Who Lost Iraq?

Frontpagemag.com ^ | June 11, 2015 | Thomas Sowell

[Biggirl]

After the pro-Western government of China was forced to flee to the island of Taiwan in 1949, when the Communists took over mainland China, bitter recriminations in Washington led to the question: “Who lost China?” China was, of course, never ours to lose, though it might be legitimate to ask if a different American policy toward China could have led to a different outcome.

[Alberta's Child]

The U.S. campaign in Iraq officially became a farce once the U.S. allowed Iraq to adopt a constitution that established Islam as the official state religion.

You know ... "Islam is a religion of peace" and all that sh!t.

[zzwhale]

no one LOST iraq
OBAMA gave it to ISIS
who he also armed and funded
he is ONE OF THEM, a TRAITOR, our BENEDICT ARNOLD.....

[Chainmail]

Easy question: Obama.

[Justa]

The 2007 Democratic Congress. They cut the funding necessitating a timeline for withdrawal. Once it was clear we were leaving the Iraqis became more difficult to negotiate with.

Many of the bases we built-up there were permanent bases such as Camp Victory, Al Asad, Tallil, etc.. They were called COBs (Continuity of Operations Base) The US spent 100s of millions on permanent infrastructure on the COBs. The bases are still there and we’re still using some (Al Asad, Irbil, etc.) albeit with shoestring budget and manning.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

Dr. Sowell brings up a good point. The Iraqis of 2006 or of 2008 or even of 2010 were not ready for democracy. If we were going to do this right, we should have continued to run the country, keep a modicum amount of troops there and slowly transition them over years to some type of functioning liberal democracy.

He uses the example of German and Japan after WWII, but an even better pattern to follow would have been the Phillipines. After we took them from the Spainish in 1898, we had a bitter campaign to gain control of them and it lasted on and off for the next 15 years approximately. Many people do not know about the Morro War. Incidentally, the Morros were muslim, what a coincidence but I digress. After that was supressed we had a military dictatorship there for the next 25 years until the Japanese invaded in 1941. We had an agreement with them to give them independence in 1946 which was coincidentally a year after WWII ended. We did that. All in all it took them over 45 years to transition to a proper functioning liberal democracy. They have never been perfect, there has been much corruption but they are a functioning democracy who is an ally of ours. When we took them, many of the islands did not consider themselves a part of this country called the Phillipines. By 1946, they ceased being a collection of tribes and became a nation state with a functioning liberal democracy.

The question is, will it take 45 years to make Iraq into something like that? Possibly. But it would have been better to have 10 - 15 thousand troops there with some type of quasi military/civilian dictatorship during a transition to a nation state and liberal democracy than what we have now. The way things are going, I can almost guarantee that we will be fighting in this region off and on for the next 45 years, instead of troops stationed there and having liberty to enjoy the Baghdad nighlife....

[Pollster1]

In 2011, Obama said, “We’re leaving behind a stable and self-reliant Iraq”. After three more years, in 2014, Obama ordered the removal of our troops over the objection of all his military advisers. Since we withdrew, the ISIS terrorists Obama armed have taken over large sections of what used to be “a stable and self-reliant Iraq”.

The person to blame is obvious: Bush’s fault.

[Biggirl]

Yet it was under Obama’s watch, so it is time to move the blame over to Mr. Obama.

[Alberta's Child]

I call B.S. on that.

"It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq." -- Dick Cheney, U.S. Secretary of Defense, April 15, 1994

It turns out that Iraq has simply ended up exactly the way Dick Cheney said it would. If only Dick Cheney had listened to himself, we wouldn't be here having this discussion.

[Justa]

I cite facts, you cite, what a friggin quote about GWI made 10 years before OIF? Do your own research.

It was ~because~ the Surge succeeded that the Democrats cut the funding. They’re LOSERS. That’s ALL THEY DO.

[MrEdd]

You can’t lose what you never had.

[Alberta's Child]

The U.S. was never going to keep sufficient resources in Iraq to maintain law and order there. The place was destined to be a mess, and by 2007 this country was bankrupting itself with these stupid military campaigns that had no tangible objective.

Those of us who follow these things knew the game was over on March 23rd of 2006, when the U.S. Treasury announced that it was going to cease publishing M3 money supply data.

If and when someone ever writes an objective history of this period, it will be noted that the "surge" was not a military effort at all, and that the military funding for it was effectively hiding a massive bribery scheme involving billions of dollars in U.S. cash that was being printed without being reported, and then funneled to military contractors and tribal leaders in Iraq. Once the cash ran out and the tribal leaders escaped to places like Bahrain and Dubai (we saw signs of this in 2007-08 with major real estate purchases in these places through all-cash transactions using U.S. dollars), the game was over and Iraq's peasant class was left to fend for themselves.

[bert]

The war in Iraq will be won in Syria

[US Navy Vet]

George HW Bush and Colin Powell in 1991.

[bk1000]

Sometimes one sentence from a president can permanently alter the fabric of society. (”I did not have sexual relations with that woman...”) We lost the high ground when Bush declared Islam a “religion of peace”. We use it as sarcasm. The left touts it as gospel. Either way, the statement is repeated until it becomes an unquestionable “truth”. Like the fellow said, tell a lie often enough...