The Road to Safwan: The 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry in the 1991 ...

Conclusion
Those were dramatic days back in 1991. As
the 1-4 Cavalry and the remainder of the
Big Red One returned to Fort Riley, it was
engulfed in a frenzy of parades and celebrations. All summer
those soldiers not on leave were sent around the country to
march in local parades and display their equipment. Meanwhile,
the Soviet Union disintegrated and the United States
stood as the world’s lone superpower. In effect the 1991 Persian
Gulf War, fought in the Iraqi desert with the weapons, equipment,
and army designed to defeat the Warsaw Pact in Europe,
became the last conflict of the Cold War and the first of the new
Post-Cold War.
It was not, however, the beginning of an era of peace. Before
the last troops pulled out of the Arabian Peninsula, American
soldiers were back on the ground in northern Iraq to rescue the
Kurdish people from the retribution of Saddam Hussein’s reconstituted
military force. In the next decade American soldiers
would find themselves in Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans and, after
the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, in
Afghanistan. In 2003 the United States Armed Forces returned
to Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power. Following
the Iraqi leader’s downfall, a coalition built around American
and British forces found itself in the middle of a civil war. In this
very confusing conflict, various Islamic and political factions
fought each other and the coalition, in an attempt to gain control
of this strategic and historic region. By the winter of 2004,
the 1st Infantry Division was again in Iraq, not conducting a
high-intensity operation, but fighting a war with insurgents by
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