Echoes of 1991 Gulf War linger on in Mideast

KUWAIT — The 1991 Gulf War saw only 100 hours of ground fighting as US forces entered Kuwait to end the Iraqi occupation but echoes of that conflict have lingered on for decades in the Mideast. Now, 25 years after the first US Marines swept across the border into Kuwait, American forces are battling the extremist Daesh group, born out of Al-Qaeda, in the splintered territories of Iraq and Syria. In all, the United States finds itself in the quandary it hoped to avoid back in 1991. “Had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit — we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs for that occupation,” the late US Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Desert Storm, wrote in his memoirs. Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. US officials moved quickly to deploy troops to the region. After months of negotiations and warnings, the US launched its assault on Iraqi forces in Kuwait on Feb. 24, 1991. In purely military and political terms, the first Gulf War marked a tremendous success for a US still haunted by Vietnam. America suffered 148 combat deaths during the entire conflict, while 467 troops were wounded out of the over 500,000 deployed, according to the Defense Department. It held together an allied army, its war effort was supported by a number of United Nations resolutions, and the conflict cemented its position as the sole world power following end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet despite seeing his forces routed from Kuwait, Saddam clung to power and survived an uprising following the war. The US and its allies began to patrol a northern and southern no-fly zone while Saddam remained a thorn in the inside of American politics for more than a decade. “I miscalculated,” Bush said in a December 1995 interview. “I thought he’d be gone.” It would take President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion to end Saddam’s reign, coming amid the US campaign in Afghanistan. In its aftermath, Al-Qaeda in Iraq would arise and be put down by a US military surge. But as the US withdrew from Iraq and Baghdad stopped supporting the Sunni tribesmen, the Daesh group emerged from the ashes of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and in 2014, took control of about a third of both Iraq and neighboring Syria. Today, the US finds itself mired in a long war feared by Schwarzkopf and others who oversaw Operation Desert Storm. Oil prices, which sparked Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, have dropped to under $30 a barrel from more than $100 in just a year and a half. — AP