A Failure of Diplomacy: U.S. Policy Toward Iraq Prior to the Gulf War

Ambassador Glaspie (L) and Saddam Hussein

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Persian Gulf War were consequences of failed United States diplomacy. For almost a decade, from 1980 to 1988, Iraq had been at war with Iran. To a certain extent, the U.S. had aided Saddam Hussein’s government in their conflict with Tehran, Washington’s intent being to deny the Iranians hegemony in the Middle East. The long war placed a severe strain on Iraq’s economy which, with their large standing army, contributed to Iraq’s worsening relations with its neighbors, especially Kuwait. Disputes arose over their shared border, over drilling rights, over crude pricing, and such things. But Iraq’s issues with Kuwait went back much further than that. There had been a crisis in 1961-62 very similar to the 1990 dispute, which had only been quelled by a British show of force. 

There was also a study done in 1979 by Pentagon “conservatives”[1] that warned of an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia—a scenario very much like what actually occurred in 1990. The study was shelved by the Democrat administration because the 800-pound gorilla in the living room at the time was not Iraq but Iran. It was about that time, in fact, when the American embassy in Tehran was overran by Iranian students and the 444-day hostage drama torpedoed the Carter presidency. The subsequent Iran-Iraq war was seen in Washington as a way to beat down Iran’s designs on the larger Middle East, even if it meant sharing intelligence with Saddam. The Saudis also thought it was a good idea to back the Iraqi regime. By the end of that war, however, old tensions between Iraq and Kuwait resurfaced. A cash-strapped Iraqi government with long-standing designs on its neighbor’s wealth and its access to the sea couldn’t just do nothing. Especially with a 280,000-man army.[2] And the irony of it all was that some of the more prominent “conservative” members of that 1979 study team were serving in the Bush Administration. 

Too much is made, I think, about the role of April Glaspie, the United States Ambassador to Iraq.

What Can Never Be Recaptured

“History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect.  We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.”[1]

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[1] C. V. Wedgwood, William the Silent, cited in Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002), 7.

Reagan on the Democrats' Platform

Classic Reagan.

 

John Keegan's Bookshelves

Sir John Keegan
(photo Jeff Gilbert, Daily Telegraph)

I think it's cool how Sir John Keegan and I have something in common ... no place to put all our books.  Practically every shelf is filled to the brim.  Books on the floor and on the desk.  Piles of 'em.  Stacks of papers, too.  And I'll bet that's  the "neat" corner of his study.  I love it!

On Cancer and Cornelius Ryan

Informative, captivating, and at times quite moving

Some of my favorite lines from A Private Battle, by Cornelius Ryan and Kathryn Morgan Ryan ...

Cornelius Ryan, speaking of his awards, plaques, and medals ...  

"each one less an honor than a challenge to make my work better."

On the subject of his research ... 

"Professionally, I have never accepted a single piece of historical data without researching it to the fullest, collecting all the opinions and interviews I could."

In reference to A Bridge Too Far ... 

"This will be the most difficult writing I've ever attempted.  And this book is the greatest challenge I've ever faced.  I've got to do it well or not do it at all.  No matter what happens to me, I want my books to stand the test of time."

"You don't jolt a reader or a patient until rapport has been established."

"It is my profession to ask questions, to probe, to get at reasons, more so now than ever when my unreliable body must function in spite of what ails it."

To his first cancer doctor who berated him for asking so many questions and who said to him, "You are not medically trained, yet you insist on medical language," Ryan replied ... 

"No, not precisely.  I simply want to know what you have found, and I want permission to question what I don't understand."

Cornelius Ryan on Courage

Cornelius Ryan

"I continue to be constantly amazed by the courage of men in battle," said Cornelius Ryan, "and by their humor in the midst of catastrophe. Ryan, the author of three volumes on World War II, dictated these words as he labored over volume that was perhaps the most famous of the three, A Bridge Too Far, as he himself faced a private battle with cancer at the age of 53.

“There is a desperateness, I suppose, in courage and in wartime humor. I have seldom encountered a soldier who thought he had been courageous and I would tend to discount a man who said he was. I rather think that courage is man’s unplanned positive reaction to what appears to him to be a last-ditch situation. I believe courage is at its peak when one has run out of hope. A soldier figures he has nothing to lose because subconsciously he has arrived at the conclusion that he has no future.”[1]

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[1] Cornelius Ryan and Kathryn Morgan Ryan, A Private Battle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 307.

Favorite TV Shows of the Past: Tom and Jerry

Many a Saturday morning spent watching these two make believe creatures.  They were--and still are--amusing.  But the source of my most remembered laughter was when I watched these guys with my grandfather.  I never knew he was even the slightest bit interested until one morning he startled me by his deep laughter.  He laughed so hard that he attention to the cartoons ceased.  It was almost as if the TV wasn't even on.  It was just me and Granddaddy Huffman sitting in the living room of his house ... laughing our heads off.