Operation Desert Storm - 30 Years On

[mongers]

Today, 17th January is the 30th anniversary of the start of operations to liberate Kuwait from Saddam's Iraq.

More than half a lifetime ago for most of us here!

Opinions anyone, as I've not found a good article about it yet, I guess Covid-19 and Trump overshadows most things.

[Maladict]

I remember my dad waking me up saying the war started, and thinking that was the most exciting thing ever 
Someone in my class brought a portable radio and we all huddled around it during breaks. And ungodly amounts of time spent watching CNN, which itself was a novelty.

It all seems a bit odd now. As does the war itself, it feels like it was the last traditional war between nations and belongs to a different era.

[Syt]

My school staged an anti-war protest; I refused to participate. In hindsight, it turned out that the war wasn't quite as neat and clean as advertised on TV, though I still think it was right to intervene.

[The Brain]

I remember the impression of a sports event more than a war, with "everyone" rooting for the same team.

[Duque de Bragança]

Portable radios were definitively a thing back then. 

Some pundits were calling it the Second Gulf War though, since the first one was the Iran-Irak. Not so anymore in the common parlance after 2003, the third one.

[Pedrito]

Dear old (not so much, then she was younger than now me) irrational mom came back home with a carful of pasta and, hear hear, dates and pistachios.

Pasta because you can't have too much pasta; pistachios and dates, because they were probably the only food she could associate to a far and exotic desert, and the embargo could hit you hard in your dates needs.

We still laugh about it sometimes.

L.

[Duque de Bragança]

Dates were quite exotical in Portugal, once. At least up north, with people never having seen them before when my parents brought them once from France, from North Africa or the Near or Middle East, I guess.

[Monoriu]

I learned a lot from this guy -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSqKx3FG0Lw

I was in high school, and I was really excited about it.  I thought it was super badass to kick the invaders out.

[Maladict]

Dear old (not so much, then she was younger than now me)

I didn't think of that, damn we're old 

Pasta because you can't have too much pasta; pistachios and dates, because they were probably the only food she could associate to a far and exotic desert, and the embargo could hit you hard in your dates needs.

[Grey Fox]

I remember see tanks being offloaded somewhere desert like at the 10 O'clock news. It might have been on this day but I was 6 so it's a blurry memory.

[Barrister]

I remember we wheeled the TV into the kitchen so we could watch CNN about what was going on during meals.

And quickly doing the math... dammit my mom was a a couple of years younger then than I am now.

[Razgovory]

I think the first time I ever read a newspaper article occurred during the war.  I remember watching CNN and I remember all those yellow ribbons.  I was only 10 so my understanding boiled down to Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis were the bad guys.

[Grey Fox]

I remember we wheeled the TV into the kitchen so we could watch CNN about what was going on during meals.

And quickly doing the math... dammit my mom was a a couple of years younger then than I am now.

Dad was 38 - Golden!
Mom was 33 - Shit.

[viper37]

Today, 17th January is the 30th anniversary of the start of operations to liberate Kuwait from Saddam's Iraq.

More than half a lifetime ago for most of us here!

Opinions anyone, as I've not found a good article about it yet, I guess Covid-19 and Trump overshadows most things.

30 years and two days ago, I was screaming and singing to Iron Maiden songs in the old Coliseum of Quebec city while the first bombs were dropped on Iraq.  Good times.
I was still in high school, I wanted to join the military college, against my parent's and family's wishes, so that I could help my country in such future conflicts like these.  Fate decided otherwise.

[viper37]

My school staged an anti-war protest; I refused to participate.

ah. yes, I remember now.  Some students staged a protest that went nowhere.

I refused to participate (well, they didn't bother asking me anyway ), but in hindsight, I should have done it, if only for the no-bra semi-hot chicks in there.  Oh well.