Kuwait's position, of a rich weak nation with no military alliances bordering a hungry strong one, was somewhat untenable. It is folly to fight a war for a short-term benefit. If spanking Saddam and then leaving would so obviously result in his invading Kuwait again, then the decision to deploy was effectively a decision to deploy indefinitely [0]. That was also folly. One can forgive impermanent mistakes, however. In retrospect, withdrawing troops soon after they repelled Iraq and then encouraging fracking in USA would have been a better decision. It was certainly discussed at the time, and Korea was certainly mentioned in those discussions. The reason we didn't "choose" to do that, is that military-industrial complex would have made much less money in that case. That's always true, however. An ineffective military that is always fighting is an eternal fountain of money for them.

[0] One supposes that another option would have been to disrupt the governance of Iraq such that it would stop invading Kuwait, but later experience suggests that could also have had its drawbacks...