The 20th anniversary of the Iraq (Gulf) War. Yes, that first war, remember?

Have you already forgotten "Stormin' Norman" who led the war on the ground? The "Scud Stud" who reported on the war?

Yes, that was twenty years ago--On February 28th, 1991 cease fire took effect.

Who were the coalition partners at that time?

Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Portugal, Qatar, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Spain, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom

So, let us go through this list, with respect to the countries in the neighborhood:

• Bahrain: protests going on
• Egypt: Mubarak, who was the president then, was a key ally, and has been thrown out
• Kuwait: in a holding pattern
• Morocco: protests going on, though not large enough, yet, to topple the government
• Niger: came back to haunt Bush, Jr., with the yellocake controversy
• Oman: relatively peaceful, for now
• Qatar: the home of Al-Jazeera, which came into existence in 1996, way after the war ended
• Saudi Arabia: now, a land of shaking sheikhs, worried about their long-term prospects
• Syria: protests, though not big time, yet
• UAE: peaceful, for now, though one emirate, Dubai, is bankrupt for all purposes

Jordan was one of the many countries that sat out for all kinds of geopolitical reasons.  Stability through dictators was the aim of that war, which only delayed the inevitable:

The illusion of strength and permanence created around these essentially decrepit regimes means that the successful Arab uprisings came as a shock to all of us – and to them. Yet perhaps the bigger surprise should be that it took so long. The kings and tyrants of the Arab world have survived for years with only guns and oil to sustain them, lacking any real political authority or roots in their societies. Other props of the stable post-Second World War order, notably the Soviet bloc in eastern Europe, have long since collapsed. Now the Arab world is finally being dragged into the twenty-first century’s era of uncertainty.
And there seems little that the old imperialist powers such as the USA, Britain and France, who designed and long controlled the modern Middle East, can do to halt it. If the Gulf War of 1990-91 could not reassert Western authority in the long term, the attempt to repeat the trick in the second Gulf War of 2003 turned into a tragic farce.

But, don't jump into any hasty celebrations:

But there is also a common underestimation of what has really been taking place. The focus on the personal fate of a Mubarak or a Gaddafi tends to miss the powerful undercurrents of change that are shaking the Arab world and will have wider repercussions across the unravelling world order. There are no longer any certainties, and nothing that is on the political table today is in any way permanent. The one thing for sure is that the future is up for grabs.

It worries me that the "developed counties" will rush to ensure stability in the short-term and in the process create newer monsters.

Which is why I prefer all the comparisons being made to Europe in 1848--the revolutions didn't usher in any immediate stability and transformation but were merely the beginning of a much longer and drawn out process, which was awfully bloody as well.  I do hope that we would avoid large scale bloodshed ...