Arabs and other Muslims generally agreed that Saddam Hussein might be a bloody tyrant, but, paralleling FDR's thinking, he is our bloody tyrant. In their view, the invasion was a family affair to be settled within the family and those who intervened in the name of some grand theory of international justice were doing so to protect their own selfish interests and to maintain Arab subordination to the west.

~ Samuel P. Huntington

Samuel P. Huntington American Foreign Policy Gulf War Imperialism Iraq Islam Military Intervention Saddam Hussein Tyranny United Nations War Western Hypocrisy

Among the privileges of being a superpower, the right and the ability to make a local quarrel into a global one ranks very high.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens 1991 American Imperialism Gulf War United States

In the spring of 1990 I flew to Aspen, Colorado, to cover a summit meeting between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President George Herbert Walker Bush. This fairly routine political event took on sudden significance when, on the evening before the talks were scheduled to begin, Saddam Hussein announced that the independent state of Kuwait had, by virtue of a massive deployment of military force, become a part of Iraq. We were not to know that this act—and the name Saddam Hussein—would dominate international politics for the next decade and more, but it was still possible to witness something extraordinary: the sight of Mrs. Thatcher publicly inserting quantities of lead into George Bush’s pencil. The spattering quill of a Ralph Steadman would be necessary to do justice to such a macabre yet impressive scene.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens Britain George Hw Bush Gulf War Iraq Margaret Thatcher Saddam Hussein United States War