[Old Teufel Hunden]

"Turn those dirtbag countries into modern democracies?"

That is the mistake we made. I have to admit I was for the idea of planting a democracy in the middle east and "Nation Building" in Iraq 10 years ago. However, I was wrong on that account. Sure, topple Sadaam, destroy the Taliban and destroy Al Quada, I will never apologize for those decisions. However, unless we as a nation are willing to commit to an American Empire along the lines of the old British Empire (which I am not in favor of) then we can't be nation building in these backwards third world cesspools.

When I justified it 10 years ago, my model was Germany and Japan. The one big difference I overlooked is that those nations had an educated middle class that could grasp these concepts. Iraq, much to my chagrin has had to grow that on the fly. Hopefully they get it right. I still think once we committed and actually won by the end of 2008 we should have left a residual force of 10,000. This could have been easily accomplished by pulling all the ground forces out of Western Europe (no longer needed) and re-deploying some of those ground forces to Iraq.

[Pining_4_TX]

We didn’t win anything. Maliki is every bit as much of a thug as Saddam was, just a different flavor. When the US pulled the plug (Saddam) that held that place together, civil war was inevitable. The history and makeup of Iraq should have told the dimwits in DC that. I don’t understand military men, who surely knew better, not objecting strenuously to invading Iraq. All those lives and money and things are worse than ever. The US has managed to arm the most violent, radical jihadists in the Middle East with our best equipment. Epic failure.

[a fool in paradise]

Democracy wasn’t established in Iraq. Islamic theocracy was encoded in their Constitution.

[murrie]

Well said. This sums it up. Excellent post.