George H. W. Bush: Address to Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis

Impact

Bush's speech failed to solve the nation's economic problems or his own political problems that arose from them. Bush made concessions, the most important of which was agreeing to an increase in the gasoline tax, to reach agreement with congressional negotiators on a budget reduction plan in late September. But conservative Republicans, irate over the president's broken promise not to raise taxes, opposed the legislation. Joining with Democrats who had other objections, they defeated the budget bill. While the White House and Congress tried to hammer out a new agreement, the federal government shut down for three days because the new fiscal year had started without an approved budget. Eventually, both sides agreed to a new plan, which substituted higher income taxes on the wealthiest Americans for some of the gas tax increases. The president signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act on November 5 and praised it as “the largest deficit reduction package in history” because it was supposed to reduce the shortfall in the budget by almost one-half trillion dollars during the coming five years (Bush, Public Papers of the President: 1990, vol. 2, p. 1553). But polls showed that the president's approval rating had declined more than twenty points, to 53 percent, mainly because of discontent with his handling of the deficit and the economy.

On international affairs, as usual, Bush was more successful. The speech he gave on September 11 was part of a continuing effort to build support for strong action to force Saddam Hussein to withdraw Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Bush wrote in his memoirs that he was not sure when he realized that only military force, not sanctions, would secure that objective. But he was clearly preparing for war when he announced on November 8 that he was substantially increasing U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia so they would have “an adequate offensive military option”(Parmet, p. 471). On November 29, the UN Security Council authorized member nations to use “all necessary means” against Iraq if it did not remove its troops from Kuwait by January 15, 1991 (Parmet, p. 474). When Saddam Hussein failed to comply, Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm when U.S. air attacks began on January 17. Coalition ground troops attacked Iraqi forces five weeks later. After only one hundred hours of fighting, Bush proclaimed the liberation of Kuwait and victory in the Persian Gulf War.

The president's approval in the polls soared to 87 percent, but his popularity did not last. A recession gripped the economy, and many discontented Americans blamed Bush for the hard times. Many people could not forget his reversal on raising taxes. These economic problems contributed to his defeat in the election of 1992.

What seemed in 1991 to a vast majority of Americans as a highly successful war that had achieved its fundamental objectives became an incomplete triumph, or even a failure, during the next twelve years. Hussein remained the president of Iraq. Although UN sanctions continued, Hussein challenged international efforts to curb his power and seemed to be carrying out programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush condemned Iraq as an outlaw nation, part of an international “axis of evil” that “continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror.” On March 19, 2003, the second President Bush authorized the beginning of military attacks on Iraq that drove Hussein's government from power in weeks but that led to a prolonged war between the United States and Iraqi resistance forces and among Iraqis themselves. The war generated enormous controversy over its origins, conduct, and results. It led to many comparisons between the two presidents Bush, their diplomatic skills, and their war leadership as well as the ways that the first war with Iraq contributed to a second one.