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Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam pp 3–110Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

After the 1991 Gulf War

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Abstract

The prosecution of the 1991 Gulf War by the US-led coalition was intended to serve a number of purposes. It was useful to demonstrate to the world that any grave threat to American interests would not be tolerated, particularly where these required the unimpeded supply of fuel to the world’s most energy-profligate nation. It was useful also to signal the new global power structure, the ‘New World Order’ in which a post-Cold War United States could operate without the bothersome constraint of another global superpower. It was essential in these circumstances that Iraq be mercilessly crushed. As the American academic and dissident Noam Chomsky pointed out, the much weaker opponent ‘must not merely be defeated but pulverised if the central lesson of World Order is to be learned: we are the masters and you shine our shoes’.1

Let me also make clear that the United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people.

President George Bush, 1991

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Notes

  1. A detailed account of how journalists were restricted in their efforts to cover the Gulf War is given by John R. MacArthur, Second Front, Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, Hill & Wang, New York, 1992.

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Authors
  1. Geoff Simons
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© 1996 Geoff Simons

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Simons, G. (1996). After the 1991 Gulf War. In: Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24763-9_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24763-9_1

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-333-65169-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-349-24763-9

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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