The legacy of former U. S. President George H. W. Bush in the Middle East takes root in the 100-hour ground war that routed Iraqi forces in Kuwait in 1991.
On the outskirts of Kuwait City, the love Kuwaitis have for former U. S. President George H. W. Bush could be seen in 2016 on a billboard one Bedouin family put up to announce their son’s wedding.
That son being Bush al-Widhan, born in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War that saw U. S.-led forces expel the occupying Iraqi troops of dictator Saddam Hussein.
“He was a real man, a lion,” said Mubarak al-Widhan, the father of the Kuwaiti Bush, of the American president. “He stood for our right for freedom, and he gave us back our country.”
With Bush’s death, his legacy across the Middle East takes root in that 100-hour ground war that routed Iraqi forces. That war gave birth to the network of military bases America now operates across the Persian Gulf supporting troops in Afghanistan and forces fighting against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
However, Bush ultimately would leave the Shiite and Kurdish insurgents he urged to rise up against Saddam in 1991 to face the dictator’s wrath alone, leading to thousands of deaths. That mixed picture only extends to the presidency of his son, George W. Bush, who ordered the 2003 U. S.-led invasion of Iraq that overthrew Saddam, whom he once famously described as “the guy who tried to kill my dad one time.”
“I feel tension in the stomach and in the neck… but I also feel a certain calmness when we talk about these matters,” the elder Bush once said about the 1991 Gulf War, according to biographer Jon Meacham. “I know I am doing the right thing.”
Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2,1990, angry that the tiny neighbor and the United Arab Emirates had ignored OPEC quotas, which Saddam claimed cost his nation $14 billion. Saddam also accused Kuwait of stealing $2.4 billion by pumping crude from a disputed oil field and demanded that Kuwait write off an estimated $15 billion of debt that Iraq had accumulated during its 1980s war with Iran.
