In the years since, I've sometimes thought about my counterparts in the Iraqi army during the Gulf War: the ones on the "Highway of Death", and the ones simply bombed to smithereens in the middle of nowhere.
Their leadership probably deserved that fate, though few of the rank-and-file.
I wonder what Iraq would be like today if we had done in 1991 what we postponed to 2003. I wonder how many of those Iraqis killed since the Gulf War would have been able to make their country a far better place than it is today.
Ultimately, the whole thing has been a massive failure; it would have been better for us, and likely much of the Middle East, to have let Iraq take Kuwait (and Saudi Arabia, for that matter). It wasn't our fight. It was never our fight.
Their leadership probably deserved that fate, though few of the rank-and-file.
I wonder what Iraq would be like today if we had done in 1991 what we postponed to 2003. I wonder how many of those Iraqis killed since the Gulf War would have been able to make their country a far better place than it is today.
Ultimately, the whole thing has been a massive failure; it would have been better for us, and likely much of the Middle East, to have let Iraq take Kuwait (and Saudi Arabia, for that matter). It wasn't our fight. It was never our fight.