Posted on 05/21/2015 2:56:16 PM PDT by Kaslin
The U.S. was absolutely right to invade and conquer Iraq in 2003. It suddenly has become a stock question to ask candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination a seemingly simple question: would you have invaded Iraq in 2003, knowing then what we know now? And most of them have fumbled badly. And the usual liberal suspects are jabbering away about how the war was based on a bunch of lies and utterly unjustified. Let me explain the proper and most sensible answer to this question.
I have always been surprised that nobody seems to see the crucial importance of one essential fact. The price of oil for the last decade has averaged around $100 a barrel. In the decade or so prior to 2003, it was well under $20. In 2003, Saddams Iraq was, absent WMD, merely a potential threat to the security interests of the U.S. and our allies in the Middle East. (And. yes, the United States of America has serious and legitimate security interests which we would be foolhardy to deny.) Boxed in by sanctions and no-fly zones, and with oil at low prices, Saddam was financially broke and militarily broken.
But fast forward five or ten years. If we had not overthrown his regime, sooner or later Saddam would have wiggled out from under the sanctions regime. And with his coffers flush with record high oil revenues, does anyone doubt that the French and the Russians would have been more than eager to sell Saddam every kind of military hardware his heart desired? We would have been facing not a pathetically weak tin-horn dictator, but a well-armed menace to the security of the Gulf, but by extension to our security. I believe that if you face a nasty and vicious adversary who can someday potentially harm you, better to stomp him into the ground when hes weak and helpless, rather than being nice and giving him a chance to arm himself.
Now it is clear the Bush administration ginned up the intelligence on Iraqs WMD capabilities. I think they were right to do so. (I just hope they were smart enough to realize they were doing so.) In 2003, nobody could prove Iraq had WMD (ultimately, because they didnt - yet anyway). But nobody could really prove they didnt. If you are confronted with a potentially lethal peril, and you cant prove it exists, youd be a fool to ignore if you couldnt be sure it didnt exist. Skeptics like Obama were just as in the dark as the Bush administration was, but without the responsibility for answering for the consequences if they were wrong.
Now it is also an unfortunate fact that the U.S. bungled the occupation. We grossly underestimated the savagery of the Iraqis. People somehow blame the U.S. for the years of obscene bloodletting that followed in the wake of our occupation of that nasty little country. I grieve for the 4.491 American servicemen and women who gave their lives in that literally God forsaken country. But of the half million or so Iraqis, who actually killed them? In the immediate sense, their fellow Iraqis, their own bloody neighbors. When some Sunni Iraqi was having the bit of a power drill drive through his skull, it was a bunch of Shia Iraqis doing the job. When some Shia Iraqi was blown to pieces by a suicide bomb, it was a Sunni Iraqi how was wearing the bomb vest. We owe no apologies to the Iraqis for the bloodshed they brought upon themselves.
In fact, those miserable people should be grateful to us. We did bring them a chance to remake Iraq into a modern democratic state. Maybe we were foolish to think such a project would succeed, and I for one would not have sacrificed one American life trying to do so. But we did, and it is the Iraqis who have squandered that precious opportunity. One need only look at what is happening in Iraq and Syria today to see what these people are capable of doing left to their own devices.
That war is over, and I am glad we are no longer pouring money into that rathole, or exposing our troops to danger trying to make it a decent place to live. But the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was the correct one, and had we not we would certainly be facing much more serious problems in this nasty little corner of the world, which is nonetheless critical to our security. And Americans should be proud that, notwithstanding numerous mistakes, we actually tried to bring a better way of life to the Iraqis, as we successfully had with the Germans and the Japanese. It was perhaps a foolhardy mission, but none the less noble for it, and its failure lies squarely with the Iraqi people.
Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.
― Lord Palmerston
So kill him.
And with his coffers flush with record high oil revenues, does anyone doubt that the French and the Russians would have been more than eager to sell Saddam every kind of military hardware his heart desired?
So sic the Iranians on him.
We would have been facing not a pathetically weak tin-horn dictator, but a well-armed menace to the security of the Gulf, but by extension to our security. I believe that if you face a nasty and vicious adversary who can someday potentially harm you, better to stomp him into the ground when hes weak and helpless, rather than being nice and giving him a chance to arm himself.
So when are we stomping Kim into the dust?
I get the idea this guy is making this all up to rationalize and justify the decision afterhand, rather than considering if it actually was the best choice to make at the time.
...
In fact, those miserable people should be grateful to us. We did bring them a chance to remake Iraq into a modern democratic state.
Isn't there some quote somewhere about not expecting gratitude between nations?
It was the right decision. That arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania made the wrong decision by pulling the troops out in 2011. He is to blame for ISIS
I don't know why you would suggest that George W. Bush underestimated anything. See my Post #17. His own 'effing vice president already knew that an invasion of Iraq would be a complete disaster ... and he knew it from his days serving as the Secretary of Defense under Bush's own father.
Here is the context of that time. We were in a state of war with Iraq, under a cease fire.
I left out the 500,000+ people Saddam had killed because, after all, who cares about those filthy little brown people. Right? /s
Then why write this, non-defense defense?
By any objective measure, his administration was a complete disaster.
If such a thing is possible, then we shouldn't invade.
Re WMDs. No one has yet explained what those truck convoys from Iraq’s weapons storage areas to Syria contained. The liberals don’t even want to acknowledge that those convoys took place, and our Intel people are either afraid to tell us, or were caught off guard and ashamed to admit it.
Heard that the Russians were involved in scooting the weapons out at night and we were afraid to hit them.
Cyanid poison was found in some chemical/ammo depots. My son’s unit captured Green Soviet Bloc CBW suits east of Hindaya. Those found precursor components to gas warfare weapons, esp. Sarin gases (i.e. artillery shells).
Forgotten in this whole debate is the fact that Saddam’s Iraq was one leg of a tripartite potentially nuclear tripod of Iran, Iraq and Syria (the Israelis took out much of Syria’s secret nuclear weapons facilities, quietly and effectively).
Imagine today if Saddam were still in power. He would probably have gotten a crude nuclear bomb, as would Iran (with help from No. Korea, Pakistan and Russia), plus Syria would be right behind them, depending on who from the outside was helping them.
Three secretly nuclear rogue states in the Middle East at one time. Welcome to Armaggedon.
Screw Obama. Pres. Bush took out one of those tripod stool’s legs when he deposed Saddam. That is something to keep in mind when discussing the war.
There would be many more Christians alive today as well, Saddam protected them from the Muslims. But then again to think he could have survived the "spring uprising", almost every dictator during BO's reign except Assad is dead and gone, don't you think Saddam would have been dead and gone also even if we had not invaded?
The Arab Spring was not a monolithic event with common origin and common results. While inspiration for a revolt was in the air, each country went its own way. Libya, for example, would be still happily living under Gaddhafi - but France was determined to put him down for personal, political reasons. Egypt was unstable all along. The war in Syria got started after Assad's secret police caught and tortured a few kids who were spraying political graffiti. It's hard to say what could happen in Iraq. Iran, for example, and Pakistan were never touched by Arab Spring.
Besides, the job of a dictator is not the safest in the world. But it shouldn't matter to the USA. One dictator departs, another steps in and assumes control. The only important part is to keep the leash on them - and that is done by external force, like military presence, like sanctions, like arrest of foreign deposits. Those are also negotiating tools when time comes to negotiate.
At that time Saddam was quite amenable to inspections on the ground, and inspectors were present. It's likely that he would be cooperating further - primarily because he had no other option. That possibility was not exploited to the fullest.
As an example: you have to chop down a tall tree that grows near a village. Your options are:
In the case of Iraq the option (1) was chosen, when options (2) and (3) were perfectly available and could be achieved with nothing more than a few promises made by diplomats. Saddam was anxiously looking for an exit from the box that he put himself in. He'd do anything for the chance to redeem himself. At least he was a usable material. That possibility was thrown away, and US soldiers were sent in. The rest is history.
Here’s my reaction (although it’s drawn from the late Larry Auster, who was so right about so much).
You said, “ We must turn rational Islam against this jihad or we will perish...”
So, in other words, whether we perish or not is up to the souls of muslims, and whether or not they willingly turn against Allah as revealed in their holy book.
Bad, bad, bad.
Whether or not there is a “rational Islam” is unknowable. What your hypothetical rational muslims do is up to them, not up to us.
What we CAN do is kill them or not, savage their women and fire their cities, or not, destroy their wealth buried under the sands, or not, occupy their lands and strike terror into their hearts, or not. Those are our choices.
Choosing reformation for them is not. And their reformation has already started, anyway. They have their Luther. His name is Muhammad ibn al-Wahab.
It is very rare that I disagree with you, NB. But I am unwilling to leave our fate up to a hypothetical turning of “rational muslims” against jihad.
Below please see a series of quotations from my post which I think demonstrate that I am not advocating any touchy-feely approach to the war against radical Islam. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world but we could not continue to fight a war in Iraq after sustaining less than 5000 dead. We cannot fight Islam in conventional wars that resemble Iraq or Vietnam, there is no domestic stomach for that. Therefore, we must find a different way of winning that war.
That does not mean we abandon warfare, it means we fight in the different way. You will note the references below to intimidating the Muslim world. The Arab Street does not believe in justice it believes in power and unless the United States is the big dog we will loose. That is how you win hearts and minds in the Muslim world, that is how you win the "soul" of Islam and that is what I mean by not losing our own soul.
That is not so easy. But what we have been doing we both agree is not working. You will note that I advocated taking the oil for example in my comments and I am certainly not opposed to strategic bombing in fighting a war against Muslims who are waging asymmetric war against us. But here again, we must bring along domestic political support which will be very difficult. The problem is the other side simply ratchets up the violence causing the inhabitants of a place to fear them more than us. That is what Isis has been doing, for example. If we ratchet up the violence on our side to make the inhabitants wary of us, we find domestic problems raised as the media exploits mei lei (SP?) In Vietnam or Abu Ghraib in Iraq. The left takes to the streets and the war is lost.
Please read the excerpts below to understand that I am not forfeiting waging war to win the support of enough of 1.6 billion Muslims to prevail. I do not want to leave them to their own free will pursue militant Islam, I want to use military power to persuade them to our point of view, but I want to deploy military power that works and military policy that will be sustained at home. That is probably impossible until we sustain another 9/11.
Here are the excerpts:
I wanted to so intimidate the Muslim world with our military prowess that they themselves would turn against the terrorists in their midst because I believed, and still believe, that the only way we ultimately can win this war is to turn the sane Muslims against the crazies
Perhaps the very worst legacy of this whole Irak tragedy is that we are a daily demonstrating to the world that we are presently incapable of winning asymmetrical wars of terrorism....The people in Afghanistan are beginning to understand it. The tide in the Muslim world is rising against us as their fear drains away. So the goal of saving the soul of Islam has been made more elusive.
My belief is that the miscalculation was to presume that the Iraqis, read Muslims, would behave rationally when presented with the opportunity for self-determination and democracy. It is not really that we made fatal tactical military mistakes in Iraq which we can lay at the feet of Bush or Rumsfeld, rather it is the nature of the traditional Muslim society that caused all of this bloodshed to be inevitable. Iraq has revealed that America has no stomach for the pain which must be endured to see such a traditional Muslim society through to Western democratic values.
Asymmetrical warfare works against armies of occupation but these tactics do not work against 21st-century Blitzkrieg, American-style. I fear that the American military will engage in another Vietnam style soul-searching and draw the wrong conclusion, that military force does not work at all in the war against terrorism. I am tempted, therefore, to argue that it was the occupation and not the war itself which was the bridge too far.
We cannot hope to prevail if we eschew all military operations as ultimately counterproductive. We must find what works.
Great post.
I thought so too until the ROE got so bad (and the MSM howling about us hurting and humiliating) the poor bad guys) that we made it harder for our warriors to do their jobs and stay alive and out of prison while doing them.
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