It was no less dumb than to attack Iraq following its Kuwait invasion. Why did Bush the 1st and the press think we had a moral obligation to return a kingdom to autocratic absolute monarchists? His presumed next conquest, Saudi Arabia, would have done the World a favor.
Agreed. What was so great about Kuwait? And they were caught red-handed side-drilling into Iraqi oil fields.
I'm not privy to Bush's thoughts or the thoughts of Germany's and Japan's leaders, who fully funded Desert Storm, along with the Saudis and Kuwaitis. However, I suspect it had little to do with morality and everything to do with history. Muhammad started out as the leader of a band of robbers. By the time his generals of the Rashidun caliphate were done 50 years later, a good chunk of the Byzantine and Sassanid (Persian) empires were under Muslim rule. The principal reason for removing Saddam from Kuwait was to prevent him from going on to unify the oil resources of the Middle East under his rule, which would have given him the ability to dictate (very high) prices to the world.
Apart from oil, it was to our advantage that 400 million Muslims weren't unified under a single ruler. It was the same logic that guided our decision, on the eve of our entry into WWII, to support China against Japanese invasion, despite the fact that the Communists were allied with the Soviets and the Nationalists had allied with both the Soviets and the Nazis. It made little sense for us to stand by as the Japanese empire prepared to add to its ranks 400m new subjects who, in time, might become every bit as fanatical in their devotion to the goals of the Japanese empire as their conquerors. The Koreans and the Taiwanese who fought in Hirohito's service were certainly indistinguishable from the Japanese in their devotion to the cause of the Rising Sun - Japan's rule over Taiwan and Korea since the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 had been largely beneficial to the populace, and the native draftees reciprocated by serving loyally in the Imperial Japanese forces.
“Why did Bush the 1st and the press think we had a moral obligation to return a kingdom to autocratic absolute monarchists? His presumed next conquest, Saudi Arabia, would have done the World a favor.”
That ain’t the point. I was over there in the 1980s, and it was my opinion—and that of others—that the US needed to establish some credibility in the region. The only way to have done that would have been to achieve a dramatic military victory.
In short, it was in the best interests of the US to go over there and kick somebody’s butt. Anybody’s, didn’t matter whose.
Unfortunately, the continued survival of the left in American politics—especially including the leftard mafia in the CIA—ensured that it all got screwed up.