I wasn't around for the first Gulf War. My family is staunchly conservative so that's what I've heard all the time. Still, we secured the trust of an important religious group in Iraq and then left them--next time around they weren't nearly as cooperative and fear a second US pull out. The US leaves and Iraq is back in chaos in the long run--that simple.
Wow. Let's try for a realistic history lesson, shall we?
-Iraq fights Iran throughout the 1980s. Neither side wins, but Iraq has successfully held Iran out of the Arab world (Iranians are not Arabs, they're Persian).
-Iraq's economy is left in shambles after the war and they want loans from their neighbours, notably Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, at good rates since they feel they're been protecting them.
-Iraq also feels a historical ownership of Kuwait.
-Iraq issues an ultimatum to Kuwait, then promptly invades.
-UN Security Council tells Iraq to GTFO and creates a deadline. Iraq ignores it.
-UN Security Council authorizes a coalition military force to forcibly remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait. That was the sole mandate of the UN forces. They consisted of: most NATO countries, Russia, the Arab League, and several others.
-After a lengthy bombing campaign, the ground war begins. After 100 hours of fighting, Iraqi forces have either been slaughtered, surrendered, or driven far back across the border into Iraq. Retreating Iraqi forces are bombed into oblivion on the road back to Baghdad.
-The US, leading the UN Coalition, declines to pursue the Iraqi's and oust Hussein for three reasons:
1. The UN mandate was only to aid Kuwait, NOT invade Iraq or remove its leadership.
2. The Arab League, a key supporter of the coalition, would not have participated in an operation to remove Saddam, and indeed, may have militarily opposed it.
3. Saddam was on shaky ground anyway and it was widely believed among intelligence sources that an internal coup would successfully remove him. Unfortunately, said intelligence failed to take into account the fact that the Republican Guard was kept largely in reserve and still protected Saddam.
The US and UN were never in Iraq excluding a few ground and air units that pursued fleeing Iraqi forces. Indeed, it was the abject failure of the UN mandate to secure a lasting stability in the region that allowed the US the premise in 2003 to claim Iraq was producing WMDs and invade.
Had the UN resolution allowed more stringent military sanctions against Iraq and actually had teeth when it came to keeping weapons inspectors in-country; or, had the UN forces bombed out the Republican Guard units protecting Saddam and given money and weapons support to pro-democratic and pro-Western factions in Iraq already seeking to oust Saddam... things would have turned out very differently.
As it was, it had very little to do with the man sitting in the White House at the time. And it was Bush in charge during the Gulf War, not Clinton. Clinton was later merely following down the path the UN and Bush had already laid out.
