Posted on 09/25/2014 11:02:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
What if the American invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction? What if whatever weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein once had were sold to him in the 1980s by American arms dealers with the express permission of the U.S. government? What if he no longer had them when the U.S. invaded? What if the principal reason for invading Iraq was to depose Hussein because he tried to kill President George H.W. Bush, whose son ordered the invasion?
What if another reason for the invasion of Iraq was to enable western-allied governments to control or receive oil from Iraq? What if the Bush administration lied to the American people, Congress, the U.N. and governments of other nations in order to persuade them to support the invasion? What if the Bush administration knew all along that Hussein posed no threat to the stability of the Middle East or the freedom or security of the U.S.? What if Hussein was, in fact, a stabilizing force in the Middle East?
What if the American invasion violated the moral precepts of the Just War, precepts accepted in Judeo-Christian teaching and culture for more than 500 years, and that have underpinned international law for more than 100 years?
What if the invasion killed 4,500 Americans and 650,000 Iraqis, and injured 40,000 Americans, displaced 2 million Iraqis and destroyed more than $100 billion in Iraqi property? What if that invasion, which cost more than one trillion borrowed U.S. dollars, degraded the Iraqi military?
What if the American invasion sent many members of the Iraqi military underground or into the arms of anti-government resistance fighters? What if the American invasion also produced a fierce resistance and determined will to expel the American invaders?
What if the Middle East has been the scene of a 1,000-year-old religious dispute between two branches of Islam: the Sunni and the Shia? What if under Hussein the Sunni persecuted the Shia and also persecuted a third group in that region, the Kurds? What if Hussein used the weapons of mass destruction that American arms dealers sold him to gas thousands of Kurds? What if the Shia now persecute the Sunni?
What if Iraq is not a country of people with common cultures and interests and generally accepted borders, but rather an amalgam of warring groups cobbled together by British and American diplomats? What if only a strongman like Hussein -- however evil and ill suited for government by Western standards -- can keep peace and stability in an artificial country like Iraq?
What if al-Qaida was not present in Iraq before America invaded? What if the American invasion drew al-Qaida fighters to Iraq from Africa and other parts of the Middle East? What if the American invasion produced a violent stew of resistance to and resentment of American-induced violence in Iraq?
What if that stew -- which has been known by different names, but is now called ISIS -- included not only fighters from all over the Middle East and Africa, but also from the current Iraqi military and from Hussein's military, which U.S. forces thought they had defeated or dispersed? What if many of those former Iraqi military forces brought their American-made and American-paid-for military equipment and their American military training with them into ISIS?
What if, in the 11 years since the U.S. invaded Iraq and in the 13 years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, American troops have been training new Iraqi and Afghan armies? What if during that time of training many of those U.S.-trained troops joined the ISIS resistance? What if the U.S.-trained troops that stayed in the Iraqi military are really a rag-tag band of second-rate soldiers who are unable to defend the Iraqi government against ISIS? What if President Obama's military advisers have told him this?
What if some of the training has taken place in the United States? What if some of those trainees left their instructors, fled a U.S. Army base and were at large in the U.S. with their weapons?
What if under the watch of the U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers one-third to one-half of the landmass of Iraq has fallen to ISIS? What if ISIS -- though barbaric and ruthless and decidedly undemocratic -- has established governments in the lands it conquered? What if those governments -- though terrifying to those who would resist them, as Hussein was -- have financed schools and hospitals and operated as the only government in the land, as Hussein did? What if those governments are selling oil to finance themselves, as Hussein did?
What if the forces in the U.S. who believe the military is best when it is fighting are again beating the drums for war in Iraq? What if Obama's present plans are to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels and induce them to fight ISIS on the ground while the U.S. provides air cover? What if the U.S. really cannot tell the moderate Syrian fighters from the fanatical Syrian fighters? What if they are one and the same fighters, whose moderation or fanaticism changes with the politics and military needs of the moment?
What if American empire building and military adventurism and going about the world looking for monsters to slay have caused this mess? What if the American government refuses to recognize that? What if the United States is about to embark on the same thing all over again? What if all this has not made a single American freer or safer? What if all this has made the American government paranoid and the American people less free and poorer and more vulnerable?
What if the government here cannot recognize its failures? What if a people who cannot understand the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them? What do we do about it?
I generally like the Judge, but this article is silly and sophomoric.
In my family we changed it just a bit:
Wenn das Wörtchen “wenn” nicht wär, werde ich längst ein Millionär
Staying in Iraq until things "stabilize", whenever that would be, is not an exit strategy.
No, but naturalized citizen from Germany. We used to say Vater as schoolkids in the 50s. My father’s ancestors were actually from Sweden
“...
What if Obama’s plans are to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels
and induce them to fight ISIS...
What if the U.S. really cannot tell the moderate Syrian fighters
from the fanatical Syrian fighters?...
What if they are one and the same fighters,
whose moderation or fanaticism changes
with the politics and military needs of the moment?
...”
-
What if the U.S. House and Senate voted to arm and train them anyway?
What if their votes were all about getting reelected?
This is just an isolated measure, but I think it should be borne in mind: Saddam's stability was a state of steady war against various hostile tribes and political enemies. When they found the Saddam-era mass graves in various spots after the U.S. takeover in 2003, the numbers were truly staggering.
I did a little calculation for an AT column and discovered that Iraqis died at a slower pace during their hot war against the U.S. than during peacetime under Saddam Hussein. (That means I excluded GW-1 and the Iran-Iraq war.)
He was a prodigy of killing. I'm not saying that fact should be dispositive in our foreign-policy choices—after all, it's their lousy country. But considering Lockerbie, plus his long history of funneling money to Pali suicide bombers and who-knows-who else, plus his gas attacks on the Kurds, etc., and culminating in his statement on 9-12-01 saying that we deserved 9-11 (the only such statement from a world leader at that time) I would say concerns about him were not unreasonable.
What if ridding the world of Islam would be an act of mercy?
I just don't believe there is a way for us to deal with them without the risk of making a bad problem worse, unless we are prepared to wage total war.
Obviously this is 20/20 hindsight - in 2003 I was supportive of the invasion.
Besides Radix News is not on the Must excerpt list and if an article has to be excerpted it is the first 300 words from an article, unless the article is very short then it is 100 words or 50 percent whichever is shorter
Yeah the article was kind of strange.
No kicks here but it was worse than a mistake, it was an intentional deliberate misleading of the American people by groups with purposes not yet revealed.
NONE of the above would have happened if CARTER hadn’t sent the middle east into a chaos death spiral that every administration since has had to deal with.
Amen. If Slick Willie hadn't let Saddam kick the inspectors out we would have KNOWN whether WMDs existed or not. But people (even out side) forget that.
Exactly right. I don’t think more 65 year military commitments are necessarily desirable.
And no American mother's son needs to worry about being shot in the back by one of their "allies".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.