Running down a dream
Atrios writes:
DB will go on record right now saying the first Gulf War was a "bad" war because it was unnecessary and it was obvious to anybody with half a brain that Hussein was going to invade Kuwait. We did nothing to stop it.
It seems fitting today, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to remember one more detail from the first Gulf War and how much the Bush family believes in Dr. King's message of peace. In 1990, the first Bush Administration led the United Nations to pass Security Council Resolution 678, which essentially authorized any member state to use force in Iraq if Saddam refused to leave Kuwait by a specific date. Resolution 678 is really the foundation of the authority to use force the current administration used in interpreting Resolution 1441, which led us into the current catastrophe.
They chose Jan. 15, 1991, as the deadline -- Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Anyway, I don't really want to engage in a full argument about whether it was a "good" or "bad" war, I just find it puzzling that it's become universal conventional wisdom that it was a great and glorious thing and that anyone who disagrees obviously is a dirty fucking hippie. Through the narrow lens of American politics it's true that politicians didn't pay a price of supporting it, though I'm not really sure anyone paid the price for opposing it either, but that really has little to do with whether from a broader perspective it was a sensible thing to do, even without pointing out that maybe there was a way to stop Hussein from invading Kuwait before he did so which didn't involve military force.
DB will go on record right now saying the first Gulf War was a "bad" war because it was unnecessary and it was obvious to anybody with half a brain that Hussein was going to invade Kuwait. We did nothing to stop it.
It seems fitting today, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to remember one more detail from the first Gulf War and how much the Bush family believes in Dr. King's message of peace. In 1990, the first Bush Administration led the United Nations to pass Security Council Resolution 678, which essentially authorized any member state to use force in Iraq if Saddam refused to leave Kuwait by a specific date. Resolution 678 is really the foundation of the authority to use force the current administration used in interpreting Resolution 1441, which led us into the current catastrophe.
They chose Jan. 15, 1991, as the deadline -- Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
