By Justine Hemmestad
The George Bush Sr. Presidential Library in College Station, Texas houses many history lessons, among them is Israel’s presence in the Iraq war of 1990 and 1991. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi troops started the build up of Allied forces opposing Iraq’s use of pillage, rape, torture, murder, and theft. The world opposed Iraq and supported Kuwait without question, as the violence was clear. Bush also alluded to what awaited the world if Hussein controlled Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, when Hussein would control more than 20% of the world’s oil reserves and the power over oil, who got it and when, would be his. Bush explained, ‘’Our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom and the freedom of friendly countries around the world would all suffer if control of the world’s great oil reserves fell into the hands of Saddam Hussein.’’ The Iraqi regime even held Westerners who had been in the country as human shields if there should be an attack. While any similarities between the Iraqi regime of Saddam Husein and the present Hamas exist. The same systematic us- age of rape, torture, murder, theft, and human shields was used again in 2023, this time against Israeli citizens by Hamas. Iraq was additionally thought to have a multitude of biological weapons in 1990 like anthrax to use against innocent citizens. Historically, the Palestine Liberation Organization was Iraq’s lone ally. In fact, the Arab League countries passed a resolution condemning Iraq’s violence toward Kuwait in 1990. Iraq’s aggression escalated but the world stood united. Iraq responded to an Allied air offensive in January of 1991 by launching Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and Haifa, with the intent of drawing Israel into the conflict…a move that Iraq had hoped would split the Arab coalition. In a little over a month, Iraq had fired 39 missiles at Israel, killing 3 Israelis and injuring 200. The United States urged Israel to refrain from retaliating at the time, which Israel agreed to if the U.S. Patriot anti ballistic missile defense systems would be used to back up the existing Israeli Patriot missiles. In addition to these effective weapons, Iraq had to consider the very real possibility that Israel would respond to any chemical attack on its citizens with the use of its nuclear weapons. Ultimately, the Iraqi military performed miserably. They were unskilled and inept next to the Allies. In addition, many Iraqi troops were just coming off decades of war already and they didn’t support the new war to take over Kuwait. Flash forward to 2024, past the Hamas attack on Israel that bore striking resemblances to Iraq’s attack on Kuwait in 1990, when on April 13 a barrage of 300 missiles and drones were fired upon Israel by Iran. Questions about what has changed within the nature of these attacks, first by Iraq and second by Iran/Hamas begin to be answered by Alan W. Dowd’s article for the American Legion. In the article, Dowd said, “Israel has constructed the world’s most advanced and integrated missile-defense system. Yet as formidable as it is, it could not have deflected the Iranian barrage without allied help.” The Wall Street Journal says that military assets from 8 countries were instrumental in intercepting Iran’s missiles. With the might of fighter jets from Israel, the U.S., Jordan, Britain, and France; and with U.S. warships, U.S., Israeli, and Saudi ground-based assets deflected Iranian missiles and drones across lands stretching from the Mediterranean through Israel, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, and into the Arabian Peninsula in what Israel called Operation Shield, 99% of Iran’s weapons were deflected. None of Iran’s cruise missiles or kamikaze-drones ever reached Israeli airspace. It was also heartening to see the world rock-solid in its support of Israel. The bottom line is that Iran fired 300 poorly guided rockets (60 tons of explosives) at civilian locations 800 miles away - a blatant indication that “the Iranian regime is the problem.” My friend, Captain Itamar Ben David, finds the current U.S. policy of appeasing Iran perplexing. He says such a policy emboldens Iran. In fact, as Dowd writes, “Washington has spent much of the past 15 years trying to induce and incentivize Iran to behave like a normal country. In response, Iran has continued to train, fund and equip Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and militias in Iraq; continued to deploy soldiers into Syria and Iraq; continued its drive for nuclear weapons; continued to lock out IAEA inspectors; continued to harbor al-Qaida’s leader; continued to use its proxies to target and kill Americans; continued to attack international shipping in the Persian Gulf; and continued its proxy war on Israel, which culminated in the beastly assault of Oct. 7.” Dowd says that those who run Iran have “normalized terrorism into a basic government function...Iran is not a regime that engages in terrorism, but rather a terrorist organization that runs a regime.” Clearly, Hamas’ current terror against Israel is similar to Iraq’s terror against Kuwait in 1990, but the U.S. government’s response, to Iraq’s terror in 1990 and Iran’s spearheaded terror in 2023, is entirely different. Also different is the current incentive for these terrorist organizations to pursue war, whereas in 1990 the reason was control over oil, and in 2023 the reason is to control religion. As Neville Teller writes in the Jerusalem Post about the Iranian regime’s original Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, “He affirmed repeatedly that the foundation stone of his philosophy, the very purpose of his revolution, was to destroy Western-style democracy and its way of life, and to impose Shia Islam on the whole world.” GEORGE BUSH LIBRARY
Коментарі