More competent Iraqi performance in the Gulf War

On paper, maybe.

30K over the span of a few weeks and its over we won... America is willing to take that kind of war.

1/10th that say 3K combat deaths over 10 years... American isn't as willing to take that kind of war as they will grow tired of hearing about it.

Much like Vietnam if LBJ planned an invasion of North Vietnam in 1964 and China gets semi involved and 150K Americans die in a few months, but it ended in North Vietnam giving up its war and proxy war on South Vietnam. Americans would have supported that war.
 
I'm of the school of thought that the omnipresent power of modern media makes it nigh impossible for a Western Democracy to sustain losses like that without A Very Good Reason. Americans wanted to fight the Communists, for much of the country it was indeed the burden of a long twilight struggle. Nurse Nayirah isn't gonna cut it if we're talking 30,000 dead. We've already established in this thread that you basically need the military to shit the bed to reach that number. Limiting things to a few weeks obviously doesn't give anti-war movements a chance to gain momentum but heads are still gonna roll in Washington.
 
The modernization of the Chinese military was a result of the overwhelming victory of the coalition against Iraq´s forces in 1991.
 
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