I am now watching Rand Paul on Face the Nation. He asserts he supported Trump because he was against the Iraq war.
It irritates men when people just shrug it off, saying the Iraq war was a mistake. And never mind George Dubya Bush who dared not ever defend himself or the party....but just why was the Iraq war a mistake?
Does anybody remember Saddam Hussein?
This guy was a bad actor and remember, the Iraq war began not long after the attacks of 9-11. The country, the world, was ready to rid the planet of terrorism until Valjar and Huma got in there but never mind.
We had to have flyovers of Iraq to protect the Kruds in the north, does anybody remember that? All because of one petty little dictator who had, it was believed, weapons of mass destruction.
And we all know that Saddam was such a nutjob, maybe he didn’t YET have weapons of mass destruction, at that time, but he would if given a chance.
And then, let’s not forget, Obama comes in and pulls everything out of Iraq leaving those nut jobs, Muslims make lousy governors and soldiers, to run the place?
I will agree that maybe Dubya got a little bullshitted about America being welcomed with open arms. Once those Iraqis got rid of Saddam they didn’t know how to govern fairly and democratically. They got all that oil wealth over there and a populace that was raised under a brutal religion.
Failure to see the bigger picture was the mistake but boom, they just say the Iraq was a mistake.
No it wasn’t.
How the Iraq war was “ended” was the big mistake.
Big tributes to Gwen Ifil all day today.
But I’ll be nice. She died way too young.
And after the ‘surge in Iraq’ many middle-east countries’ citizens voiced for a chance to vote, even Hillary acknowledged Libyan elections.
Fast-forward to today with Trump’s election I’d bet that individual freedom becomes a top issue and the Theocracies are less popular.
I dunno, Pat.
No one was a bigger enemy of Saddam than me.
I spent a considerable amount of my military time opposing him and his regime. I would have certainly killed him had I been in a position to do so! Not that I was—but I did my time in Saudi under Operation Southern Watch. I had slept in Khobar Towers—before they got blown up.
But THAT happened in Saudi Arabia, from the home town terrorists in Al Qaeda; not Saddam.
I guess the fact the we waged war—without defeating Islamism—is the hardest fact for me to swallow. I fought the Soviets for most of my career; when they fell, things were looking bright—except for the Islamists.
But even during this time and before the invasion of Kuwait I hadn’t forgotten the Iranians and the illegal, act-of-war taking of our embassy staff, Lebanon and all the hostages scooped up, abused and murdered over time, Kaddafi and his antics—Lockerbie, Scotland, Operation El Dorado Canyon and the French and Spanish—our NATO allies—making us fly AROUND their countries to do what had to be done.
Still, and now with hindsight, I see that although Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, he did keep the Islamists at bay. So did the Shah. So did Kaddafi, once he got a taste of our sword. So did Mubarak. And so does, to an extent, even to this day, King Hussein of Jordan, Kind Abdullah in Saudi Arabia... In fact, just about every country run by Muslims is a hellhole of either brutal secular dictatorship, or a brutal Satan-worshipping religious dictatorship bent on OUR conquest.
If I had to choose between these two realities, I’d choose the secular dictator every time!
Knowing that Saddam’s brutal Ba’ath party kept people like ISIS away makes me second guess what we were then thinking.
Actually, Job #1 SHOULD HAVE BEEN:
Blow the Sowdies off the map!