The Gulf Conflict 1990-91
Langan, John
YOUR MBA FROM TEMPLETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY The Templeton MBA program, a 17-month program led by an internation- ally-recognized faculty, is designed for ministry professionals including ...
...As the war shrinks to an abstraction and First from Baghdad, as the air war began in January, one the debate about its political and moral justifications-or dispatch included a mind-bending description of a "smart" lack thereof-proceeds, Mr...
...All It offers a crisp and thoughtful set of con- Anthology of English Literature, for in- right...
...These, plus postwar acKelly, Random House, $23, 354 pp...
...For a prospectus and application form write: TEMPLETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY P.O...
...Kelly was one of the few journaltion, degradation, torture, and murder...
...Especially notable in this regard is Poems, captures the ethos of the 1990s at blithely abandoned...
...Here the authors avoid both long-range speculation as well as any unsubstantiated broader claims...
...It provides a readable and reliable Columbia University Press...
...Margaret Thatcher has been elevated to the House of Lords...
...Admission requirements are a bachelor's degree and five years in the ministry or equivalent...
...First, the Iraqi view of many key events is simply unavailable except in a highly propagandized and self-serving form...
...Box N3732 Nassau, The Bahamas Or dial toll-free: 1-800-847-8921 WHO WON, WHO LOST, & WHAT'S JUST...
...but Saddam Hussein, who may well have had the most difficult and dangerous job of the lot, remains in the presidential palace in Baghdad...
...best that has been written in the shorter Western partners than with the more closed The most recent edi- poetic forms for about 750 years...
...These are points that we should perience of the war by the soldiers, the The Gulf Conflict serves to remind us of some not lose sight of in a season of moral disWestern and other hostages, the Kuwaitis crucial facts: Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was satisfaction...
...John Langan The al-Sabah family has returned to power in Kuwait...
...Third, the focus is confined to high politics and diplomatic and military strategy...
...A Columbia Anthology poems, from "Sumer is icumen in" to Nonetheless, the book is a very valuable William Harmon, editor Sylvia Plath's "Daddy," have earned their resource...
...A striking indication of this approach is Martyrs' Day: Chronicle of a Small War, by Michael bombs and exploding gas tanks...
...Only in the age of compumany points that are clearly relevant to an rather than the seminar room, William terized databases and instantaneous word evaluation of the war in terms of just-war Harmon's new anthology, The Top 500 searches could the task of editing be so theory...
...That he also knew how to the Iraqi forces outside Kuwait City caught with the spoils see, how to write, and how to tell a story is a gift and a tool of war in an allied air trap was captured in the telling de- to those who continue to puzzle over the Gulf War...
...On many matters, Freedman and Karsh, like the rest of us, are reduced to intelligent conjecture...
...Their argument will largely confirm the public consensus, and is unlikely to alter the views of those on either side of the moral debate...
...29.95, place by appearing more frequently in account of the course of events, and is par- 1,132 pp...
...Students will he accommodated in an international hotel in Nassau...
...Despite the scholarly care and the sophisticated judgment about international politics and diplomacy that Freedman and Karsh bring to this work, their coverage of the war is limited in three very important ways...
...Those of us who believed that the war was both necessary and justifiable have found new arguments since the war in Saddam's brutal treatment of Kurdish and Shi'ite minorities, and in Iraq's extensive and ingenious covert nuclear weapons program...
...Li under occupation or in exile, or the Palestinians in Kuwait and after expulsion...
...Second, we are still too close to the events, and too many matters in the Middle East are unresolved, to fit the 1990-91 war with any confidence into a larger pattern of regional developments...
...mined the diplomatic initiatives promoted Harmon remarks in his introduction by the French and the Soviets...
...Kelly's book is both a corbomb turning a corner...
...For those who thought the war was a disaster arising from greed and ineptitude, leading nowhere, the foolish and criminal Western dealings with the Baghdad government, the grievous sufferings of the Iraqi people during and after the war, the exaggeration of Iraqi misdeeds in Kuwait, and continuing patterns of injustice in the Middle East remain strong counterarguments...
...This new study of the diplomatic prelude to and the military strategy of the Gulf War is the joint work of Lawrence Freedman, a distinguished strategic theorist who is professor of war studies at King's College, London, and of Efrairn Karsh, who has written extensively on politics and war in the contemporary Middle East...
...the third is not...
...As I have and secretive Arab members of the alliance...
...counts of Kurdish rebels and refugees and the citizens of During the Gulf War, some of the most detailed and as- Baghdad still living under the dual siege of Saddam Hussain tute reports were published in the New Republic and came and economic sanctions are gathered in this readable and from Michael Kelly, now a reporter at the New York Times...
...important book...
...than the initial 100,000, which they see as or theoretical trends can affect a selection Depending so completely on familiar26: 7 May 1993 Commonweal...
...Next, the rout of ists to elude military control...
...Mikhail Gorbachev has lost his office in the Kremlin...
...Saddam's durability is evidence of his ruthless skill in manipulating factions within Iraq as well as the weakness of the forces working for open and democratic societies in the Arab world...
...Of course, such perspectives would have lengthened an already long book...
...So long as Saddam Hussein remains the ruler of Iraq, the debate over the Gulf War of 1990-91 will doubtless have a certain edge to it...
...It also means that many of the issues that most concern the moral critics of the Gulf War THE TOP 500 POEMS made by statistical analysis: these 500 are not illuminated...
...tion of The Norton said to myself repeatedly, this is it...
...YOUR MBA FROM TEMPLETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY The Templeton MBA program, a 17-month program led by an internationally-recognized faculty, is designed for ministry professionals including clerical, religious and laity, and offers courses in: -Theology of Management • Business Ethics • Principles of Management • Corporate Culture • Marketing • Strategic Management • Finance for Not-for-Profits -Total Quality Management The multinational composition of the class promises students access to diverse ideas and an exciting learning experience...
...Commonweal 7 May 1993: 25 THE GULF CONFLICT 1990-91 Diplomacy and War in the New World Order Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh Princeton University Press, $30, 504 pp...
...My main regret is that the authors' argument for accepting a much least as effectively as the products of William Harmon does not carry out his idea lower estimate of Iraqi military casualties scholarly consensus...
...The 17-month program consists of four one-week intensive study sessions with extramural directed readings and a management project...
...tails of bodies frozen in flight from the searing flames of MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS given in a five-page listing of dramatis per- vitiated by systematic overestimates of an unjustifiable act of aggression, it was sonae, which includes almost no one the number of Iraqi soldiers in the theater condemned by an overwhelming majoribelow the level of ambassador or under- of war before hostilities...
...Saddam seems to combine Mussolini's penchant for self-promotion, brutality, and delusions of military grandeur with the survival skills of the canny and prudent Franco...
...we shout in response, exchanging clusions about the war, which it sees as stance, adds selections from the writings high fives in celebration of the inclusion Saddam's responsibility and as his great of Dame Julian of Norwich, thus record- of our favorites-"Kubla Khan," "Jabgamble to recover from his desperate eco- ing the developments of the past decade berwocky," "The Road Not Taken," "To nomic situation...
...Very little is said about the ex- Despite the limitations I've mentioned, versed...
...The first two of these limitations are unavoidable...
...One has to add, of course, that the Iraqi dictator and his regime might disappear tomorrow...
...Designed for the bedside table a Dream Team...
...Application deadline is August 30th...
...The Gulf that "these 500 poems, with a bit of comConflict also pays considerable attention to nthologies are indeli- mentary, will serve as a splendid way for the diverse political interests within the bly marked by the time somebody to become acquainted with the coalition, though it does this better with the of their compilation...
...but their THE HIT PARADE absence precludes the human depth, immediacy, and poignancy that should be present in a major study of war...
...No interest groups more boldly...
...other anthologies (according to The ticularly informative on the ways in which Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry, 9th Saddam first encouraged and then under- Suzanne Keen edition), than any other poems in English...
...This debate, however, goes on at the edge of a rather broad public consensus that is simultaneously pleased with the military success and low casualties of "Desert Storm," disappointed with the unsatisfactory aftermath in both Iraq and Kuwait, and condemnatory of Saddam Hussein as a tyrant and aggressor...
...ty of states, and it was successfully resecretary...
...Finally, while the book is in scholarship, criticism, and classroom Autumn," and "Annabel Lee""-now that's not driven by a just-war argument, it makes practice...
...That edge is sharpened by the resentments and fears of Saddam's victims inside and outside Iraq, and by regrets over the failure to eliminate him...
...The study sessions conducted in Nassau, Bahamas are held each May and November...
...Then, after the ground war freed rective (to the abstractions) and a vivid reminder of the Kuwait, came the stories of the victims of Iraqi humilia- people on the ground...
...George Bush has left the White House and taken up residence in Houston...
Vol. 120 • May 1993 • No. 9
