The War for Peace: George H. W. Bush and Palestine, 1989-1992 Page: 42
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War Changes Everything
While public pressure that bordered on slander forced the administration to back
down and admit defeat in 1989-90, in 1991 Bush and Baker were prepared to tie
American aid to genuine change in Israel, and not bow to political and diplomatic
pressure. The key difference in the stance of the administration in 1991 was that they
were no longer concerned about charges that they were betraying America's truest ally in
the Middle East, or that they were closeted anti-Semites. The reason they could dismiss
such charges was that American military might was used against a former ally of the
United States, Iraq. This was a war that was so unexpected by the administration that
Baker wrote in his memoirs "Iraq, a nation of only 18 million had suffered more than half
a million deaths [in the Iran-Iraq war]. None of us could have guessed that this country
that America had sought to engage could muster the capacity to set the world on a course
for war in August 1990."72
Indeed, most of the Secretary's papers explain the reasoning for not taking action
against Saddam Hussein before he invaded Kuwait. Perhaps surprisingly, Baker places
some of the responsibility on the Reagan administration, in which he also served as a
cabinet secretary. He argued that Reagan administration reasoned that Iraq could be used
to contain Iranian influence in the wake of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. To that end,
during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the United States, removed Iraq from the list of
state sponsors of terror, extended lines of credit that allowed Iraq to buy American
agricultural produce, and provided the Iraqis with military intelligence concerning Iran.
72 Baker, The Politics ofDiplomacy, 261.42
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Arduengo, Enrique Sebastian. The War for Peace: George H. W. Bush and Palestine, 1989-1992, thesis, August 2009; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11061/m1/48/: accessed May 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .