Why Donald Trump's vicious attack on George W. Bush was so brutally effective — and brilliant

The Week ^ | February 14, 2016 Th | James Poulos

[Political Junkie Too]

But it was the British occupation for the prior 100 years that established the societal norms for a representative republic that evolved them to the point of demanding their own self-rule at last.

-PJ

[Political Junkie Too]

Vietnam was a proxy war between superpowers, Iraq was not. It was the specter of Vietnam that caused us to fight in Iraq with our hands tied (remember the calls for proportional response instead of outright defeat?).

Diplomatic agreements are meant to be broken and should not be held to the same standards as financial contracts between business partners. The global problem has been that the world always expects the USA to be above repute when adhering to treaties, while the other parties are breaking treaties even before they are signed.

If the United States felt the need to remain in Iraq, we would have stayed in Iraq regardless of any prior agreements.

As I said elsewhere, we're still in South Korea since the 1950s and Germany since the 1940s, so why the rush to vacate Iraq?

-PJ

[Alberta's Child]

Diplomatic agreements are meant to be broken and should not be held to the same standards as financial contracts between business partners. The global problem has been that the world always expects the USA to be above repute when adhering to treaties, while the other parties are breaking treaties even before they are signed.

I don't know why anyone would deal with Iraq in this manner. The status of forces agreement signed between the U.S. and Iraq in 2008 wasn't a "diplomatic agreement" at all ... it was a formal agreement to lay out the terms under which the U.S. military would operate in Iraq, and then leave Iraq. The whole purpose of signing the agreement was to establish the legitimacy of the Iraqi government. If the U.S. intended to break the agreement for any reason, then we would have been in the position of overthrowing the elected government we had established after the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein had been toppled.

The U.S. never would have done this, for two reasons:

1. It would have destroyed our credibility all over the world.

2. It would have been a disaster politically here in the U.S. How do you p!ss away thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars for a military campaign to "promote freedom and democracy" in Iraq, only to turn around less than a decade later and decide that you didn't like the results of that "freedom and democracy?"

The examples you give of Korea and Germany are old, tired, and irrelevant. Korea and Germany were modern states before the U.S. ever got involved with them, and our presence in those countries doesn't even meet the basic definition of a military occupation. Iraq was never a viable modern state. It was cobbled together from the remnants of the British empire, and the U.S. was delusional if we really thought we could depose Saddam Hussein, paint a bunch of purple fingers over there, and call it a modern democracy.

History will remember George W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson as the two @ssholes from Texas who were responsible for disastrous military calamities in Third World dumps.

[entropy12]

Do not know, before my time! I was just A child when the British left. But even during the he British colonial period, there were autonomous kingdoms existing in India. My fasther was a high ranking official in the 2nd largest kingdom ruled by the Maharaja of Baroda. And IIRC the British had no control over our kingdom.

Also your theory doe not make sense, because Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq etc also had lot of British involvement and democracies have a checkered past there. I think it has a lot more than to do with the large number of educated people in India. Universities for ÃŽhigher education existed in India 2000 years ago.

HTTPS://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjB_Tf7Cy3A&feature=related

[Political Junkie Too]

I don't have a theory. I was responding to your post that India had no external influences when clearly they had. That was all.

-PJ

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The war in Iraq started with Clinton signing the 1998 Iragi Liberation Act. Clinton and leading Dems said Saddam had WMD.

Clinton goofed off his remaining time in office and left the war for Bush.

[Political Junkie Too]

My point is that if McCain or Romney had won the election, the United States and Iraq would have come to new terms of mutual interest regardless of the prior status of forces agreement. Obama had no interest in doing so and couldn't wait to pull out ASAP.

North Korea doesn't seem so old news right now, with their nuclear testing. We are still supporting the DMZ 60 years later.

-PJ

[entropy12]

Not only those 2 invaded countries we had no real reason to invade, but even bigger folly was to fight in Vietnam with both hands tied behind back, and attempt nation building in Iraq with borrowed money from China!

[entropy12]

If Iraq ever had some third rate chemical WMD’s, it was not an urgent threat to security of United States.

Much bigger threats existed and still exist in North Korea who has nukes and on fast track to develop missile delivery systems to reach US. How about Pakistan, which infested with Jihadists, has more Madrassah’s than anywhere else, Taliban was conceived and nurtured by ISI of Pakistan, and that country has at least 100 nukes.

Saddam was carrying on a charade of possessing WMD’s mainly to dissuade his bigger and more powerful enemy, Iran, from invading Iraq.

So with Bush’s Iraq invasion, we have handed Iran the gift of a weakened and fragmented Iraq on a silver platter. Talk about stupid foreign policy!

[Alberta's Child]

My point is that if McCain or Romney had won the election, the United States and Iraq would have come to new terms of mutual interest regardless of the prior status of forces agreement. Obama had no interest in doing so and couldn't wait to pull out ASAP.

Maybe so, but timing is everything. If McCain or Romney had won the election there may have been no need to come to "new terms of mutual interest" with Iraq. This agreement was signed by George W. Bush AFTER the 2008 election -- which tells me that the decision to sign it (or not) was predicated on the election results.

I'm sure he -- along with everyone else in the GOP leadership -- saw the election of a jug-eared exchange student from Kenya as a thorough repudiation of the war in Iraq and everything associated with the Bush administration. If Bush didn't sign that agreement in November 2008, Obama would have signed it ten minutes after he was inaugurated in 2009 ... and he would have been very popular among Americans for it.

North Korea doesn't seem so old news right now, with their nuclear testing. We are still supporting the DMZ 60 years later.

South Korea is nothing more than a welfare state of the U.S. As with most countries around the world where the U.S. has maintained a long-term military presence, they are propped up solely as a trading partner. North Korea is surrounded by countries that are perfectly capable of defending themselves. Compare the two Koreas by any measure -- population, GDP, standard of living, etc. -- and it's obvious that the South Koreans don't need us to maintain the DMZ.

[Alberta's Child]

So with Bush's Iraq invasion, we have handed Iran the gift of a weakened and fragmented Iraq on a silver platter. Talk about stupid foreign policy!

If you have time, do some research on Ahmed Chalabi and his role in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He was an Iraqi Shi'ite who lived in exile after the Sunni Ba'athist government assumed power in Iraq in the 1950s. He was one of the strongest champions of the U.S. military campaigns against Iraq in the 1990s, and was a key player in the Iraqi transitional government after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

When they write the honest history books about the early 2000s, I would not be surprised to learn that the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 because the Bush administration was filled with paid agents of the Iranian government.

[DouglasKC]

Trump plays to win. One week before the debate and who is everyone talking about? Donald Trump. He’s getting a massive amount of publicity without spending a dime.