I can see Kd Gergo likes to rewrite history... especially WW2 history.
This is my favorite though.
"Then in 2003 you invaded Iraq, as you put it, didn"t let Saddam to rape and pillage his own nation, terrorize his own people and restart his WMD programs again. But you seem to fail to realize, the current state of Iraq is worse than it was four years ago. You brought chaos with yourselves, because you were unable to handle the region. And your prestige has been hit, thanks to the false WMD threat, which was made up. The "evidence" sublimated. Yeah, Saddam could have started another program, but fact is, he didn't. Now you make things worse. Your domestic jesters(Democrats, largely) want to pull out, and American people approved it. Another unfinished job. Great work, America!"
Listen, let me clear you up on some Iraqi history. In 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait, but that wasn't the first time foreign troops were on Kuwaiti soil, in the 1960's British, note not AMERICAN! Troops were deployed to prevent an Iraqi invasion, similar to the gulf war invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. The reason Iraq used as a legitimacy to invade Kuwait in 1990 was the same used in 1960, that it was a breakaway provence. Kuwait had been and continues to be a sovereign nation, thanks to us, since 1913, with a brief stint as part of the British empire.
During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq has run up debts, totalling billions of dollars to "the surrounding arab nations, in its effort to win whatever Saddam Hussein intended to win in that war. Initially we were on the side or Iraq, even so far as to aid, and provide him with weapons, choppers, and biological weapons, because of the Iran hostage situations and American dislike/distrust of Iran.
Here your point, of us minding our own business, would apply quite well.
"We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late ’60s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via [Chadli] Klibi [then Arab League General Secretary] or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War
This was the offical policy, and an enabling factor for Hussein, we would take no stance, or have no opinion on him settling his differences one way or another with Kuwait.
A telling quote in Wiki, "diplomatic language signaling an American "green light" for the invasion"
Very similar to the green light in this piece Roosevelt wrote to Hitler before the Polish invasion
Reads quite a bit like this one from Roosevelt to Hitler, in 1938
"The Government of the United States has no political involvements in Europe, and will assume no obligations in the conduct of the present negotiations. Yet in our own right we recognize our responsibilities as a part of a world of neighbors.
The conscience and the impelling desire of the people of my country demand that the voice of their government be raised again and yet again to avert and to avoid war."
Raising voices but not arms, one thing that was somewhat different was America's radical isolationism before 1941, and it was similar to the official isolationism since the Vietnam conflict. Not only that but the United States had been more of a partner with Iraq for some time, rather then a sworn enemy.
Either way it was Iraq's decision to go to war and invade Kuwait. They invaded because they owed Kuwait billions, and wouldn't have to pay if they owned the country. So they invaded, with less then a "professional armed force" raped and killed lots of people. The invasion was over and done with in less then a few days.
Right away, Bush 41, saw along with the British Prime Minister that Hussein could go on and invade Saudi Arabia as well as other nations in the gulf as well, if the agression was left unchecked. Not only that, but Saddam Hussein would effectively control the world's oil market, an oil market to this day, unfortunately our country is largely dependent on to make the economy spin. Operation desert shield was initiated.
UN resolutions were passed, this is where the world wide community observing the dangers of another tyrannical and perhaps very unstable madman who had already fought a war against a neighboring country, Iran, used weapons of mass destruction, chemicals, against the Kurdish peoples of northern Iraq, and also perhaps against the Iranians, and had just invaded Kuwait. Hussein also owed money to the Saudi's and other neighboring regions, and without a sizable military force, to counter the fourth largest army in the world at the time, Iraq's, Saddam Hussein may have gone the way of hitler, and tried to conquer the middle east. He had already began to re-unify the arab nation, in a similar was as Hitler had attempted to re-unite the German people, and then the Aryan race.
The world decided that Saddam had in fact illegally invaded Kuwait and that if he didn't leave, the world body would remove him. Enter Operation Desert storm. To say that American's weren't acting as part of the rest of the world body, doing our major part to ensure a steady world economy, and oil suppoy, as well as knock back a tyrant, and liberate a sovereign nation, is silly and denies the facts of history from any perspective.
Kuwait was liberated, in the resulting war events, Hussein ordered a "total war" destruction plan, similar to Tecumseh Sherman's total war during the civil war, burning villages and towns, destroying railroads, and wrecking vengence above and beyond military targeting of militarily valid targets. Hussein launched scud missles at Israel in an effort to draw them into the war, and dissolve the coalition, he dumped millions of gallons or barrels not sure, but sh*t ton of of oil in the gulf, he ordered the destruction of hundreds if not thousands of oil wells in Kuwait, wrecking their economy for months and years ahead.
The army of the Iraq largely surrendured, but for those who did not they were overwhelmed at every level. One-quarter of the casualties of American forces were friendly fire in the fog of war and chaos of battle, and there were many many more fold valid military soldiers killed on the side of Iraq. The scale of destruction to Iraqi military forces was on a magnitude of orders higher. The civillian leadership called the war off, 100 hours or so later. Iraq signed an armistice, agreeing to a no fly zone both in northern and southern Iraq, isolating their military forces from any further agression.
Fast forward a decade later, during this time, they fired on post-war forces hundreds of times, and continued to deny weapons inspectors access to sites, they also mis directed funds in the oil for food program, and failed to cooperate with UN resolution after UN resolution, in the end, Saddam was done in by his fanatical hate of the United States, and love of money and war, during the post-war period he was responsible for the deaths and torture of hundreds thousands, tens of thousands in Iraq.
Now that's all bad and sucks, but the UN refuse to enforce the resolutions by which they had passed, and if the rest of the world would have seen to the post-war i.e. no sanctions, Saddam very well may have rearmed, and again attempted to develop WMD, and conventional war forces, and invaded another country, or Kuwait again. Since then it was cost the united states billions of dollars to enforce the no-fly zone, money the US can never hope to recover from the other nations of the UN who cannot pay for world peace.
The reasons for a re-invasion of Iraq were...
Search and verifying no presence of WMD, and deliverable WMD's.
Regime change, get Saddam out of power, let the people vote on who they want to run their country.
The war is over and won, the United States was victorious, the Iraqi people victorious and free. Free to choose, their way of life, cowering in fear under another tyrant, or bravely standing up for their own freedom.
Now the post-war is largely about standing up the country and fighting the forces that would deny that freedom for the Iraqi's, however those forces, though some of them may be outside influences, and some Islamic extremist terror mongers, and radicals, a lot of what the Iraqi's face is themselves, fighting corruption, and hate, and animosity. Themselves basically. It is up to them to come together or split their own seperate ways, but whatever they choose, we largely will have no impact one way or the other.
As for WW2, we aided the British and French freedom fighters un-officially before 1941, because they were free nations and allies from WW1. Germany had started WW2, not the British or French, and to say we even had much of an impact, well we did in 1944 when we landed and aided the taking back of France, and defeated the Germans in 1945. American forces were not fighting in mass alongside the Allies until Germany declared war against us in 1941, which was after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
You'll note America was radically isolationist and didn't want to enter into any war until we were attacked. Since then it has been proven that even two vast oceans and two friendly neighbors one north one south, cannot keep out out of world wars and that engagement is the only answer.
Your argument that we have always got into the business of war without being asked, is really poor, but it is true in some circumstances. Just not in the case of Gulf War and WW2.
