PrintOctober 19, 2005
The Wrong Questions
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Luther Powell and Former President of the United States George Herbert Walker Bush have been severely criticized for pulling up short at the end of the Gulf War, and perhaps they deserve the criticism—when it does not come, as it often does, from people who opposed the war in the first place. I prefer to think that an old soldier and an older fighter pilot looked at the Highway of Death and had no stomach for further slaughter. Whatever they said to themselves in defense of their decision to end the war, their sense of honor would not allow them to go on.
During the Gulf War, reporters sought desperately to force the military to admit that it was concealing battlefield defeats and was in grave danger of losing the war. The Pentagon played them for the fools they are because its real worry was that we would kill so many of the enemy that the Arab world would react with horror and dismay. Indeed, many Arabs resented our immense...(Read Full Article)
