Bush Sr. was right on Iraqi invasion

Five years ago, George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft wrote a book called, "The World Transformed". In these memoirs, Bush explained why he didn't try and remove Saddam Hussein from power at the end of the first Gulf War.

Bush wrote that "trying to eliminate Saddam … would have incurred incalculable human and political cost. … We were concerned about the long-term balance of power … the fate of Saddam was up to the Iraqi people … We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq … there was no viable exit strategy we could see … Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world.

Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nation's mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome.

From an American foreign policy making perspective, we sought to respond in a matter which would win broad domestic support and which could be applied universally to other crises.

In international terms, we tried to establish a model for the use of force. First and foremost was the principle that aggression cannot pay."

Excerpts from G.W. Bush's book appeared in Time magazine on March 2, 1998. This article was available at the Time Web site until it was recently pulled.

HARVEY BRANNIGAN

Sandpoint