Ronald Raegan , the 40th president of the United States said about protecting those who can not protect themselves ,“protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing”. It seems as though the United States repeatedly throughout the pages of history gets into wars for the sake of protecting the underdog. In the Vietnam war the united states defended the south Vietnamese from the spread of communism, in the Korean war the United States defended south Korea from communist North Korea, and during the Gulf war the United states came to the rescue of the out matched nation of Kuwait against Iraqi forces. The Gulf war lasted only a year but the affects of the war left a lasting mark on the veterans of the war

Many believe that the number one cause for the gulf war was Iraq attacking Kuwaitt in 1990, but bad blood between the two nations would begin long before the attack of Kuwaitt over financial issues. In 1980 after several years of the leaders of the two nations, Iraq and Iran, despising one another and arguing over the Shatt al-Arab, which divided the two nations both nations were ready to fight. During the period of anomocity between Iraq and iran the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, repeatedly, publicly said that it would be better for both sides to solve the problem without war but then out of no where attacked iran at Mehrebad airport on September 22, 1980. During the war Iran was attacking Iraq while also attacking Kuwaitt oil tankers at sea.The war continued between the neighboring nations for 8 years until in 1988 a truce was declared in . Kuwaitt lent Iraq 14 billion dollars to help stop the war and it did just that. Afer the war Iraq tried to