Fuking' hell. Another America who doesn't know his own nation's history.

Kuwait was pumping far more oil than it was permitted under OPEC quotas, thus depressing the price of oil. When the Iraqis complained, the Kuwaitis told them to fuck off, but used worse language and refused every attempt by Iraq to solve the problem. The Iraqis were in a bad situation from the Iraq-Iran war and couldn't afford to lose this money so wanted to force Kuwait's hand. There is the also the issue of Kuwait pumping from Iraqi wells. A week before they invaded, the State Department told Iraq that the US had no position on Arab-Arab conflicts. They didn't care, so they said; yet a week after the invasion, 40,000 US troops were on the border. This wasn't an accident. The US had been planning for this invasion and were able to provoke the Iraqis into invading Kuwait and then rebuffed every attempt at negotiating a peaceful withdrawal. It was a far of aggression by the US. And when you look at the statistics relating to the conflict, it's hard to think it was a war against the Iraqi people. 50,000 Iraqi civilians died in the First Gulf War (though under a regime like Saddam's, it's hard to call much of the army itself anything other than civilian). Within days of the start of the bombing campaign, there was NO electricity in Iraq. Four of the seven major pumping stations were destroyed. Twenty eight hospitals and fifty two health centres were bombed. Thirty eight schools were totally destroyed. All major cement production facilities were bombed. The list goes on and on. And all this is before the Americans and British inflicted the mediaeval horror of sanctions on the country, and then attacked it again. Millions dead. Millions. And, of course, Saddam was a bastard but he was your bastard, until he failed to be of use.

Pride in your country is not necessarily a bad thing, but pride in a murderous, genocidal regime of thugs and fascists is.