History of the United States II / Unit 16 USH2 2291 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Desert Storm
The idea
Bush assembled an international coalition of thirty-four countries against Iraq, and went to the United Nations for a resolution permitting force if Iraq did not withdraw by January fifteenth, nineteen ninety-one. An air campaign came first. Then Operation Desert Storm, a land war of one hundred hours involving over five hundred thousand American troops, drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
In practice
Iraqi troop morale so broken by the bombing that an estimated thirty percent of Baghdad's forces deserted before the ground war, Digital History records.
Where people slip
The misreading measures the war by its speed alone. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, rose to prominence in it, and the Yawp records that sanctions, weapons inspections and no-fly zones followed, with American warplanes patrolling Iraqi skies by mid-nineteen ninety-one. The United States stayed committed in the region, as unit seventeen shows.
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