As a result, the United States had a clear chance to establish a more sustainable policy on Iraq. Iraqi records show that once Clinton replaced Bush, Baghdad was prepared to adjust its approach to the United States and the international community. The second opportunity arose following Bill Clinton’s election in 1992. The first opportunity emerged from a plan in the summer of 1991 to separate the humanitarian situation in Iraq from the United Nations’ attempt to eliminate illicit Iraqi weapons programs. ![]() interests and to the post-Cold War order that the United States wanted to build. As new archival material makes clear, the American failure to seize either of these opportunities caused lasting, and probably irreparable, damage to U.S. Following the war, at least two opportunities arose for finding a formula to hold Baghdad accountable while also alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Throughout the following decade, the inability of the United States to find a way out of this dilemma plagued American diplomacy and diminished the country’s international standing. However, these sanctions further deepened the emerging humanitarian crisis in Iraq, punishing civilians for the crimes of a regime that they had little ability to influence. In response, the United States insisted on keeping economic sanctions on Iraq in place to coerce the Iraqi regime into full compliance. inspectors full access to its weapons sites. Moreover, the Iraqi regime was carrying out atrocities against its own people and failing to abide by the Gulf War’s ceasefire agreement that permitted U.N. As a result, the conflict contributed to an acute humanitarian crisis that developed during and after the war. The Gulf War had caused much more damage to Iraqi infrastructure than American officials had anticipated or acknowledged. Yet, just a few miles north of the June 1991 ticker-tape parade, the difficulties American diplomats were facing at the United Nations offered a quite different image of the war’s place in history. 5 Despite some handwringing about Saddam Hussein remaining in power and the fact that there was no World War II-style surrender, the conflict is still remembered as a “good war” or, as one Marine Corps general described it, a “beautiful thing.” 6 Unsurprisingly, it has had an outsize impact on the way Americans think war should be conducted. Both the Clinton and Obama administrations admired the way President George H. 4 Such praise has transcended domestic American politics. 3 Others have contrasted the success of the 1991 Gulf War with the failure of the 2003 Iraq War. As two historians of the war wrote a decade later, the Gulf War was “one of the most successful campaigns in American military history.” 2 For many Americans, the war exorcised the demons of Vietnam. ![]() In June 1991, nearly 5 million onlookers enthusiastically welcomed American troops returning home from the Gulf War as they marched in a ticker-tape parade through New York City’s “Canyon of Heroes.” 1 This image of the Gulf War as a triumph has proved enduring.
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