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The United States has had significant political and economic interests in Southwest Asia, or the Middle East, since the 1800s, when merchants, missionaries, and tourists began to visit the region.
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In August 1990, the country of Iraq invaded Kuwait in an effort to control Kuwait's large supplies of oil.
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The creation of the country of Kuwait in 1920 meant that Iraq no longer had any coastline on the Persian Gulf.
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The US support for the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 also focused attention on this part of the world.
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Thirty-nine countries joined in and within three months , by Febuary 1991 the Iraq goverment accepted a truce and agreed to withdraw from Kuwait.
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In 2001, after the destruction of the World Trade Center in NYC, the Us began a military operation in Afghanistan aimed at capturing the people responsible for the attack.
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The US launched a series of attacks on these mountain hideouts in October 2001. (The mountains of Afghanistan.)
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In 2003, the US launched an invasion of Iraq, after claiming that the Iraq goverment, led by Saddam Hussein, was developing nuclear weapons and offering aid to groups to groups like al-Qaeda, who were a threat to US interests in the region.