D you have any political views that would be unpopular on DU, so you keep them private?

[cemaphonic]

129. I was (and remain) ok with the first Gulf War.

Even at 17, I found a lot of the propaganda painting Hussein as the new Hitler, and Kuwait as a friendly Western Gulf state a little eye-rolling, and I was a bit shocked and disturbed at how quickly all of the news media uncritically jumped on board with the program (Really, that era was a big watershed for me in how the media is hardly the impartial observer that it likes to paint itself as). And I was pretty horrified at how, for many people, the main justification for the war was so that we could stop feeling bad about Vietnam. (I lived in the DC suburbs at the time, lots of Pentagon families at my high school.)

All that being said, since WWII, one of the biggest principles of international relations is that unilateral annexation of a weak neighbor is a major violation of international order and should be resisted/punished. Also unlike the recent Iraq War, most of Iraq's neighbors were equally concerned about the situation, and it was a true regional alliance against a regional threat. And unlike the recent war (or Vietnam for that matter), it had achievable goals, both military and political, and stuck to them.