George HW Bush, the 41st president of the United States, who died last Friday aged 94, appeared a statesman of global stature after leading an international coalition to eject Saddam Hu
December 2 2018 2:30 AM
George HW Bush, the 41st president of the United States, who died last Friday aged 94, appeared a statesman of global stature after leading an international coalition to eject Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait in 1991; yet only a year later his bid for re-election was humiliatingly scotched by Bill Clinton.
Victory in the Gulf War was secured with a skill and decisiveness which silenced suggestions of wimpishness that had haunted his political past. His resolve stiffened by Margaret Thatcher («Remember George, this is no time to go wobbly»), he responded to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2,1990 by speedily obtaining a vote for sanctions in the United Nations. With two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves threatened by Iraqi expansionism, Russia and China were persuaded to offer their support.
Meanwhile Bush convinced Saudi Arabia to accept the vanguard of American forces. He could not have foreseen that the move would foment hatred for America within al-Qaeda, which passionately opposed the presence of American troops on Muslim holy lands, and thus contribute to wars that his son — George W Bush — would lead as America’s 43rd president.
Beyond Saudi Arabia, George HW Bush also kept in constant telephone contact with every Arabian leader opposed to Iraq.
Israel, where gas masks were being handed out in preparation for the possibility of an Iraqi chemical attack, needed constant reassurance too, as well as a hand restraining it from launching retaliation that might have shattered the Arab alliance within the American-led coalition.
In November 1990, even as Bush doubled the number of American troops in the Gulf (without seeking the approval of Congress), the United Nations set January 15,1991 as the date after which «all necessary means» might be used to drive Iraqi forces from Kuwait. When the deadline passed without any concession from Saddam, Bush immediately ordered Operation Desert Storm, under which the 34 allies began, on January 17, to bomb targets in Iraq.
On February 15, Saddam announced his willingness to withdraw from Kuwait, but as it became clear that the offer was linked with the Arab-Israeli conflict, Bush rejected it as a «cruel hoax». Brushing aside a peace plan concocted in Moscow on February 21, he ordered his ground forces to attack two days later.
The «100-hour war» proved to be a virtual walkover: on February 26 Saddam confirmed what was already apparent on the ground — the withdrawal of his forces from Kuwait. The next day Bush called off the offensive. Though the oilfields of Kuwait were set ablaze by retreating Iraqi forces, American euphoria knew no bounds. «Those who doubted George Bush’s nerve and geopolitical acumen owe him something of an apology,» wrote the New Republic. The President’s popularity ratings soared.
Though it was by far his biggest success, victory in the Arabian desert was just one triumph on the foreign stage during a term in office that coincided with the end of the Cold War. And Bush, a former head of the CIA, had the experience and temperament to respond to the collapse of the Soviet Union and other potential entanglements abroad, such as the removal from power of the Panamanian dictator, Manuel Noriega.
But if ever proof were needed that foreign policy victories, even on the battlefield, count for nothing when set against domestic economic woes, Bush’s failure to secure a second term provided the perfect example.
Having wooed the Republican faithful in 1988 with the words «Read my lips: No new taxes», he was forced to sign off on tax-raising measures as Reagan-era budget problems spiralled.
He never fully reconnected with his core supporters: approval ratings that had stood at 90 per cent at the end of the Gulf War were in freefall as the election year got under way. The remarkable transformation from hero to zero was memorably summed up when, on January 8,1992, Bush vomited and fainted at a state banquet in Japan in full view of the cameras.
Endlessly replayed on television, images of the world’s most powerful man brought low had a similar effect on his ratings, which soon fell to under 30 per cent.
Aiming to hit back, he launched a spirited campaign in which he portrayed his rival for the White House as a draft-dodging, marijuana-smoking sleazeball, badgered by a bossy, radical-feminist wife. However, at Bill Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas, the Democratic strategist James Carville hung up a sign inscribed with three rules to keep his own party election workers on message.
The first tip was to emphasise change over continuity, the third an instruction to focus on health care. But it was the second rule that has become an indelible mantra of politics since: «The economy, stupid.»
And it was that failure to steady wobbling American finances that ensured that, despite all his triumphs abroad, George Bush was fated to become one of only three post-war presidents, along with Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, to be denied four more years by the voters.
George Herbert Walker Bush was born at Milton, Massachusetts, on June 12,1924 into a long established Wasp family regarded by the American East Coast establishment as «the Achievers». His father was Prescott Bush, a businessman and investment banker, who served from 1962 to 1972 as a Republican senator from Connecticut. George was brought up with three brothers and a sister in the conservative atmosphere of the East Coast «Ivy League».
The family lived in the prosperous Greenwich suburb of New York and Bush was educated at Phillips Academy in Andover, north of Boston, where he captained the basketball and football teams .
He graduated in 1942 but instead of going immediately to Yale, he volunteered for the US Navy, enlisting on his 18th birthday and becoming its youngest pilot. Next year he joined the aircraft carrier San Jacinto as a member of its torpedo bomber squadron, and sailed into the Pacific.
During a raid against a Japanese communications station the following year, Bush’s Avenger bomber was badly shot up and his two crew members killed. As his aircraft broke apart, Bush parachuted into the sea to be picked up by a US submarine just as Japanese patrol boats bore down on him.
Returning home a war hero, he married his childhood sweetheart, Barbara Pierce, daughter of the chairman of McCall’s publishing group. The couple spent the rest of the war in Virginia Beach, where Bush trained pilots. He was released from the Navy in September 1945, and resumed his studies at Yale where he took a degree in Economics and played in the baseball and soccer teams with such skill that for a time he considered becoming a professional baseball player.
The young couple’s first baby, a son, also George, was born during Bush’s university career. They had five other children, but a girl, Robin, died of leukaemia in 1953 at the age of four.
When he left university in 1948, Bush started working for International Derrick Equipment, a Texan subsidiary of Dresser Industries, an oilfield supply firm, of which his father was a director. In 1950 he teamed up with an independent oil operator, John Overby, and formed a development company which bought and sold oil and gas properties.
After three years, the business was merged with Zapata Petroleum, which Bush had helped to found with two other businessmen.
