Lesaca, Ancheska S.

BSLM 4A Reaction Paper on the 1991 Gulf War Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein. These names are all those leaders who have used totalitarian approach to leading a nation. Stalin and Hitler ruled in the early mid-nineteen hundreds. Like Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein is now. He belongs to the Baath Party of Iraq which adopts many techniques similar to those used by Stalin and Hitler. War was inevitable in the Gulf and it was a war in which Iraq was inevitability to lose. There were several reasons why this was and became a reality. It was quite evident that Saddam Hussein was becoming a military giant in the Middle East and therefore a threat to the stability of the entire region. His war with Iran was proof of this. The US and the other industrialized Western nations could not risk the loss of oil from the area. Kuwait is the second largest source of petroleum in the Middle East and so Iraqi invasion of Kuwait sent the world oil market into frenzy. Iraqi forces then gathered their forces on the border with Saudi Arabia, the second largest supplier of oil in the world. The in turn brought the military might of the United States into the conflict. In analyzing the war originally between Iraq and Kuwait, one must first understand the factors that contribute to the conflict. For eight years, the Iran-Iraq war grew more intense, until the US accidentally downed an Iranian plane, killing 290 passengers. The three factors which contributed to this war are: (1) territorial disputes, (2) religious disputes between Islamic moderates and fundamentalists, and more importantly, (3) a personality conflict (ego-mania) between Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomein.