This chapter traces the Army’s rehabilitation of its reputation in the wake of the Vietnam War. Two features were central to this transformation: the first was the advent of the All-Volunteer Force and the post-Vietnam reforms to Army training, equipment and doctrine. After a shaky start, the All-Volunteer Force’s success normalised the notion of soldiering as an occupation rather than an obligation, and reforms seemed to create a much more professional and competent force than the one that was wracked by unrest and uncertainty. Second, the Army’s performance in Operation Desert Storm affirmed this narrative of professionalism and competence. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the aftermath of the war. The celebrations that took place to welcome home Gulf War veterans stood out as the largest seen in the United States since the end of World War II. Representing a crucial moment in the American public’s deepening veneration for US soldiers and veterans, the Gulf War celebrations marked a turning point when the Vietnam-era image of the soldier as a broken or rebellious draftee was finally and purposefully eclipsed by the notion of the volunteer service member as hero.

This chapter shows how the United States and its allies established a containment regime on Iraq after the Gulf War in the hope of using sanctions to compel Saddam to cooperate with UN weapons inspections. This chapter argues that despite the military victory in the Gulf War, a political narrative emerged in 1991 that Bush had missed several opportunities to overthrow Saddam and abandoned rebels who rose up against the Iraqi government, making the Gulf War a flawed victory. As Saddam obstructed inspections and challenged containment over the next two years, Democrats and neoconservatives developed the argument that containment could not address the Iraqi threat because it did not target the Iraqi regime, the source of its misbehavior, for removal. Containment thus became the US policy toward Iraq in an atmosphere of disappointment and recrimination that created a political bias against restrained approaches to Iraq and in favor of the more immediate pursuit of regime change.