Did America Really Lose the First Gulf War?

Daniel L. Davis

Security, Middle East

How Desert Storm taught us all the wrong lessons.

In the heady days following the spectacular U.S. victory over Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard armored divisions in Operation Desert Storm, military experts in Washington celebrated the fact that the U.S. military was vastly superior to every armed force on the planet. Even officials and experts in Russia and China grudgingly acknowledged the claim. President George W. Bush declared that the “specter of Vietnam” had been authoritatively vanquished with the stunning military victory in Kuwait. Twenty-five years later, however, the only thing that was vanquished appears to have been objective analysis. The unequivocal military success may have resulted in a dangerous strategic defeat for the United States.

On this date in 1990, I was a second lieutenant with the Second U.S. Armored Cavalry Regiment (2ACR) in the Saudi port city of Jubail, feverishly preparing my armored fire support vehicle for the coming ground campaign against the Iraqi troops that had invaded Kuwait the previous August. 2ACR had been designated as the vanguard of the U.S. VII Armored Corps, ordered to lead theater commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf’s armored thrust into Saddam’s strongest combat divisions, the Republican Guards, in northern Kuwait. I had been an officer in the Army barely a year.

In early January 1991 our unit departed the friendly confines of Jubail for the open deserts near the border with Kuwait. We began a series of large scale maneuvers including thousands of troops and literally hundreds of Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and other armored vehicles spread out over scores of square miles. Even before the 2ACR left our base in Germany, we knew the UN Security Council had passed Resolution 678, which issued an ultimatum to Saddam.