Changed My Mind: Bush's Dad Was Right to Stop After Liberating Kuwait

Brendan Miniter, in the WSJ (May 27, 2004):

For more than a decade I believed that the first President Bush made a massive mistake in leaving Saddam Hussein in power in 1991. I almost voted against him for this wobbliness in 1992. But the longer the fight drags on in Iraq today, the more I thank God that the first Gulf War stopped with the liberation of Kuwait. This is no endorsement of Saddam's final 12 years of rule, nor a repudiation of the invasion last year. But it's time to face a hard truth: America cannot afford to be beaten in the sands of Iraq.

Let's consider what would've happened had George H.W. Bush ordered the troops to go on to Baghdad in the first Gulf War. Whether in quiet desertion or mass protest, much of Europe and the Arab world would have turned against the American president in the face of a protracted insurgent war--and there is every reason to believe Saddam loyalists would have been much stronger then than they are today. Each ally's departure would have emboldened domestic opponents, who were more numerous back then. (Only 10 of 56 Senate Democrats voted for the Gulf War, compared with 29 of 50 who backed Iraq's liberation in 2002.) The impulse to withdraw with less than total victory would have been almost irresistible. And without seeing the war in moral terms, the first Bush administration would likely have buckled under the pressure.

Republicans didn't control Congress at the time of the Gulf War, so the erosion of what little Democratic support there was would have doomed the war effort. Last week the House approved a defense bill north of $400 billion. Would a Democratic Congress have been willing to appropriate such a large sum to fight insurgents and rebuild Iraq in the run-up to the 1992 presidential election, at a time when the nation hadn't been steeled by a terrorist attack on our own soil?

On the world stage, this would have been infinitely worse than Mogadishu. Osama bin Laden would have had the kind of victory he'd hoped for in Afghanistan in 2001--proof that a Muslim population could defeat the U.S. And domestic resolve would have been devastated.

Today we are facing a similar situation. With a presidential election approaching, domestic opposition to the war is growing ever more vocal. With J. Paul Bremer and Colin Powell promising that the U.S. will withdraw troops if the Iraqi government asks for as much after the June 30 transfer of sovereignty--which has prompted Katie Couric to sound a similar drum--it's possible to imagine American GIs leaving Iraq with less than total victory. ...