George HW Bush should be remembered for the Iraq war his son started, revealing the pitfalls of political dynasties

The death of George HW Bush is a reminder that history matters. One thing leads to another. One obvious consequence of his presidency was biological, in that his son succeeded to his office eight years after he left the White House.

This was an unexpected return of the dynastic principle to US politics – in abeyance since John Quincy Adams, son of the second president, became president after the disputed election of 1824.

The Bushes’ family succession seems likely to remain an aberration rather than a trend after Jeb Bush failed in his presidential campaign running as a pro-immigration Republican, and after Hillary Clinton lost two years ago.

But that aberration does pose the question: would any other president than the former president’s son have taken the US into the war in Iraq in 2003? Bush Junior was asked by Bob Woodward at the end of 2003 if he had taken his father’s advice, and said: “I don’t remember.” That was the time when he said: “There is a higher father that I appeal to.”

It wasn’t quite as cryptic as it seemed. The president thought the question was about advice on how to deal with the burden of sending troops into action knowing that some would lose their lives. Presumably, the son knew the father had his doubts about the invasion. It has long been assumed that Bush Senior opposed it but would not have presumed to tell his son what to do. Perhaps now we will find out for sure.

Either way, the Iraq war was a consequence of the elder Bush’s response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. That seemed at the time to be a high point in American foreign policy. The sole superpower since the fall of the Berlin wall the year before, Bush exemplified responsible, collective leadership. The invasion of Kuwait was a straightforward annexation of a sovereign nation by force, and the United Nations responded by authorising, for only the second time in its history, the use by its members of “all necessary means” – that is, including military action – to right the wrong. (The only other time the UN did this was in its earliest days in Korea in 1950, when the Soviet Union made the tactical error of boycotting the Security Council meeting.)

When the US-led troops retook Kuwait after seven months of occupation, a minority in the Bush administration wanted to pursue Iraqi forces to Baghdad to remove the Saddam regime. Bush decided against, but it meant that, for some, possibly including his son, he had left unfinished business.

This group was strengthened in its conviction when Saddam launched a murderous campaign of repression against the Shia population in southern Iraq, some of whose leaders had convinced themselves the US would come to their aid. And it was strengthened further when a hit squad led by a colonel in Saddam’s intelligence service was sent to Kuwait in 1993 to assassinate Bush when he visited to commemorate the allied victory – a plot foiled by the Kuwaiti defence ministry.

That was why, for Bush Junior, the Iraq war might have been personal. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 – except that, in the mind of Osama bin Laden, the presence of infidel troops on Saudi Arabian soil for Operation Desert Storm to retake Kuwait inspired a grievance against America. But you can see why, for that president, the idea that he was finishing something his father had started might have taken hold.

Which just goes to show how history never ends. Francis Fukuyama wrote his celebrated essay “The End of History?” in 1989. It turned out to be a question to which the answer was no. Just as Bush Senior seemed to be living up to the highest principles of global liberal democracy, he was sowing the seeds of the whirlwinds to follow. Although there was a minority on the so-called left who thought the counter-invasion of Kuwait was “all about oil” – and Jeremy Corbyn voted in the House of Commons against British forces taking part – Bush thought it was about Munich, 1938 and standing up to dictators, according to Tom Nichols, a US professor and a senate staffer at the time of the Gulf War.

And for a while, Bush Senior seemed to have his reward in public opinion, in the US and worldwide. I vividly remember the Democratic primaries in 1992, when six unknowns, including Paul Tsongas who had bumper stickers saying “Tsenator Tsongas” to help people pronounce his name, and Jerry Brown, former governor of California, competed for the honour of being taken to the cleaners by one of the most popular presidents in American history.

But the economy had turned, Bush’s tax rises came back to bite him and the candidate who survived the Democratic primaries, Bill Clinton, turned out to be one of the best campaigners in recent politics.

That meant it was left to the son of Bush to finish the father’s business, after one of the greatest what-ifs of history: Al Gore’s narrowest of defeats in 2000. And to remind us why dynastic politics is a really bad idea.