Talk:Gulf War

Moved this page and the parent page from Talk:Gulf War and Gulf War, respectively.

DanKeshet proposed on my talk page to name it differently. Sebastian 18:42 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

A name that people might be able to recognize would be Operation Desert Storm (which is just a redirect at the moment). --mav 20:29 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

It seems to me that this is rather the a code name, and it is probably not as widely know around the world as it is in America. I find Iraq-Kuwait War an accurate description because the point of the war was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.Sebastian 21:00 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

Operation Desert Storm is a widely known alternative to the more widely known "Gulf War". I've never once heard of an "Iraq-Kuwait War" - and it is not at all accurate. Iraq invaded Kuwait and then a US and other forces in Operation Desert Storm fought the Iraqis mostly in Iraq. Relatively little fighting went on Kuwait. --mav

I agree with parts of what both of you have said. Operation Desert Storm is a codename for only one part of the war, namely the coalition bombardment part (or was it the invasion part?). It does not include the Iraqi defenses or the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. But Iraq-Kuwait war is grossly misleading. How about placing the page at Gulf War (1990-1991)? That way it's disambiguated without using extremely uncommon or incomplete names. Not great, I know, but better than the others? Graft 19:17 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)

I still think that any move is way too premature. As I state above "Gulf War" was the most common name for the Iran Iraq War before 1990 but after the American led Gulf War that name was subverted for the newer conflict. I'm sure the media will figure this out with the war that will be starting soon. The best thing would be to undo the premature move and then follow common usage as soon as it is changed. --mav

Though I think "Gulf War" is a valid descriptor for the 1990/1991 conflict in the US and much of the west, I wonder how people in the Gulf itself describe it, since we pretty much always called the "First Gulf War" as the "Iran-Iraq War", and thus saw no need to disambiguate the second one. I.e., I don't think there's a need to disambiguate in the West, since "Gulf War" and "Iran-Iraq War" are the common terms. So... should we leave it at that, or do we also need to disambiguate for english-speakers from the Gulf? I.e., is "common usage" a term for people who speak English in the West, or people who speak English everywhere? This is the decision that has to be made. Graft

Common usage is common to all English speakers with an emphasis on native speakers. The number of English native English speakers in Gulf is probably too low to subvert terms used by the vast majority of other English speakers. The Vietnam War is called the "American War" by English speakers in Vietnam, BTW. --mav

At any rate, I think we can agree that the need for disambiguation doesn't warrant moving it to the very poorly-titled "Iraq-Kuwait War". I'm in favor of moving it back to Gulf War, though I'm not sure what to do with the edit histories and such. Perhaps it just needs to be cut'n'pasted? This is how it was moved here, so if we delete Gulf War, we lose its history. Graft

Removed the statement that the Republican Guard lay in tatters. The Republican Guard actually retreated in fairly good order.

I removed references to the two presidential speeches below, because I found it distracting to focus on George Bush' particular words, as opposed to what actually happened. I left in the reference to the first Presidential statement, because that sentence was about what the president said, not what happened.

[USPRES2]: Presidential statement, 1991-01-16

[USPRES3]: President Addresses the Nation, 1991-02-23

The USA was mindful of its cultural and moral duties: targets were allegedly selected and prioritized so as to minimize civilian ("collateral") casualties and minimize damage to culturally sensitive sites (such as Mosques).

I removed the above sentence, because it seems to be contradicted by the evidence presented re: destruction of water plants, etc. I do remember much hype re: the cultural sensitivity of the bombing. If somebody could find a cite indicating an actual policy, then we should put this back in.

Responding to myself, I found an interesting document at http://www.fas.org/spp/aircraft/part08.htm (among other interesting documents, http://www.fas.org is an absolutely incredible site) that implies both could be pretty much correct (minus the window dressing re: cultural duties): there were relatively few civilian casualties from "collateral damage", that is, damage done by missiles hitting civilian facilities they weren't intended to hit. This seems to be confirmed by UNICEF reports, though I lost the URL. However, there was gigantic damage done by the secondary effects of missiles hitting intended dual-use targets: bridges, power plants, water facilities, oil wells, etc. Hopefully we can find a good way of explaining this split.

Also 90% of the bombs dropped were good old dumb bombs... which aren't too culturally or morally sensitive... I don't konw where this absurdly low 100 civilian casualties comes from, that has to be propaganda from the US side.

The US government doesn't claim 100. The aspin report: http://es.rice.edu/projects/Poli378/Gulf/aspin_rpt.html claims about 9,000 killed during the air campaign, and doesn't give an exact estimate of the ground campaign (unless I'm reading it wrong). If we can't find a citation on the 100, we should replace that with the lowest figure we can actually find a citation for. Same goes for 200,000; the largest number I've run into so far is 100,000, though I admit I haven't searched that hard. It would be interesting to give official american and iraqi estimates of casualties on both sides.

Nevermind, that. The 100 is referring to civilian casualties; I haven't found what the US government says about civilian casualties. They don't advertise them very loudly in their analyses of the war...

I think it's valid that the US *tried* to limit the civilian casualties - it was a UN operation after all... however during the Afghan war they would have little compunction against destroying a hospital to get at one helicopter etc.

Links for further research:

http://fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/iraq.htm Federation of American Scientists site on Gulf War. Tons of links to primary and secondary sources

Critics have called it the First Oil War because of the central role oil exports and petroleum interests played in motivating, intervening, supporting, and ending the conflict.

I removed this for several reasons: 1) I have never heard it before. A quick google search reveals one person beside ourselves referring to the Gulf War as the "First Oil War," whereas a few more people refer to the 1956 Suez War as the First Oil War. In each case, in fact, nobody actually refers to it as the "First Oil War" but rather claims that they do in an aside, while actually referring to it by it's more common name. 2) What does it mean to be a "critic" of the war? Perhaps they are critics of pariticipants in the war? If that's the case, we should say who these critics are criticizing. DanKeshet

Why isn't Operation Desert Storm mentioned in the article? - User:Olivier

Because you didn't add it? ;-) Seriously, I have no idea, but if you think it should be in there, just add it. Jeronimo

Some added text that I have removed.

in only 100 hours of hostilities.

This is only true if you don't consider bombing "hostilities". This is highy misleading.

The hastily reached cease-fire settlement established several key issues, including the continuing rule of Saddam Hussein, and the establishment of "no-fly zones" in northern and southern Iraq.

This is incorrect. The "hastily reached cease-fire settlement" did not have no-fly zones; they were added months later.

"...as George Bush| put it: "The Gulf War established that what we say goes" ...and you better understand it. It was understood." "The US returned to its support for its old friend Saddam while he murdered Shiites and Kurds. Since then, [Hussein] has been returning to a rather rational policy of destroying Iraqi society."-Noam Chomsky (.1)

This is thrown-in analysis, and inappropriate for a Wikipedia article.

The political rhetoric in the US and most of the world was clear, and often very explicit about its goals in the region. George Bush, in an address to Congress, said "there will be a lasting role for the United States in assisting the nations of the Persian Gulf. Our role, with others, is to deter future aggression." Later in the same speech, in the context of Americas domestic budget crisis, he added: "For America to lead, America must remain strong and vital. Our world leadership and domestic strength are mutual and reinforcing." "...Higher oil prices slow our growth, and higher defense costs would only make our fiscal deficit problem worse." In the open Western rhetoric at the time, there was little shyness in citing oil as a primary factor in the repulsion of Iraq from Kuwait.

Shortly after the speech, in answering press questions about the degree American oil-interests had in the conflict, George Bush attempted to distance the issue from oil: "its not about oil, its about aggression", he said. Nearly a decade later, in an interview he said something else: "I never said oil was'nt a factor; it certainly was."

We already have a paragraph that's strikingly similar to these two, a few paragraphs down. It starts "The United States went through a number of different public justifications for their involvement in the conflict.". We should merge the information from the two added paragraphs into the already existing paragraph. DanKeshet

Regarding the debt figure to Kuwait: I have found a figure of $80B for total Iraqi indebtedness, period. This leads me to believe that it was in error, rather than disputed fact, that we had that figure for Iraqi indebtedness to Kuwait. In the Glaspie transcript, Hussein puts the total indebtedness figure at $40B, though he doesn't count debts to Arab countries, as he doesn't consider them debts, he considers them payments for services rendered.

Also, I am not opposed to using footnotes to further explain where we got the numbers from. The only reason I took the footnote out was because it seemed awkward once I removed the question about the $80B DanKeshet 16:57 Feb 4, 2003 (UTC)

Re: the air raid shelter attack: the fact that this was an air raid shelter is not in dispute. Everybody agrees this. The Pentagon claimed that, in addition to an air raid shelter, it was a military communications facility, although AFAIK, they have never offered any evidence for this assertion and nobody else has found evidence for it.

Re: the water supply: I removed the war crime bit (which I added to begin with), because AFAIK, it's only idle speculation and nobody has started procedures to indict the perpetrators. However, the fact that it was anticipated is extremely well-established and the fact that it was intended is broadly accepted. (The idea being that making the civilian population suffer would encourage people to overthrow Hussein.) DanKeshet 19:22 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)