Posted on 06/28/2011 6:11:44 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Exactly. I would add that Reagan wouldn’t have supported staying in Afghanistan indefinitely either.
What did Grenada have to do with anything, apart from the Cubans building an airstrip there?
I doubt it. Did it sound like that’s what I said?
Maybe you should’ve payed closer attention to the comment to which I was responding?
Reagan would have recognized that Iraq was a strategic threat, and that it was the heart of the Islamic world, and Reagan would have followed GWs actions, Reagan would not have merely gone into Afghanistan and played cat and mouse with guerrillas, in the mountains to no real end or result.
When Reagan left office, he said that his biggest regret was sending troops to Lebanon in the first place.
Maybe you should get your historical quotes straight.
See post 10.
Oh, and we sent in a very small number of troops; commensurate to the threat level.
There were no hostages in Iraq, and at one time Iraq was our friend. Saddam tried to expand into Kuwait, but GHWB put an end to that. Saddam did not appear to be expanding his nation, and certainly not in anyway that was a direct threat to the US.
You can try to twist the facts as much as you want, but even W. gave up and basically just started spouting the neocon line of spreading democracy.
Now the neocons are starting to declare Iraq a success story, but we'll see in the next few years how accurate their "mission accomplished" celebrations are.
That message was mitigated by the invation of Grenada a week later. The fact that Reagan was willing to liberate a new Soviet client state showed that he wasn't afraid to use force, but he was going to pick his fights.
Yeah, I guess . . . who knew, but for FR, that George Washington wasn’t really in charge during those days, but Benjamin Franklin?
You kinda forgot that the Iraqis were firing on our planes everyday, and that we were bombing them every other.
Reagan had waited out the Soviets. Why wouldn't he have waited out the Iraqis? The Iraqis were a perfect counterforce to the Iranians. Why get rid of that? The cost of maintaining the no-fly zone for decades would have been chump change compared to what we spent to make Iraq safe for ultimate Iranian takeover.
What kind of a strategic outcome is that?
So the reasoned and proportional answer to that is bomb the country back to the stone-age so that the Iranians will feel more at home there when they take it over in the next few years.
That's some great strategery!
So in other words, Reagan made an example of Grenada (who is not even remotely as close to the U.S. as Cuba), but wouldn’t have made an example of Iraq?
I merely noted the odd construction, “...and at one time Iraq was our friend.” It smacks of historical revisionism.
The problem is not that Bush invaded Iraq. It’s that he didn’t invade Iran.
When Cuba "invaded" Grenada, we met them there in Grenada. We didn't bomb Cuba.
This all seems quite sensible to me.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait, we kicked them out of Kuwait. Again a sensible policy. What damage we did in Iraq was to ensure our success in kicking them out of Kuwait.
When Iraqis shot at out no-fly-zone enforcing planes, we bombed their anti-aircraft emplacements. Turnabout is fair play.
In what way does any of this rational, proportional, commonsensical behavior compare to the completely unjustified and disproportionate all-out invasion of a country which had piddling to do with 911?
A country, by the way, which was a strategic counterpoint to a much larger longterm threat, i.e. Iran.
At one time, Iran was our friend, btw.
And I suppose since we have it on great authority that Iraq and Iran were part of an "Axis of Evil" that included North Korea that we should have invaded them as well.
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