FoxNews.com
February 28, 2011, marks the 20th anniversary of the end of the Gulf War.
Has it really been twenty years?
When I was 19 years old, I felt the urge to serve my country and left college after my freshman year to enlist in the United States Marine Corps.
Little did I know that decision would soon place me on the front lines of our nation’s largest military engagement since the Vietnam War. This was of particular interest to my mother, who happens to be 100% Sicilian and who two years earlier refused to allow me to enlist because she feared the possibility of a war. Of course, as the baby boy of the family I understood her concerns, but chalked them up to the drama of an Italian mom worried about any possible danger, no matter how remote, coming to her only son. I guess mom is always right. But please don't tell her I admit that.
The summer of 1990 was a time of great optimism for our country and really for the world. The two years prior had seen the collapse of the Soviet Union’s domination of Eastern Europe. In 1991, that collapse would soon consume the Soviet Union itself and lead to a birth of freedom for hundreds of millions of people who had suffered under the yolk of communism since 1945.
After a century of global war, Americans felt that perhaps a new era of peace and cooperation was at hand.
That illusion was shattered on August 2, 1990, when Iraqi troops under Saddam Hussein launched an unprovoked invasion of their Kuwaiti neighbors. The world reacted with disgust to a brutal act of aggression by a dictator who saw himself as the leader of a new pan-Arab empire.
A series of United Nations Security Council resolutions and Arab League resolutions were passed regarding the invasion of Kuwait. One of the most important was Resolution 678, passed on November 29, 1990, which gave Iraq a withdrawal deadline of January 15, 1991, and authorized
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