The Persian Gulf War

The Persian Gulf War

War was inevitable in the Gulf and it was a war in which Iraq was

inevitability to lose. There were several reasons why this was and became a

reality. How, when, where did this process of self destruction begin? It

was quite evident that Saddam Hussein. the president of Iraq, was becoming

a military giant in the Middle East and therefore a threat to the stability

of the entire region. His war with Iran was proof of this. The U.S. and

other industrialized Western nations could not risk the loss of oil from

the area. Kuwait is the second largest source of petroleum in the Middle

East and so Iraqi invasion of Kuwait sent the world oil market into a

frenzy. Iraqi forces then gathered their forces on the border with Saudi

Arabia, the second largest supplier of oil in the world. This in turn

brought the military might of the United States into the conflict.

There are several reasons why Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. "After

the 8 year war with Iran over territorial disputes and religious rivalries

between the Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunni factions, Iraq had a massive

debt to many Arab nations including Kuwait."2 The rulers of these nations

wanted some of their money back but Iraq thought they were ingrates and

were ungrateful for defending the Arab emirs from the Iranian Islamic

fundamentalism. The Arab emirs were afraid that the Islamic fundamentalists

would rise against the government and eventually take over the government

as they had Iran against the Shah. Kuwait was also afraid of this and so

they supported the Iraqi Arabs against the Iranian Persians.

2"Iraq",World Book (New York, World Book, 1990), Vol 10, p. 260

The funds that Gulf countries lent to Iraq were used to buy high tech

weapons, high tech weapons that made Iraq one of the largest armies in the

world and a force to contend with. "Ironically much of the money and

weapons came from the countries that united to fight against him."1 The

Gulf countries bankrolled him while the Western nations, who had many

defense contractors going out of business because of the end of the Cold

War, supplied him with the weapons to fight Iran and later Kuwait and the

Coalition. With a large army like his, it would be very easy to defeat the

far smaller Kuwaiti army compared to his.

1CNN The Gulf War (Video) (Atlanta, CNN News, 75 min.