“I knew it was a declaration of war, just as is the… measure before us today.” The eventual congressional go-ahead that Bush received three days later was the narrowest-margin military force authorization since the War of 1812. “Out of the 17,000 votes I’ve cast, the only one I really regret was the one I cast for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,” said Charles Bennett, a Florida Democrat, on the House floor. In Congress, the memory of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Johnson to expand the conflict in Vietnam, hung over the debate. After weeks and months of politicking behind-the-scenes and in the media, Bush officially requested Congress’ authorization for military action in a letter on January 8, 1991. As the deadline drew near and Hussein continued to reject diplomatic resolutions, President Bush strongly believed it would become necessary to attack – advocating the escalation of Operation Desert Shield into Operation Desert Storm. and its NATO allies rushed troops to Saudi Arabia on August 7 to intimidate Hussein and to defend Saudi Arabia in the event of an Iraqi attack, an effort codenamed Operation Desert Shield.įrom the perspective of the international community, Iraq’s invasion warranted combat – the U.N.’s passage that November of Resolution 678 authorized military action against Iraq if Hussein’s troops did not withdraw by January 15 of the following year. The United Nations Security Council passed economic sanctions against Iraq, freezing the country’s foreign assets and imposed crippling trade embargoes. Countries around the world condemned Iraq’s aggression. Iraq’s military occupation of Kuwait began on August 2, 1990, a consequence of dictator Saddam Hussein’s allegation that the small nation was stealing oil from fields on the Iraqi side of their border and conspiring with Saudi Arabia to sell oil at a low price to the West. “When people look back at this, they will see it as a textbook example of the way in which the world community can react to unprovoked aggression.” “We won, and we won big,” said Bush’s Secretary of State, James Baker, of the conflict in a 1996 interview with PBS’ “Frontline”. combat deaths – though it killed an estimated 20,000 -30,000 Iraqi troops. It deployed half a million troops, lasted just six short weeks starting in January 1991, liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation and resulted in fewer than 150 U.S. Operation Desert Storm, as it was codenamed, was a large-scale operation that resulted in a decisive U.S. Modern hindsight tends to view the Persian Gulf War as an undisputed and straightforward political success, the high-water mark of George H.
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