Father knows best

In his memoirs, A World Transformed, written five years ago, George H.W. Bush wrote the following to explain why he didn’t go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War:

“Trying to eliminate Saddam…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs.  We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq….There was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles.  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 Nations’ 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.”

If only his son could read!