﻿ Foreseeing the future -- and ignoring it | The Japan Times
Online Home > Opinion   print button email button  Monday, Jan.
26, 2004   Foreseeing the future -- and ignoring it  NEW YORK --
U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy has recently reminded us why the U.S.
forces decided not to go all the way to Baghdad during the
Persian Gulf War. Addressing the Center for American Progress in
Washington, D.C., on Jan. 14, he pointed out that it was none
other than the first President Bush and his national security
adviser, Brent Scowcroft, who had explained in their joint book,
"A World Transformed" (Knopf, 1998): "Trying to eliminate
Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq,
would have . . . incurred incalculable human and political
costs. . . . We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in
effect, rule Iraq."  I was struck by Kennedy's reference not
because I am knowledgeable enough about the complexity of recent
historical developments, but because I had just read, belatedly,
Naoki Inose's oddly titl