"Thatcher Pushed Bush into War with Iraq "
This cabinet meeting takes place on the morning of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.
This is before Bush met with Thatcher in Aspen in the afternoon.
To Bush's left is Robert Gates, to his right is Dick Cheney and Paul Woolfowitz is seated directly behind him; Colin Powell appears to be across the conference table.
Watch the way they GLARE at him...
"Thatcher may have seen the handwriting on the wall, and may have tried to save herself with yet another war. When the regime of Bush the Elder in the United States had lured Saddam Hussein into occupying Kuwait, the Thatcher regime was the first to demand a military counterattack against the Iraqis based on Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter. Thatcher’s admirers claim that her desire for war with Iraq was far greater than that of the outwardly wimpy President George Herbert Walker Bush. After a key Anglo-American summit at the beginning of this crisis, press leaks inspired by Thatcher suggested that Bush - perhaps still frightened by the fate of LBJ in Vietnam - had begun to “go wobbly” on the military mobilization, and that Thatcher had been forced to carry out an emergency backbone transplant on the president.
What followed was Operation Desert Shield, the deployment of immense NATO military resources into Saudi Arabia. But since the bombing did not start until the middle of January, Thatcher’s hopes for a quick new Malvinas were in vain. Instead, in early November 1990, Lord Geoffrey Howe - a loyalist who had now gone over to the Wets - resigned from her government. Soon, Thatcher faced a challenge from Tory leader Michael “Tarzan” Heseltine. When this challenge revealed the extent of hatred against Thatcher, the Iron Lady finally quit. "
International Socialist Review Issue 7, Spring 1999
The 1991 Gulf War: Establishing a New World Order
By Lance Selfa
IRAQ’S PREDAWN invasion and occupation of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, precipitated the crisis that led to the Gulf War. Within days, Western politicians lined up to denounce Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, comparing Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. On August 8, President Bush announced the deployment of 250,000 U.S. troops to "deter Iraqi aggression" against Saudi Arabia. When Bush announced the deployment, he emphasized:
A puppet regime [Iraq’s occupation government in Kuwait] imposed from the outside is unacceptable. The acquisition of territory by force is unacceptable. No one, friend or foe, should doubt our desire for peace and no one should underestimate our determination to confront aggression. . . .
America does not seek conflict. Nor do we seek to chart the destiny of other nations. But America will stand by her friends. The mission of our troops is wholly defensive. Hopefully, they’ll not be needed long.
Bush announced high-minded goals (to oppose a "puppet regime imposed from the outside," and "to confront aggression"). He assured the world that the U.S. desired only peace. He assured a wary public that U.S. troops wouldn’t "be needed long" and that their mission was "wholly defensive." He rejected any imperial designs on the region. Of course, these were all lies.
Behind closed doors, Bush and his advisers were planning one of the most destructive and horrifying wars in modern times. Only a month later, Air Force General Michael Dugan revealed some U.S. plans: a sustained aerial bombardment of Baghdad and other civilian population centers and the assassination of Saddam Hussein. "The cutting edge would be in downtown Baghdad," Dugan told the Washington Post. He ordered his planners to target, he said, "what is it that psychologically would make an impact on the population and regime in Iraq . . . to find centers of gravity where air power can make a difference early on." For his candor, Dugan was fired.
By the time the U.S. put Dugan’s plans into effect on January 16, 1991, 500,000 U.S. troops had been mobilized in the Gulf. Through the five-month buildup to the war, Bush tried nearly every public justification for the war he could: to confront aggression, to defend small nations, to face down a dictator, to support American jobs and to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But the real reason, which Bush was loathe to admit, was oil.
No comments:
Post a Comment