Posted on 09/07/2014 7:43:53 PM PDT by WilliamIII
If you're wondering why America's political leaders seem so hesitant to devise a response to the frightening rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, let me tell you a story. It's about the neocons and liberal hawks who cried wolf.
Once upon a time, some foreign-policy hands warned that unless the United States invaded Iraq, Islamic radicals the kind who murdered thousands of Americans on 9/11 would obtain weapons of mass destruction.
During the hunt for Osama bin Laden, they warned against losing sight of the danger of a possibly nuclear-armed Iraq. "[T]he larger campaign must also go after Saddam Hussein," Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly wrote in the Weekly Standard after 9/11. "He might well be implicated in [the 9/11] attacks or he might not. But as with bin Laden, we have long known that Saddam is our enemy, and that he would strike us as hard as he could."
Invading Iraq would not only prevent these weapons from falling into the terrorists' hands, the war hawks claimed. It would also result in the creation of a democracy whose people would greet us as liberators and whose government would become a reliable ally in the war on terror.
The Iraq War would drain the swamp of terrorists. It would light a fire in the minds of men. It would create a democratic domino effect throughout the region.
Obviously, most of this fairy tale proved to be utterly false. It now seems plain that the results of the Iraq War were almost precisely the opposite of what its most ardent supporters promised.
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
The Week does not require linking and excerpting. Were you aware of that?
Might just be me but it continually amazes me how people can publish things that are exactly the opposite of what is true.
The neocons were right, are right, will be right.
America is the world policeman. Liberals and libertarians wish we weren’t— which is utterly irrelevant.
The colonialists were not isolationist. Jefferson did build the marines and attack the muslims in Libya.
Somehow it is useful to continually fill American newspapers with inane complaints about how we should not have to fight wars.
no, didn’t know that. better safe than sorry
Neocon schmeocon
we may be the world’s policeman, but the invasion of Iraq was a huge mistake and created a disaster. about three disasters, actually.
“Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.”
Here are the Iraq war mistakes:
1. Saying the war started on false pretenses— it didn’t— he did have WMD
2. Saying we were losing when we were winning.
3. Demonizing our own soldiers.
4. Representing evil as innocent victims.
5. Refusing to celebrate our victories in iraq as victories.
Honestly, I think neo cons should gloat about present heartbreaks in Iraq. ISIS is exactly what Bush predicted would happen if we followed the libertarian/ Obama axis of non-war.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amr45PddqHM
It did not take a lot of smarts to see the chaos in Iraq coming, even I could see we were screwing up when we left.
Yep.
Says it was his biggest mistake.
” he did have WMD”
Please provide something describing the WMDs that Saddam Hussein possessed. The only weapons I’ve ever seen anyone produce were a few artillery rounds with poison gas.
Bunp!
This article is utter garbage.
‘The Iraq war would drain the swamp of terrorist.’
“This is what you a call a writer making stuff up to support a desired narrative. “
Actually it’s the writer paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld from Sept 18, 2001:
“The best way to get at the terrorist networks is to “drain the swamp they live in,” Rumsfeld said, referring to action against countries that harbor terrorist activities. “
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=44863
except the parts - i.e. most of it - that are spot-on true.
“Thank you George Bush for invading Iraq and replacing our biggest enemy - Saddam - with a government Shiites, former exiles from Iraq who we had harbored during Saddam’s regime. Since you invaded and replaced Saddam, Iraq is now our closest ally. Thank you W!”
- Iran
It looks accurate enough to me.
There was a ‘Democracy Project’ faction that believed that they could change the very nature of the Middle East by converting an Islamic country into a democracy.
Some of these people were affiliated with the Project for a New American Century which had issued a letter urging Bill Clinton to invade Iraq in 1998. Well before 9/11 you will notice.
I suggest you give this a glance:
http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/project_for_the_new_american_century
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