Posted on 05/27/2015 4:54:58 AM PDT by Sean_Anthony
The detail hindsight forgets, and the fiction murky memories create
We’ve been coming back to the Iraq War lately for two reasons. One is that the media keep bringing it up in the form of a knowing-what-we-know-now gotcha question aimed at Republican presidential candidates (although they offer no such question to Hillary Clinton concerning the 2011 withdrawl of all U.S. troops . . . not that she would answer). The other, more pertinent reason, is that ISIS is overrunning Iraq at the moment, taking advantage of the absence of a residual U.S. force and Barack Obama’s refusal to wage a real fight against them.
Conventional wisdom long ago decided that George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake, and that for all his faults, Saddam Hussein’s presence was preferable to what came after - not to mention the price we paid in blood and treasure to remove him. I have remained one of the steadfast defenders of the decision to invade Iraq and take Saddam out, and I discussed that in some detail last week.
But I am just a guy who remembers what was happening at the time and found the post-event revision of history unconvincing. David Patten was there, fought in the war and remembers in much clearer details why we fought, and why the current revisionist narrative is total B.S. Many of the post-invasion decisions the Bush Administration made were mistakes, and resulted in a very difficult four-year post-invasion period that only turned our way with the 2007 surge. Patten doesn’t deny that and neither do I. But anyone who now argues that we would have been better off leaving Saddam in power is forgetting the true nature of his regime and the destablizing force he represented in the region.
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
Very good article. But the “glass parking lot” people (many of whom inhabit FR) don’t have any idea that their idea is a bad one, and aren’t interested in evaluating it.
We did what we had to do, for good reasons, and did a good job, mistakes not withstanding.
The very people who scream the loudest that we shouldn’t have invaded are the seam ones that would scream loudest had we done nothing.
Removing Saddam was a good thing but I think its time to drop the nation building/ democracy fantasy.
When we remove a ruler we should be willing to step in and impose our own rule till the people are truly ready to rule themselves. Start teaching elementary children about representative democracy and start holding elections at the lowest levels. It might take a generation or more but these are people with no real history or understanding of freedom and democracy.
Not ever mentioned but I remember there were U.N. sanctions that Iraq was violating. U.S. planes were getting shot at trying to maintain no-fly zones.
“Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix remarked in January 2003 that “Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance—not even today—of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War#Iraq_disarmament_and_pre-war_intelligence
And when we invade Iran who’ll pen that?
Exactly. Let's define a generation as twenty years. The frustrating part is that we were about halfway there to having that first generation raised in something other than despotic cruelty and corruption when the arrogant Obozo "geniuses" pulled out.
1. The invasion and subsequent military occupation officially became a farce once the U.S. leadership allowed the new Iraqi government to establish a constitution in which Islam is enshrined as the official state religion. This is what would have led to the inevitable persecution of Christians even if the new regime was stable compared to the idiocy you see over there now. If it weren't such a serious matter I'd find it comical that we have so many conservatives -- many of them Christians -- right here in the U.S. who actually believe it could ever be a good idea to spend thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars to: (A) protect Islamic royal families in places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and (B) establish Islamic governments hell-bent on eradicating any Christian influence in places like Iraq and Syria.
2. "It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq." -- Dick Cheney, U.S. Secretary of Defense, April 15, 1994
The second point is important because it proves to me that the Bush administration -- and a complicit Congress -- knew well that the invasion of Iraq would end up being a complete disaster and a waste of American lives and money. I can't think of anything that would more thoroughly discredit an administration than that, folks.
well stated. our example of a constitution is stellar, our ability to follow it, not so much.
Iraqi elections, if kept going would have stabilized the region... with an American force to oversee them.
knowing what I know now about the American media and their abstractions, I would have gone in with full disclosure and imbedded media leading the charge.
t
*
You may be right there, cripplecreek.
I still maintain, we are not the Soviet Union. We aren’t going to go in an slaughter everyone in a town and level it. This may change when a nuke goes off in one of our cities, but I don’t think we are there yet.
Elections aren't likely to make any difference in these tribal Islamic cultures. If anything, they are likely to make things worse.
That's exactly the point in Iraq. The leadership that is popular with the people is often incompatible with a modern civil government.
overcoming those tribal cultures is to show the young that minorities are protected by laws, not a majority religious belief
We don’t even teach young people that here in the U.S. That makes it utterly delusional for anyone to think we could impose that by force somewhere else.
call me delusional
If it doesn't work in Baltimore, how can we possibly make it work in Baghdad?
Teaching how our constitution is supposed to work here will eliminate the baltimores and fergusons. We have strayed from our individual centrix government to feudal clanning for positions on the food chain. Reforming our oligarchy system, to our initial governance is key... You laugh it off, but that is all the action you wish to do. You must be one of those that depends on the government for sustainence. Be happy with your servitude.
I agree with everything you’ve said, but it’s a post for a different thread. If we have “strayed from our individual centrix government to feudal clanning” and we have an “oligarchy system” here in the U.S., then we have no business pissing away trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives on an idiotic nation-building campaign in some Third World sh!t-hole — which IS the subject of this thread.
your consistently inconsistent... you brought the thread home to baltimore, we were successfully there with elections and normalcy, other than the threocracy issue. save that one issue, an american presence was making a difference. not wasting trillions, until after we left. jmho, sorry to get your ire up. not so idiotic, if we had stayed the course.
Rand Slams Congress for Funding Egypt's Generals: 'How Does Your Conscience Feel Now?'Sen. Rand Paul is hammering his fellow senators for keeping billions in financial aid flowing to Egypt's military -- even as Cairo's security forces massacre anti-government activists. [by "anti-government activists" is meant church-burning Christian-murdering jihadists][Posted on 08/15/2013 5:44:10 PM PDT by Hoodat]
:')
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