James Bennet

About the Author: James Bennet is an editor of The Washington Monthly. The following article was written in December 1990, before hostilities broke out in the Persian Gulf. The article covers the period from August 1990 to November 1990.

It's hard to recall now that in the first days after Iraq invaded Kuwait, sending any American troops—much less 430,000 of them—to the Middle East never seemed inevitable. In fact, it didn't even seem probable, since many lawmakers didn't like the idea. The New York Times reported on August 3, 1990, that "Senator Sam Nunn . . . expressed the prevailing view on Capitol Hill when he said that the proper response should be economic and political pressure and not military action." When reports did discuss the possibility of military...