The Pros And Cons Of The Persian Gulf War

Should the United States have invaded Iraq during the Persian Gulf War? In international politics, conflicts arise from power struggles, ideological discord, and interventions by foreign powers, often harming innocent civilians and decimating societies. In the case of the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991, the conflict emerged in the aftermath of the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1987), with the Middle Eastern countries of Iraq and Kuwait in the spotlight. Kuwait had loaned 6 billion dollars to Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War, and after the war, Iraq was financially weak, requesting debt forgiveness from Kuwait’s ruling family, the al-Sabah. Kuwait, however, declined to cancel Iraq’s debt, causing Iraq’s powerful dictator, Saddam Hussein, to amass an army

A US occupation of Iraq, which holds 17% of the oil in the Middle East, would have resulted in the United States holding power over a substantial amount of oil, decreasing American reliance and spending on non-Iraqi suppliers, overall benefiting the economy (Renner and Aarts). However, “the United States would be left ‘owning’ [Iraq,] a country of 22 million people ravaged by more than two decades of war” (Pollack 14) without the trust or support of the Iraqi population. For that reason, the United States “would have been subjected to constant hit-and-run guerrilla attacks” (Zunes) by Iraqi militants (Zunes), who would have been willing to sacrifice their lives to defend their country from what they saw as “imperialist occupiers” ("Gulf War 1991: Exit"). This would turn the conflict into a counterinsurgency war, in which American casualties could have reached up to 30,000 (CIA), and the entirety of Iraq could have been destroyed. To prevent such a conflict from arising, the United States would have to occupy and rebuild a devastated Iraq, “an occupation that would have been tremendously costly for the U.S. taxpayer” ("Gulf War 1991: Exit"). Estimates for the cost of the 2003 US operation in Iraq “range between $100

Given Iraq’s diverse population of Kurds, Sunni Muslims, and Shia Muslims, it possesses significant internal tensions. Thus, to keep the country neutralized, Saddam Hussein enforced harsh measures against the Iraqi people (“Iraq”), and his “repressive military dictatorship [was] the only [thing] that could keep this. creation together for any length of time” ("Gulf War 1991: Exit"). Therefore, the removal of Saddam Hussein from power would result in Iraq “devolving once again into its constituent parts” ("Gulf War 1991: Exit"), according to “ a host of experts and officials in and outside of the Middle East” ("Gulf War 1991: Exit"), weakening an area that “contains two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves” ("Gulf War 1991: Exit"). In the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s downfall, there would be an ensuing conflict between Iraq’s neighboring countries, with “Turkey, Syria, and Iran [being] drawn into a [conflict] in terms of enhancing strategic security, gaining allies, and/or acquiring territory in a broken-up Iraq” ("Gulf War 1991: Exit"), leading to unrest within the region. Furthermore, in a study by the CIA about the consequences of a regime change in Iraq, the CIA states that an American occupation of Iraq “would spark domestic unrest in key Arab states” (CIA). The CIA also believed that “US military force against Iraq may be more likely to