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Gulf War

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By Something ComplicatedPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
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Gulf War
Photo by Thomas Ashlock on Unsplash

The United States was led by President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State Bill Clinton, and the Gulf War ended on February 28, 1991, with a coalition victory. Iraqi forces and proved a success, with the loss of more than 1,000 lives in the first three months of the war.

Although the Gulf War was recognised as a decisive victory for the coalition, both Kuwait and Iraq suffered enormous damage. The Gulf War, however, did not drive Saddam Hussein out of power, drive him out of power, or bring stability to the Gulf, nor did it drive him out of power.

The Gulf War has not prevented an insurgency in Iraq, and US forces would lose 6,967 troops by 2019. Instead, the United Nations maintained its military presence in the Middle East for another year after the Persian Gulf war. Faulks returned to the Middle East and was appointed as a historian, but not as an active member of the coalition. In order to prevent a possible attack on Iraq and prevent further insurgencies in Iraq, the armed forces remained in Kuwait and Iraq until the end of 1991.

At the time, most Iraqi troops surrendered or fled in Kuwait, and a cease-fire was declared between Iraq and the allied coalition. In Washington, President Bush said that the invasion of Kuwait would not last and called on Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, but to no avail.

The U.S.-led coalition responded with an offensive that drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait. The United Nations Security Council called on Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait by mid-January 1991, but he refused and resisted. Three days later, a second war began in the Persian Gulf, commonly known as the Iraq War, and in response to the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arabian Peninsula, the US launched an air offensive against Iraq and Kuwait, known as Operation Desert Storm. On 10 January 1991, the Persian Gulf war officially began with the first major air strike on Iraq.

The operation was part of Operation Desert Storm, in which coalition forces from the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Saudi Arabia invaded the region to prevent Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia by invading Kuwait. The Middle East conflict, which formally ended on 31 July 1991, was resumed by the US and its allies in the Persian Gulf war.

The euphoria that followed the collapse of the Cold War was dramatically overshadowed by Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iraq and the subsequent collapse of his regime. On the day of the formal annexation of Kuwait, which Hussein described as Iraq's 19th province, the Iraqi government began to enter Saudi Arabia in a military buildup known as Operation Desert Shield. President Bush doubled the number of US troops in the region, even though the government was prepared to force Iraq out of Kuwait. Iraq began its invasion of Kuwait on July 31, 1991, bombarding Kuwait City and soon sending ground troops into the country.

The Americans had to coax Saudi Arabia, a country whose popularity was ultimately damaged by the US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, to support the effort.

Unity was not the only factor in the decision to invade Kuwait and overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. At the end of the Gulf War, there was much criticism of President George Bush for his handling of the situation. Arab leaders had worked hard to persuade Iraq to withdraw, especially in the days immediately after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. That would have been the first sign that we could have acted to limit his aggression, but we did not and we invaded Kuwait in response to his invasion.

Indeed, the US-led military response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait has transformed him from aggressor to defender, tyrant, and hero in the eyes of much of the Arab world. He remained the most powerful man in Iraq and the leader of one of its most dangerous regimes.

A retired colonel recently reflected on the five months he spent in a convoy through the Saudi desert. When Iraq began withdrawing its troops from Kuwait and facing an Allied land invasion, thousands of tanks and tens of thousands of soldiers were pushed out of Iraq in response to President Saddam Hussein. US F-14s flew over burning Kuwaiti oil wells and set their retreating Iraqi troops on fire. When Iraq's oil well burned, 80,000 of his troops invaded and occupied Kuwait's oil fields, refineries and oil storage sites.

Operation Desert Storm, also known as the Gulf War, began on January 17, 1991, when Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired at Baghdad. On 28 February 1990, the United States and international forces launched an air war against Iraq, which was called the "Desert Storm" after Iraq withdrew from Kuwait. In a remarkable unilateral loss, it liberated Kuwait, achieving the largest military victory in the history of the Middle East and the second largest in history. On February 28, 1991, it ended the war between Iraq and a coalition of states led by the US and its allies Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait City.

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