The year 1991 was ushered in for Americans, Iraqis, and many others around the world by the Persian Gulf War, which ended in a decisive military defeat for Saddam Hussein's Iraqi armies occupying Kuwait. The political outcome of the war like its political origins has proven to be more ambiguous. The following pages will examine the background and developments leading to the war, its consequences, and what its true historical significance may be.
On the afternoon of January 16, 1991, American television viewers who happened to be tuned to the Cable News Network (CNN) experienced possibly the most extraordinary event in the history of television: they were told and shown by direct live reportage and video from CNN reporters then stationed in Baghdad, that the city was at that moment in the predawn hours of the night, Baghdad time under air attack. Thus, American viewers learned that their country had gone to war. The first air strikes came within hours of the deadline established by the United Nations for Iraqi withdrawal from occupied Kuwait ("Desert Storm," 1991).
The war that began that day ended a month later, after only four days of ground combat ("Desert Victory," 1991). It was one of the most extraordinarily one sided wars of modern history. Iraqi casualties have never been reliably determined, but were probably at least one hundred thousand dead. U.S. casualties were fewer than two hundred dead a substantial fraction of them killed in the single flukish direct hit of an inaccurate Iraqi SCUD missile on an American barracks in Saudi Arabia. (Another substantial fraction of U.S. casualties were due to "friendly" fire from other U.S. forces in the confusion of a swift advance.) A nation that had never been confident of its military prowess since the long quagmire of Vietnam was profoundly relieved by the swiftness and relatively slight cost of the conflict, and perhaps the war's most me...