Historical events require time before their real impact can be judged accurately. Throughout the 1920's the Allied nations thought that World War One, then known as The Great War, had brought victory. Yes, victory had come at an appalling cost, but it had wiped out the Romanov, Hollenzollern, and Habsburg monarchies and ushered in an era of collective security and disarmament. By the 1950's history told another story about the outcome of The Great War. It had not defeated Germany. It had thrown Europe into a period of profound crisis and led to the rise of some of the most inhumane ideologies ever known to man.

The German people were not always sympathetic to National Socialism. Naziism grew out of the post-war settlement and the financial hardships of the Depression. If things had been handled differently by the victors of The Great War, National Socialism never would have come to power. If America had remained on the sidelines during The Great War it might still be known as The Great War, and not as the smaller precursor to the Second World War. One never knows. As things turned out, the United States developed nuclear weapons first and emerged from the Second World War as the undisputed hegemon of the West. In an alternate universe, we might have avoided the carnage of World War Two and a Nazified Europe only to see a rather militant and expansionist Germany in sole possession of a nuclear bomb.

When we look back at the first Persian Gulf War we can seem similar ambiguities. Yes, we won the war by liberating Kuwait. We did so at relatively little cost in lives and treasure. Combined with the peaceful breakup of the Soviet Union, the country emerged from the conflict with a sense of triumphalism. And those that had warned against the war were marginalized and considered to be suffering from alarmism and Vietnam-fatigue. Here is how the Washington Post put it on October 20, 2004.

When Kerry rose in the Senate to oppose authorization for war against Iraq in January 1991, his words conveyed a wary, Vietnam-haunted approach to the use of military force that contrasted sharply with his vote a decade later to go to war a second time against Iraq. He was on the losing side of the vote on that war, which turned out to be far less costly in human and financial terms than Kerry and most Democrats -- 45 of the party's 54 senators opposed it -- predicted.

In a lengthy speech, Kerry touched on most of the arguments that other critics made against going to war: Sanctions had not been given enough time to work; the American people were not prepared for the heavy casualties that might result; the war might spawn further instability in the Middle East. But it was Vietnam -- especially fighting a war that did not have the full backing of the American people -- that appeared to influence Kerry as much as anything else.

The first Bush administration made a strategic decision not to march on Baghdad and remove the regime of Saddam Hussein. Part of the reason for that decision is that toppling Saddam Hussein would have splitered the international coalition that was cobbled together to liberate Kuwait. But part of the reason (and it is related) was that it would have led to instability. Poppy Bush and Scowcroft have written that they expected Saddam to be deposed in a coup, but they feared chaos if the entire Ba'ath regime fell. Looking at the country today, we can see the wisdom in their assessment. Rather than topple the regime (and we did encourage an Shi'a and Kurdish uprising) we settled on disarmament and containment.

Ironically, this policy did provide a measure of stability within Iraq and, therefore, the region. But it also led directly to the rise of al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda objected to the permanent basing of American soldiers and airmen in Saudi Arabia. Those soldiers and airmen were in Saudi Arabia as part of our containment policy. Al-Qaeda also objected to the sanctions on Iraq, which caused immense hardship for Iraqi society. It is well established that Usama bin-Laden was personally radicalized by the House of Saud's decision to allow Americans into the kingdom and, especially, their decision to let us stay. As a result, as 9/11 proved, the post Persian Gulf War's stability was illusory. It was illusory in much the same way as the stability of post-Versailles Europe was illusory. So, when we revisit John Kerry's warnings about the proposed Persian Gulf War spawning further Middle East instability, we have to conclude he was correct. In fact, it was only the failure of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that allowed us to avoid that conclusion for a decade.

Our containment policy of Iraq did not make us safe. It protected us from Iraq, but Iraq was never a threat to the United States. While Saddam was contained, other Arabs were developing a virulent strain of anti-Western and anti-American ideology. And, while the Israel/Palestine conflict was a major influence in that ideology, the containment policy of Iraq was actually listed higher on their list of grievances.

Even as we began to experience blowback (1993 WTC bombing, Khobar Towers, African Embassy bombings, USS Cole) we comforted ourselves in a post-Persian Gulf War discovery. It turned out that Saddam Hussein had been closer to developing nuclear weapons before the war than we had suspected. We tried to convince ourselves that Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was a godsend that had allowed us to disarm him before he developed a nuclear capability. We might have argued that Hitler's invasion of Poland was a godsend because without that provocation he might have developed nuclear weapons before the United States. This is the kind of reasoning George W. Bush used last night in his interview with Scott Pellet for 60 Minutes.

PELLEY: But wasn't it your administration that created the instability in Iraq?

BUSH: Well, our administration took care of a source of instability in Iraq. Envision a world in which Saddam Hussein was rushing for a nuclear weapon to compete against Iran. My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the correct decision in my judgment. We didn't find the weapons we thought we would find or the weapons everybody thought he had. But he was a significant source of instability.

We must parse this reasoning because it doesn't mean what it appears to mean. Bush isn't arguing that Saddam Hussein had WMD or a functioning nuclear program when we invaded in March 2003. He is arguing that, with Iran currently pursuing a nuclear weapon, Saddam would have had no choice but to restart his nuclear program in response.

Therefore, Bush's reasoning goes, by toppling Saddam we have pre-empted his plan to gain nuclear weapons. And, therefore, our invasion of Iraq may have caused one form of instability but it avoided another, more dangerous form of instability.

If we examine this hypothesis we will find numerous factual problems. It is not at all clear how Saddam could have successfully developed nuclear weapons as long as we had inspectors on the ground, no-fly zones, and sanctions in place. However, if sanctions had ever been lifted, Saddam may well have felt that national security demands dictated that he develop a deterrent to Iran's nuclear program. The invasion of Iraq was intended to avoid an open-ended situation where we were obliged to contain Iraq indefinitely even in the face of rising terrorist reprisals.

Rather than argue over the merits of that decision (the facts on the ground in Iraq preclude the necessity for that) I want to go back, again, to the decison to liberate Kuwait. Or, rather, I want to go back even further. I want to go back to the decision to allow Saddam to make a limited annexation of Kuwait.

Below the fold, I will excerpt the exchange between Saddam Hussein and our ambassador April Glaspie, and the other signals we sent to Iraq prior to their invasion of Kuwait.