Posted on 08/14/2015 6:14:11 AM PDT by C19fan
Lefty media (both overt and covert), which has been back on its heels lately thanks to Hillarys impending arrest and prosecution, is already buzzing about the line quoted above, uttered today by Bush in Iowa. Skip to 9:40 of the clip below for the question and his answer in full. On the one hand, Im reluctant to clobber a guy for a poorly worded soundbite when, as here, its in service to a sound point, that Obama and Hillary wasted the security improvements in Iraq circa 2009 by bringing everyone home and then standing around while Maliki fostered sectarian war. On the other hand, Democrats are going to clobber him with it so why shouldnt we have at it now, when its still politically safe on the right to say this is a tin-eared, frankly odd way to describe the state of Iraq for most of Dubyas presidency? (Once hes the nominee and partisan battle lines are fixed, itll be partisan treason to acknowledge that this was a stupid thing to say.) Naval War College prof Tom Nichols:
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Obama and McCain made ISIS what it is. They sent them the weapons to do what they are doing.
Why is it that every utterance out of this guy’s mouth makes me want to slap his canned ham face?
Feel the same way.
It was a high cost, and US soldiers and policy-makers were captive to Iran and their Shiite allies who could attack or make trouble at will. But Bush did achieve a measure of stability, which Obama, out of spite really, just gave away. The US would have needed to stay in Iraq for 50 years or more to achieve long-lasting peace. If that's the case, we should have just nationalized their oil industry to pay for it all. its what the Romans were forced to do when dealing with uncivilized nations they took over.
I agree when you say “stay,” but we have “stayed” in Germany for 70 years. We would have had some bases there, and indeed SHOULD have taken some of their oil for payment in a “treaty.”
I’m still mystified, as a historian, that we are apparently the only nation on earth to win a war (Mexican War) and PAY the loser.
Baby Huey is clueless.
Jebito must have been dropped on his head a lot as a baby.
Good deal? In exchange for treasure and thousands of dead Americans, what did we get out of this? Even if the US had elected to stay in Iraq indefinitely, what would we have gotten out of it? We never took spoils from Iraq, instead what we got were the bills and problems. We never annexed territory, we never kept the oil. We got nothing of lasting value. It was a rip off of the American people of epic proportions.
Tell that to Iraqi Christians.
As are most Arab leaders.
What’s so great about Kuwait?
the best examples are Korea and Vietnam. Like Iraq, its neighbors and enemies were intent on taking over once the US left. With the former, we stayed, with the latter, we gave away a fragile stability due to nasty domestic politics and cost. In turn, one was a success, the other not.
I know but that was the point .. some President was going to come along in the future and screw it all up.. Bush should have installed a pro American military strong man, given him the military materials to hold off any future aggression by Iran and then gotten the hell out,, but no he tried to make Iraq a democratic example to the middle east that everybody knew wouldn’t work
I agree,
We should have knocked the crap out of his army, searched for the wmd, and just gotten the hell out, it is a tribal world over there and western forms of government and concepts will not work in mostly the ME and Africa, there are exceptions though.
“And, as a Trump supporter, he was wrong on this. We had the game won in 2007-8 before Zero destroyed the victory.”
And what did we win? We didn’t keep territory. We didn’t keep the oil. We got pretty much nothing for our effort except trillions in bills, thousands of dead Americans, and a middle east that is even more screwed up than it was before we walked in. Yes, Zero deserves a large part of the blame for blowing it. But there was nothing much to win before that.
Should have drew our own damn oil.
That’s precisely what we won: we had bases. We had an ally (weak and needed propping up, much like France and Greece in 1945), and we COULD have had some of the oil, quite legitimately. Most important, we had a jumping off point right at the Iranian border. That was worth billions, and, yes, was worth the lives. Patton said he didn’t like to pay for the same real estate twice. Well, we will. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to buy that real estate again.
The problem is without a commitment to stay in Iraq for at least 20 years, once we left it would go to pot. There are no guarantees that future administrations wanted to stay in Iraq, and this fact should have been given more consideration before going in.
The UN interfered in Iraq and we got stuck with a conditional surrender. We had Saddam on the run....a few more days....Damn the UN....
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