The SAA was clearly caught off-guard
Not really. They knew something was coming, but the problem is that the SAA was just hollowed out. There wasn't anything left. I want to be clear, the SAA was one of the most effective and professional fighting forces in the region for a long time, and what they were able to accomplish in the early stages of the war can be described as nothing short of Herculean. One of my favorite examples was near the Homs military academy, where the SAA had encircled a number of Hezbollah fighters, and intentionally withdrew along the thinnest salient, which caused Hezbollah to overcommit and surge over a thousand fresh troops into the bulge. Immediately afterwards the SAA reclaimed the salient and killed something like two thousand Hezbollah fighters. We're talking tactical considerations on the level of individual buildings. Absolutely stellar leadership and discipline.
That was in 2014. All of that leadership, all of those men, are dead or retired. What came up after them was a hollow force, made up of poorly trained and poorly equipped conscripts. For instance, that battle in Homs, was itself conducted by military academy cadets and the training cadre. They took severe casualties during the Siege of Homs, which lasted almost 3 years. You just don't get that experience back. Military tradition like that takes generations to develop, and if mismanaged, it can can all go up in smoke in a single war. To give you an example, there are direct descendants of Robert E. Lee serving as officers in the US military. Abrams has multiple grandchildren actively serving in the US military.
Do you know why German fighter aces in average scored multiples of the number of kills that American aces did? It's because once someone became an ace, they were pulled from combat and placed in the training cadre, whereas German pilots just flew until they got unlucky and died. With them died thousands of hours of combat experience, and dozens of lessons learned from air victories. The SAA gambled by surging their best and brightest into the front, and it won them the battle, but lost them the war.
I apologize, I'm a military historian and I am very passionate about my work, and therefore tend to go off on these tangents, but what I'm saying is true. Christmas is coming up for our Gregorian friends, which means you'll be seeing a lot of your family. I know many people here have fathers and grandfathers and uncles that are retired from the military, and I'm sure more than a few of you will be bored to tears hearing stories of "when I was in the service." This year, listen. Understand that the reason they survived was because they are standing on the shoulders of giants. The information that kept them alive was passed down over a half dozen generations of men that came before them, and their experiences and the information they handed down saved the lives of many young men that came after them.
Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now. Thank you for reading my diatribe.
I hate this strawman shit. Nobody is saying he's a moderate democratic freedom man. Again,
HTS is a terror organization as designated by the United States.
If before the whole invasion of Kuwait had the US pressured the Gulf states to come to an agreement with Iraq regarding oil production quotas, which the US could easily do since
The problem really was HW's weak signals. The Cold War was over, and Bush Sr. was, understandably, not wanting to drag the US into a conflict when it looked like a new era of peace was on the horizon, but this unclear message emboldened Saddam. A lot of my colleagues disagree with me, but I firmly believe that if the US had told Saddam that, in no uncertain terms, that an invasion of Iraq's neighbors would be met by military force, I do not believe Saddam would've launched an invasion. Saddam had several conversations with US State Department officials before he launched his invasion and basically told them his plans, and, without clear guidance from the President, basically said "please do not." Now, do I agree with the US response? Absolutely. Desert Storm was one of the most resounding military successes in US history. 100 hours and Kuwait was liberated. The US laid an absolute smackdown on Iraq (which at the time had the world's 4th largest army) the world hadn't seen since the opening days of the Blitz. That being said, as the Art of War tells us, the apex of skill is not winning a thousand battles out of a thousand battles fought, but winning a battle without fighting at all. I think it could've been avoided.
