WI the USA tried to topple Saddam in 1991?

It would have been easier. There were many more groups at the time to take over the government than in 2003, which would make the reconstruction period easier. Also while militant Islam was strong, it wasn't quite as popular as early 2000 and today. So there would be less people willing to use suicide bombs against the Great Satan, which was the biggest problem for the US.

In 1991 there were a lot of people, primarily Shia but also several Sunni groups and intellectual organizations, who opposed Saddam. Many of them were begging the UN to depose Saddam and had plans in place to quickly restore the government.
But in 1993 when the US urged these groups to revolt against Saddam, they were slaughtered waiting for outside support that never materialized. The political, business and educated leaders were forced into exile, imprisoned and broken or killed. So when Saddam was finally removed there was a power vacuum, which the US couldn't fill easily.
This allowed the more militant and radical groups to enter Iraq.

If Saddam had been removed in 1991 it would have saved a lot of lives.
 

Cook

Banned
Driving to Bagdad with 450,000 US ground troops and 45,000 British would have been a damn site easier than doing it in 2003 with ~150,000. With such a force holding occupied ground rather than just driving through it would have been feasible.

The big question is would Saddam have any reason not to use his chemical weapons if the Americans were driving to Bagdad?

globalsecurity said:
A significant number of chemical weapons, their components and related equipment were identified and destroyed under UNSCOM supervision in the period from 1991 to 1997. This included over 38,000 filled and unfilled chemical munitions, 690 tons of chemical warfare agents, more than 3,000 tons of precursor chemicals and over 400 pieces of production equipment. All chemical weapons destruction was carried out at the Muthanna State Establishment, Iraq's primary chemical weapons facility, with one exception. Some munitions found at the Khamissiyah arms depot in October 1991 were judged too dangerous to move. Therefore, they were destroyed in situ during February/March 1992. The destruction of all other agent and munitions took place at Muthanna from June 1992 to May 1994. UNSCOM supervised the destruction of over 480,000 litres of live chemical weapons agent and over 1 million kilograms of some 45 different precursor chemicals.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/cw-unscom.htm

You would not be able to expect the Arab States to contribute to such a campaign.

(On a personal note, my brother was in the UNSCOM chemical destruction team :))
 
Would the Coalition have even needed to march on Baghdad? IIRC at the time Bush ordered a halt to operations the Americans were about to trap the bulk of the Republican Guard, had they been trapped then in the ceasefire talks the Americans could have insisted that those troops had to abandon their weapons and equipment before being allowed to withdraw, they could also have prevented the Iraqis from using their helicopters. With the RG out of the picture and without the use of helicopters to suppress the twin uprisings then it's possible there could have been a palace coup with Saddam and his psychopath sons ending their lives up against a wall. The new government would still have been Baathist but they would likely have agreed to full co-operation with UN inspectors meaning that the sanctions could have been lifted and the Americans wouldn't have needed to base troops in Saudi.

Iraq in 1990 was by regional standards a prosperous country with good infrastructure and a sizeable pro-western middle class, the war destroyed the former and the sanctions the latter. Without the emotional appeal of the crippling sanctions on ordinary Iraqis then Arab opinion upwards the West may not have turned so much against the West as it did which was exploited by Al Qaeda and other groups. So perhaps no 9/11 and GWOT?

On a personal note the shameful thing about the 1991 war wasn't the failure to topple Saddam but the fact that Bush implored the Iraqi people to "Rise up against Saddam!" but when they did he abandoned them.
 

Cook

Banned
On a personal note the shameful thing about the 1991 war wasn't the failure to topple Saddam but the fact that Bush implored the Iraqi people to "Rise up against Saddam!" but when they did he abandoned them.

That was strange wasn’t it, badly thought out or just flat out not thought out at all.

So was calling a cease-fire without even consulting with the British first.
 
That was strange wasn’t it, badly thought out or just flat out not thought out at all.

So was calling a cease-fire without even consulting with the British first.

Fuck, the whole damn decade and a half from the time of Desert Storm I in '91 on seems almost like the US government was deliberately trying to make it more difficult to get rid of Saddam. From allowing the Iraqi's to use air power to take out the Kurds, to abandoning the same groups that Bush I told to "rise up", to not having a damned exit strategy and selecting a guy who had been in exile for almost three decades to take over the country (and disbanding the iraqi army).


I mean seriously, could the two Bushes have done a worse job over there?
 
The US probably would have been less into nation-building and more into turning the country over to some plausible combination of successors with a democratic fig leaf, so in the short and even medium term, it would have been less costly for the US.

It would have been easier. There were many more groups at the time to take over the government than in 2003, which would make the reconstruction period easier. Also while militant Islam was strong, it wasn't quite as popular as early 2000 and today. So there would be less people willing to use suicide bombs against the Great Satan, which was the biggest problem for the US.

In 1991 there were a lot of people, primarily Shia but also several Sunni groups and intellectual organizations, who opposed Saddam. Many of them were begging the UN to depose Saddam and had plans in place to quickly restore the government.
But in 1993 when the US urged these groups to revolt against Saddam, they were slaughtered waiting for outside support that never materialized. The political, business and educated leaders were forced into exile, imprisoned and broken or killed. So when Saddam was finally removed there was a power vacuum, which the US couldn't fill easily.
This allowed the more militant and radical groups to enter Iraq.

If Saddam had been removed in 1991 it would have saved a lot of lives.
 
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