On 2 August 1990, the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein ordered Iraq's powerful and large army to invade the neighbouring country of Kuwait. It fully occupied the country within two days. Iraq now had control of the oil coming out of Kuwait as well as troops on the border of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, afraid that it would be next asked for immediate military aid. The United States organized a 35 country coalition of forces from Western and Arab States to defend Saudi Arabia and liberate Kuwait. You can see what happened next in the video below.
Operation Desert Storm was successful. The coalition however did not remove Saddam Hussein from power because they had accomplished their mission and didn't want more casualties. That turned out to be a big mistake and the United States wound up going back and fighting Saddam again in 2003. One reason was that Iraq violated its agreements with the coalition. The coalition had allowed Iraq to keep its military helicopters to only be used for civilian purposes but Iraq used them against Iraqis who wanted to liberate Iraq. Iraq also stopped allowing weapons inspections which together with faulty intelligence reports from England and a source referred to as Curveball, led to fears that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence community did not have enough if any of their own spies in Iraq to know if Iraq had those weapons and depended largely on the testimony of a source they called Curveball who said that Iraq had biological weapons. They depended on Curveball's testimony even though the only person inside the U.S. government who had ever actually spoken to the informant was a single Pentagon analyst, who concluded the man was an alcoholic and utterly useless as a source.
In Sept 2001 Al Qaeda committed a huge terrorist attack against the United States. They hijacked American airlines and flew crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This led to the United States being a lot less complacent about their enemy Saddam having biological weapons. This together with Saddam's violation of his agreements led to the United States attacking Iraq. This time they captured Saddam and liberated Iraqis from his dictatorship. Once Saddam was gone Al Qaeda terrorists entered Iraq and attacked U.S. troops. The U.S. withdrew its troops from Iraq.and extremist Muslim ISIS terrorist groups violently took over large parts of Iraq and Syria. They killed many of the Yazidi people and enslaved the women who they captured.
The United States wound up fighting ISIS and under Trump drove ISIS out of territories it had conquered. One would think that after this the country of Iraq would have appreciated U.S. help. However there is a lot of radical Muslim indoctrination to hate the non-believer in the Arab world and so Iraq is a hostile country to the United States. The only country that Iraq may be more hostile to is Israel which is ironic since Israel did not participate in American battles with the Iraqi army. In fact during operation Desert Storm the U.S. asked Israel to stay out of the conflict because of fears that the Arab states in the U.S. led coalition would leave and join Saddam if they saw Saddam as a hero who was fighting the country of Israel who they hated so much. Saddam fired Scud missiles at Israel so that Israel would strike back and the coalition would fall apart. The U.S. begged Israel not to strike back and Israel showed enormous restraint and did not counterattack. It's not clear that Israel striking back would have helped Saddam as just the fact that he was firing missiles at Israel with Israel unable to strike back would have gained him Arab sympathy and admiration. Whatever the case the Arab coalition held partly because they were afraid Saddam would attack them.
One victim of Iraqi hate toward Israel and America was Sarah Idan, Miss Iraq. She taught herself English when she was 13 by listening to Western music. She plays piano, guitar and harmonica and can sing in English, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese and French. She competed in the Miss Universe competition. Here is a video instroducing her as a contestant for the Miss Universe competition.
Sarah took a selfie with Miss Israel and to help promote peace posted it online for the world to see. “Get to know, this is Miss Iraq and she’s amazing,” enthused Miss Israel Adar Gandelsman in her Instagram post. “Practicing bringing world peace,” Adar wrote on Facebook. “Peace and Love from Miss Iraq and Miss Israel,” wrote Miss Iraq Sarah Idan on her instagram post, followed by heart emojis.
She speaks about what happened after she did that in the video below.
One of the propaganda accusations that Muslims make against Israel is that it is an apartheid state that keeps Muslims and Jews apart. One of the things Sarah Idan said is that Israel is the only place in the Middle East where you can see Jews and Muslims walking together. It is the Muslim countries that are apartheid yet they accuse Israel of apartheid. You can learn a lot about the cause of the Arab Israel conflict from the story Sarah Idan tells. It's the insane hatred of Israel and the Jews in the Muslim world that is the cause.
There is an online video of Sarah Idan performing her favorite American song Listen to Your Heart. It is embedded below.
Sarah Idan listened to her heart when she posted a selfie with Miss Israel and when she stood up to threats demanding she take it off the internet. If anyone deserved to win the Miss Universe contest of 2017 it was Sarah Idan.
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