And by the way-I was there. I launched on the first E-2 mission from USS America (CV-66), January 17 1991.
But over at John Cole’s place they noticed something I had too-we are too busy sniping about Sarah Palin to notice the 20 year anniversary of Desert Storm:
Because the Persian Gulf War made a hard thing look easy, Villagers didn’t learn the real lessons of that war. In their eyes, the Gulf War became a failure because we didn’t get Saddam, and Iraq remained a dictatorship. Even though he accomplished the fairly rare diplomatic feat of uniting a disparate coalition of countries that committed significant resources, George H.W. Bush was a wimp because the agreement that led to the coalition kept us from a glorious march to Baghdad. Despite the clear success of the Powell Doctrine, Colin Powell was too timid because he didn’t endorse an occupation of Iraq. Only Dick Cheney was wise enough to understand that the real lesson of Iraq is that we need to do it again, and that made him tough and serious.
The events of the last ten years have shown that the Village narrative of the Persian Gulf War was upside-down, and the reason we’re not having a commemoration is because it would be yet another opportunity for Village accountability. Their inability to learn the right lessons from the Persian Gulf War was the first step in the long road to their endorsement of the current folly in Iraq, and you don’t celebrate a fuckup like that.
The Gulf War began the expansion of US presence in the Middle East as a whole-when in fact, less would have been more. And it started the chain of events that led to our current dreary time.
Still, the flying was great.