Looking Back at the Gulf War

So we all loved that Gulf War! Well, now comes Judgment Day. Three sources cause one to reflect. The Times (Jan. 12) reports that the reconstruction of damaged Gulf areas hasn’t produced huge, profitable contracts for U.S. corporations as so glowingly predicted by the press last spring. Recently a study done by the Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco states: “ . . . it is estimated that in the war’s absence growth would have been slow but there would not have been a recession.” Then the World Monitor adds the following: “Some estimates place the overall global costs of this short, by-the-numbers, regional war at as much as half a trillion dollars. This includes indirect costs; trade disruptions, environmental damage, temporary energy cost increases, loss of key reservists from the workplace, loss of GNP in Kuwait, Turkey and Israel, not to mention Iraq.”

In the future maybe we should make certain our real national security is at stake before we tie yellow ribbons and wave flags. Recent reports discount the huge number of Iraqi military killed; yet on CNN we see the massive suffering of civilians in the war area. Was that a glorious war? On balance, Judgment Day says, no. Some will say that the enlarged U.S. forces in that region will give us leverage over our trading rivals--implying that the U.S. now controls OPEC. But that’s another story.

JUNE V. HUGHES, Laguna Hills