Who says that containment wasn't enough? It was cheap, and it kept Saddam in his box. It did so without resulting in a massive insurgency, and without stirring up too much of a hornet's nest of Islamacist hatred of the West. If you remember the excuse for a full scale 'take and hold ground exercise' was the supposed presence of WMD......
Andyy,
Carriers are massively expensive, and very slow moving. Keeping one in place to do Northern Q, Southern Q and the Falklands would, I suggest, be both inefficient and costly. So you base the carrier aircraft on land, so that once in every 30 years or so (when a carrier is essential rather than merely useful) you can use them on a carrier.
And if you keep their crews fully carrier capable, the training burden is such that they won't ever do much else. How often have we seen the Aéronavale Rafales do an enduring land based deployment? Or US Navy Tomcats or Super Hornets.
In the real world, carrier-capable tends to mean carrier-fixed, unless you go down the STOVL route.