But the GOP held huge political power and at that time was utterly dominated by the evangelicals. Who are profoundly moronic.

          The USG also might have been nervous about what would happen when Qods started running around Iraq given that the CIA directly facilitated Sarin and VX gas attacks on the Iranian army in 87 and 88. That was kind of a rub. "How do you know Iraq has WMD?" "Because we helped Iraq use them against a non-aligned country that has never attacked us or sent terrorists after us, ever" is not the kind of narrative that played well in 2001

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            >given that the CIA directly facilitated Sarin and VX gas attacks on the Iranian army in 87 and 88.

            Source?

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                Cmon that's a reach

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >Yo check out these sat images your flank is about to get rolled Saddam
                >OH shit, I can't redeploy in time my shit is all up north I guess I have to go to the negotiating table
                >What about all those spicy chemicals you have, these guys are mostly infantry
                >Bruh I can't use those in such a huge public engagement I'd be vilified.
                >I wouldn't worry about it. Whose gonna listen to them? Anyway they launch in 20 hours, hit here, here, here, and here. This is the CAP schedule for their Tomcats you should have a window at X hours.

                Yeah "a reach"

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Didn't Iran actually proposed a reconciliation with America shortly after 9/11? Could you imagine a joint US-Iran invasion of Iraq?

        Iran never stopped killing Americans or trying to kill Americans. That's a bit of an issue, there.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          Be specific

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            9/11 was an Iranian false flag to make Arabs look bad as well as to make America look bad in the middle east

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          Such as? When?
          Iran was unilaterally invaded by the UK in 46. That was actually the first security council resolution ever. The US then instigates a civil war and overthrown the government and installs a new one. The Shah manages to produce some fine ass princesses and has the good taste to buy F-14s but otherwise sucks. So we withhold all support and let Khomeni take over. They kill no Americans but hold them hostage until the US hands over the massive debts it owes Iran. The US kills dozens of Iranians in failed attempts to free these guys, who are eventually let go with no casualties. Then we shoot down an airliner and kill a few hundred more. Then we load up Iraq with weapons and Intel and try to get them to wipe out Iran, including US Chem Corps and CIA smuggling botched atropine into Iran so the army gets gassed to death when trying to defend their own country. The USS Stark catches a couple exocets in the bargain... from Iraq.
          They keep warning us about Bin Laden but hey, would Saudi and Israel lie to us? Whoops. So they actively have troops in AFG fighting to liberate the west of the country. Saudi and Israel not so much. The Brits turn tail and abandon Basra and so the Marines are sent in and their "shoot everything that moves" strategy doesn't really go well so we beg Iran to set up a deal where their militas restore order, which they do. We then turn on those militas and begin exterminating them.
          Meanwhile State and CIA have created ISIS (whoopsie) and Iran crushes it basically singlehandedly. We kill more Iranians because hey, ISIS are the good guys in Syria... or something. We then release unrestricted cyber warfare on them and huge sanctions because they, uh, have better human rights than Saudi and a smaller nuclear program than Israel.
          Finally we say hey, big misunderstanding, and we invite Solemini to talks in Iraq. The leader of their guards and likely the next president and surprisingly pro-western. And then we murder him.

  2. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    The idea was the little war via sanction would finish the job. Eventually the Iraqi state would just collapse and the people would overthrow Saddam rather than the coalition going to push it with a military invasion that was beyond the mandate.

  3. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    westphalian sovereignty. the basis of the US intervention was to liberate kuwait. it was always sold as "we aren't here to take over iraq".

    in the pre-2000s westphalian sovereignty was a much bigger deal. we didn't even have a formalisation of responsibility-to-protect doctrine until like 2002.

    pre-R2P era the only way to be the "good guy" internationally was to not topple saddam.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      This. Attitudes regarding national sovereignty were different back then. Also, Bush had assembled a large coalition precisely in order to get everybody on the same side diplomatically. Most of the nations in that coalition were expressly opposed to actually overthrowing Saddam, because again, sovereignty issues.

      So, while taking Baghdad would have been possible with another 2-3 weeks of ground combat (mopping up the IRCG, then the long slog of pushing logistics forward--remember, this was a *much* larger force than in 2003), it was never really an option due to the diplomatic restrictions that were placed upon the US.

      Also, Iraq had *lots* of chemical weapons at the time, and they certainly would have been used in the defense of Baghdad. And, with the recent fall of the Warsaw Pact, there was a mistaken assumption that Iraqis were at heart no different than Poles or Romanians, and would likely overthrow Saddam themselves once the bulk of his military had been destroyed.

      In short, having just won the Cold War, most people (including myself, at the time) were shockingly naive regarding the Third World.

  4. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Because General Schwarzkopf decided to accept the surrender and handle the negotiations himself instead of letting actual diplomats handle it. He took only the most basic surrender terms from Saddam instead of more restrictive like the Versailles Treaty or whatever we did to Japan.

  5. 11 months ago
    Anonymous
  6. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Because Coalition Warfare. Syria and a number of other Arab States only joined the coalition because we promised not to Regime Change Iraq.

  7. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Primary objective was to liberate Kuwait
    Secondary objective neutralize Republican guard

  8. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Every American was shit scared of getting another Vietnam
    It was only 9/11 and the initial success of Afghanistan to get even the slightest majority in favour of the Iraq war

  9. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Fun fact.
    A lot of the US justification for the gulf war stemmed from the fact that they had a coalition of Arab countries fighting alongside them.
    Saddam knew this so had a plan to fire a bunch of scud missiles at Israel so they would join the coalition, causing the Arab countries to leave.
    The crazy thing is that this almost worked and the US had to beg Israel to not retaliate while Arab countries were threatening to leave the war if Israel joined

  10. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    for two main reasons:
    1) this was back when the UN still mattered, and the whole thing was organized as a sort of UN peacekeeping operation, rather than an actual invasion
    2) US was still very sore from vietnam and didn't want to get involved in anything that looked even vaguely like it. Bush actually said "This will not be another Vietnam" when they went in

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *