What's really special about this attack? The cat and mouse game in the No Fly Zones has been going on since 1991, and it was inevitable that Iraq would upgrade its tactics. You don't really expect aircrew who are illuminated by ground radar to just ignore it and hope the missles launched with its aid miss? Radars within the zones were routinely hit with HARMs (Highspeed Anti-Radiation Missiles) so it made sense to move them north. The previous Administration should have ordered them taken out. Now that the world has forgotten completely about Iraq invading Kuwait, there is an amazing rush to suck up to them. Such sucking (including billions in help from Kuwait)failed wretchedly before Iraq invaded Kuwait in the first place! Containment is not an emotionally satisfying way of doing business, but it has worked in the case of the former Soviet Union and on the Korean peninsula.
BTW Usul, the French DID surrender (after about six weeks of fighting)to Hitler in 1940, and the Vichy collaborationist regime even fought against the Allied invasion of North Africa. Rent a copy of Marcel Ophuls "The Sorrow and the Pity" sometime for more amusing details. The French Army pulled up its skirts and ran for the Channel, and the French women pulled up their skirts and ran for the Germans. (There were thousands of heroic Resistance fighters, and the Free French under Charles DeGaulle. Too bad they had to fight so many of their own countrymen.)