Perhaps but I don't think Bush I had the stomach to go into Iraq itself and the bloodbath. Bush II proved that could be done and the conquer of Iraq did not take that long. Had they placed a strong dictator in place in Iraq I think it would have been successful. To your point Bush II had ridiculous idealistic ideas about democracy in Iraq.
Bush the Elder chose foreign policy realists as advisors, Brent Scrowcroft being a prime example. Scrowcroft was a leading critic of Dubya’s plan for invading Iraq.
In WWII we had an entire Army division that did nothing other than reestablish civil government as our front lines passed through. The Dubya and Rumsfeld geniuses thought that they knew better and so disposed of that entirely, guaranteeing that there would be chaos behind the front line. Which of course there was.
But even if we had used a civil affairs division we wouldn’t have known how to deal with the intractable Sunni-Shia split among the population. Of course among Dubya’s neocons such concerns were inconsequential- it was only in the real world that such things matter.
The Kuwait war didn’t stop at the Iraq border. Look at any desert storm map.