We Made the Right Decision to Invade Iraq

Townhall.com ^ | May 21, 2015 | Mark Nuckols

[Publius]

One other man got it, way back in the 19th Century.

“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

[x]

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.

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 he’s 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?

[Kaslin]

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

[Alberta's Child]

My mistake, and I believe Bush's, was to underestimate the tenacity of the Muslim belief system and to see the war in a two dimensional geographical box, like a game of checkers, where squares were to be taken and held.

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.

[TigersEye]

Putting aside the question of whether it was right or wrong, there were a lot of reasons to invade other than WMDs which seems to be the popular opinion now.

Here is the context of that time. We were in a state of war with Iraq, under a cease fire.

• 1. Iraqi provocation of American planes patrolling the no-fly zone. "More than 42,000 sorties were flown during that time. Iraqi surface-to-air missiles and other anti-aircraft systems targeted ONW aircrews on nearly every flight." (That sounds like 42,000 reasons to me but I'll only count it as one.)
• 2. Saddam defied 17 UN resolutions that were a result of his losing the war. (again, that should count as 17 reasons but I'll count it as one.)
• 3. Saddam tried to assassinate a former U.S. President.
• 4. Saddam was killing the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq that we had promised protection.
• 5. Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
• 6. Iraq's biological weapons program.
• 7. Iraq's chemical weapons program.
• 8. Saddam's extensive cooperation with terrorists.

I left out the 500,000+ people Saddam had killed because, after all, who cares about those filthy little brown people. Right? /s

[nathanbedford]

Your comment only heaps more criticism on Bush. With ignorance or, worse, with foresight, Bush invaded and attempted nation building anyway.

[Theoria]

'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.'

Then why write this, non-defense defense?

[Alberta's Child]

My comment is intended to heap criticism on Bush.

By any objective measure, his administration was a complete disaster.

[nathanbedford]

Well now that you made it plain so that even I can understand, we are in complete agreement. :-)

[skeeter]

Any future decision to invade or intervene anywhere militarily should be predicated upon the assumption that a future administration will make a total hash of whatever was gained, either intentionally or unintentionally.

If such a thing is possible, then we shouldn't invade.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

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.

[thirst4truth]

All in all, HWB was more correct when he left Saddam defeated, kicked out of Kuwait, but in power. Someone had to be a ruler of Iraq anyway. A defeated, broken dictator who is fully controlled by no-fly zones is good for that purpose.

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?

[robowombat]

Unfortunately there was nothing like the pilot pool needed for that and with both know such glib prognosis are anything but the way mammoth bureaucracies function. Even if the Prez had wanted to go in that direction such an initiative would have been hamstrung and hog tied by the host of other claimants for defense dollars. Just in passing it seems to me that by around 2005/6 the CSAF was on a campaign to cut down the size of the flying officer force to use the ‘savings’ for his various pet rocks. The other part of the equation is that the Arabs that were opposed to the Saddam regime, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates were making it clear that the interminable blockade of Iraq had to come to an end because it was such a potent source of rabble rousing within their own populations. Finally (and this really does reflect badly on Bush2) the DOD went to war with its idea of how it was to go i.e. go crush Saddam and then put someone new on the throne , most likely Chelabi, and then leave only a security force necessary to guard some air bases and control Baghdad. The Iraqi Army was supposed to be rebuilt on the remains of Saddam's force purged of regime true believers. Of course Bush 2 got that one turned around by listening to Wolfowitz and his ‘Democracy Project’, the Saudis exerted pressure through the Kissinger alumni because they wanted to keep a Shia off the throne and the Prez’s wife (who had a great deal of influence over him) spouted her usual social-progressive-Christian babble about democracy and women's rights etc. So we ended up with that ass Bremer and the follies his clique in Washington helped push forward. Bush wasn't as foolish as BHO but the ‘Democracy Project’ helped set the domino's falling that “Arab Spring’ really accelerated into true Arab armed chaos.

[Greysard]

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:

1. Run up to the tree and start hitting it with your bare hands and feet for a week, until the tree cracks and falls. You lose plenty of skin and blood this way, and you'll break a few bones.
2. Go to the village, buy an axe, and bring the tree down within a day. This will cost you a few calluses and the cost of an axe.
3. Go to the village and hire lumberjacks to chop the tree down for you. Leisurely walk back, sit down and watch them work for an hour. This will not hurt you at all, as long as you have money.

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.

[Jim Noble]

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.

[Intolerant in NJ]

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...yeah, maybe if he were still around - but I think he would have been long gone - we still might have had ISIS, the exiled remnants of his brutal army and corps of thugs, but Iraq would have been gobbled up by Iran - Saddam presided over a shaky minority-Sunni regime in a majority-Shiite country, maintaining power only through a reign of terror that saw tens of thousands of his countrymen murdered every year. He had managed to win one war with next-door Shiite Iran with our help, but after Kuwait and especially his defiance of the cease-fire conditions, we were not about to help him again - after the way his army collapsed when we invaded, and particularly the way they folded in three days in Kuwait, when some of them were surrendering to news organizations, it was clear they had no great dedication to fighting for Saddam's cause - eventually probably sooner than later Iran would have struck again to "liberate" their Shiite neighbor, and Saddam would have gone - Bush's move was not some gratuitous exercise in nation building, but a strategic gamble to try to forestall the inevitable by establishing a buffer state Iraq where both Sunni and Shiite had the ability and the allegiance to maintain their independence from Iran - it was working too, with an elected Shiite leader whose impulse to expel Sunni from the government was thwarted by our presence and the protection of our military - until Obama pulled us out and the program collapsed - ISIS came roaring back from Syria where they had been driven by the Iraq army assisted by our troops, and we are where we are today - another hypothetical to ponder.....

[nathanbedford]

Jim:

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.

[NutCrackerBoy]

Great post.

[trebb]

I always thought it was the right decision until Obama turned it over to the terrorists.

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.