For those of you not old enough to remember, this ("finish the job") was famously the same mantra used for the Gulf War when George Bush Sr didn't go after Saddam Hussain.
Well, his son took it to heart and went after Saddam a decade later in what is now universally seen as one of the stupidest wars the US every carried out.
It's like these people learn nothing from history.
I've lived in both and while the similarities are there, it's a bit different. Singapore still has a majority non expat population while Dubai has only about a 10% local population. Singapore also invests heavily in local education with one of the highest densities of PhDs in the world.