Desert Storm was not niche in any shape or form. Iraq was the fourth most powerful military at the time and had the newest and greatest Soviet weapons. The expected casualties for the US were in the thousands, and no one thought the Iraqis would get steamrolled in 1991.
Kuwait United States United Kingdom France Saudi Arabia Egypt Afghan mujahideen Argentina Australia Bahrain Bangladesh Belgium Canada Czechoslovakia Denmark Germany Greece Honduras Hungary Italy Japan Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Niger Norway Oman Pakistan Poland Portugal Qatar Senegal Sierra Leone Singapore South Korea Spain Sweden Syria Turkey United Arab Emirates
V.
Iraq
And people placed their bets on Iraq? Using WW2 era T-55s and T-62s from the early 1960s?
The US provided 700,000 of the 956,600 troops and had to bring them halfway around the world. Most of those countries were using weapons bought made by the US MIC. Also I never said we were expected to lose. People expected a long and costly fight that would take months and take thousands of lives. Less than 300 were killed and that includes all those other countries.
Your point was that the MIC sacrificed our military acumen for profit, when they clearly haven't. I agree that we pay them too much, but the weapons themselves still perform better than any other.
No. The evidence is clearly insufficient. You didn't bring up Korea, Vietnam, the second Iraq war, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Laos, Cambodia, etc or that Kuwait was a United Nations and not a US campaign.
Instead you claimed some dubious members of the babbling class misjudged how long it would take, didn't take the context into consideration, misrepresented 1940s tanks as cutting edge weaponry, and then attributed military technology and prowess to a victory plagued by warcrimes like the highway of death.
Killing surrendered troops and firebombing a retreating military under the flag of the United Nations will lead to the belligerent considering it a defeat. Under those conditions, you could probably achieve that with 19th century maxim guns.
Sorry, that's nowhere near sufficient to show that the fancy weaponry on display justified the cost or was an important part of the victory.
In every single one of those wars, the weapons were never the problem. Look up the massive casualty ratios in those wars. Every one of those wars were failed by the politics and the fact that we should never should have been there. The weapons and the MIC never caused the failure of those wars. All the war crimes and evil acts committed were done by people in the military, not the MIC.
And what 1940s tanks? Both sides had modern tanks in the war.
