The 1991 Gulf War saw only 100 hours of ground fighting as U.S. forces entered Kuwait to end the Iraqi occupation, but echoes of that conflict have lingered for decades in the Middle East. The war pushed America into opening military bases in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia, drawing the anger of an upstart militant named Osama bin Laden and laying the groundwork for al-Qaeda attacks leading up to Sept. 11, 2001.
Saddam Hussein, demonized as being worse than Adolf Hitler by President George H.W. Bush, would outlast his American rival in power until Bush’s son launched the 2003 American-led invasion that toppled the Iraqi dictator.
Now, 25 years after the first U.S. Marines swept across the border into Kuwait, American forces are battling the extremist Islamic State, born out of al-Qaeda in the splintered territories of Iraq and Syria. The Arab allies that joined the 1991 coalition are fighting their own conflicts at home and abroad, as Iran vies for greater regional power following a nuclear deal with world powers.
Iraq itself is now fragmented and war-torn to a degree few could have imagined after that 1991 U.S. victory. The Islamic State jihadis have imposed their rule over many of the Sunni-dominated areas of the country, Kurds in the north have their own virtual mini-state, and Shiites — many of them allied to Iran — lead the government in Baghdad.
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 U.S. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Desert Storm, wrote in his memoirs.
Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, angry that the tiny neighbor and the United Arab Emirates had ignored OPEC quotas, which Saddam claimed cost his nation $14 billion. Saddam also accused Kuwait of stealing $2.4 billion by pumping crude from a disputed oil field and demanded that Kuwait write off an estimated $15 billion of debt that Iraq had accumulated during its 1980s war with Iran.
Fearing that Saudi Arabia could be invaded next, U.S. officials moved quickly to deploy troops to the region. After months of negotiations and warnings, the U.S. 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 the U.S., which was still haunted by Vietnam. America suffered 148 combat deaths during the entire conflict, while 467 troops were wounded out of more than 500,000 deployed, according to the Defense Department. The U.S. 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 the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, the U.S. 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.
The cause, in part, is the same OPEC overproduction the late dictator Saddam railed against.