Trump: If GOP Doesn’t Admit Iraq War Was a Mistake, We’re Not Going to Win the General Election

Breitbart ^ | 02/14/16 | Pam Key

[Politicalkiddo]

Can’t argue with you there. If that’s one thing the government is good at, it’s lying. Wasting money is another.

[Enlightened1]

Jeb Bush agrees with Trump about the war. Although it took him 5 days to say it.

Looking back now think it was a mistake, and then made it worse the way Obama left it. We should have never left Iraq.

Colossal mistake on Obama leaving.

[DesertRhino]

I keep hearing that follow up o the commitment talk. How man years should the USA be there? If we stay 15 MORE years in Afghanistan it will still implode 3 days after we leave.

Iraq is the same. Do you advocate we stay there several more years? Obama was an idiot, yes. But there are two choices there. Stay 50 years or pull out.
And don’t hand me the Japan and Germany thing. Both were sane educated populations, and we utterly defeated them and ruled over them as dictators and rooted out Nazism and Japanese militarism.

We never crushed the Moslems, we let them be in charge, and we treat islam with total deference. We even wear gloves as our soldiers touch a Koran.

[Gene Eric]

Exactly. The total Iraq effort was outstanding. The promise was real. But the Democrat Party’s unrelenting drumbeat of failure unfortunately prevailed. Scumbags.

For those that ‘forgot’, I guess Iraq could be considered a mistake — but a mistake only for those ignorant to reality.

[DesertRhino]

“The strategy of setting up a terrorist roach motel”

I keep hearing that, but it misses one thing. There isn’t a finite supply of terrorists that we can lure in and kill, and presto, problem solved.
Some of these we are fighting today were 6 or 7 years old when 9/11 hit. In Afghanistan we are fighting Taliban that were infants when 9/11 occurred.

we didn’t set up a roach motel, we set up a roach factory.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

It wasn’t a mistake until Obama turned it into one.

[justa-hairyape]

Dear Donald,

You have not seen anything yet. We are likely to be in a world war by summer due to the way Obama and the Progressives have miss managed Iraq. It was stable when Obama entered office. And Iran was being prevented from developing nukes when Obama entered office. All pissed away. Millions will die soon in the middle East because of this, Bush lied so we must pull out of Iraq crap. The Sauds will be driving an army north into syria and Iraq soon. The Turks will be driving an army south into Syria and Iraq soon. The Iranians and Russians will be driving an army west into Iraq and Syria soon. And eventually NATO will be driving East onto the shores of Syria. Now draw those movements on a piece of paper and see what you end up with.

[Gene Eric]

No prob.

[faithhopecharity]

Creepers! We got rid of a dictator that was threatening wars and feeding people into industrial shredders. The damned country was stabilized at great cost, yes. Then Obama gave it away, enabling his Iranian Islsmonazi dictator pals to invade and take it over. The biggest mistake was NOT Iraq. The biggest mistake was Electing an Islsmonazi-enemy agent.

[risen_feenix]

There are sides other that W vs. Code Pink.

Has any GOP official of any standing ever warned us, before, during, or after the war, that Islam was incompatible with democracy? That if you took away a strongman in a Muslim country, you will end up with fundamentalist Islam?

No, we were told Islam was the same as Christianity, and once we gave them elections, that would solve the problems of terrorism.

I, like the rest of us, trusted the word of W and the other Republicans. They knew better, they certainly SHOULD have known better, instead of letting Political Correctness trump reality. Many of us supported W blindly, sadly, and only after doing our own research, years after the war, that W was full of shit about the Religion of Peace.

Remember, W gave us Religion of Peace. He drilled it into us, and we assumed that he and his advisors had put the work in to find the best solution for the US. He did not, and we had to find out the hard way that Islam was not Christianity plus Mohammed, but a blood thirsty imperialist death cult, the closest thing one can imagine to be the Antichrist.

So, either you are on THAT side, or it is not as binary as you would like to pretend.

[Gene Eric]

Iraq remains undefined.

[faithhopecharity]

- a just posted article as discussion fodder because it includes exactly this topic:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/code_trump_the_gallop_leftward_continues.html — and I’m going to bed now. Have fun!

[who_would_fardels_bear]

If I remember right I was for the Iraq War for about a week or two. All the rah-rah, patriotic speeches, support from both the left and right got to me. But I had a simple conversation with a no-nonsense friend and quickly came to the realization that it was a complete mistake.

The only way that the Iraq War would have ended well is if the Bush administration had had the balls to establish a benevolent military dictatorship until the Iraqis were truly ready to run their own country. But Bush didn't have the balls, and the global community would have been outraged.

However, I did not spend much time on FR stating this position. It would have most likely got me banned. It would have been a greater crime than rooting for Romney when Santorum still had a chance, or rooting against Romney when he was the only thing between Obama and a second term.

If FR is finally coming around to realizing the Iraq War was a brutal mistake, then great.

But it's probably still the majority belief that the Iraq War was a good idea, and it was just executed poorly either because of neocon idealism or Obama incompetency.

[Gene Eric]

If we agree Obama is an idiot, I guess we can defer on the years he should have committed to follow-through.

[Fai Mao]

I felt trapped by the war in Iraq. I thought it was a bad idea at the time but was forced by the inane and deceitfulness of those who opposed it to support it. I said this in 2005

Blood for Oil; Why not?

[Reaper19]

yeah that Donald, or, you know, we could talk about things that are happening currently rather than rehashing a war started 13 years ago. But hey, who cares about the damage Obama is CURRENTLY doing to our nation when we can find an excuse to crap on the Bush family.

[Varsity Flight]

You may notice folks, that the only candidate, Republican or Democrat, that actually voices aloud each debate, all the names of China, Vietnam, Japan, Mexico, Iran, Russia etc., (not just the Middle East), is Trump.

The rest are all Sock Puppets.

[Enlightened1]

That's what happens when the GOPe = DNC schedules more debates with Leftist Establishment Media.

The GOPe added 10 more debates since their boy Jeb and Rubio have been taking a slacking. We have 8 more left.

I have no doubt if Jeb had Trump's lead, then the GOPe would be calling the race over, and there would be no more debates.

[Billthedrill]

I cannot agree. The war in 2003 was not, after all, a war de novo, but the continuation of a set of circumstances the U.S. government found itself in after the ejection of Iraqi forces from Kuwait a decade before but leaving Saddam in power. That was, in retrospect, the strategic mistake placing the entire region in a position of instability; Saddam struggling to maintain power in the face of a no-fly zone, itself a reaction to an outrageous provocation against the Kurds in Halabja, Iran in the wings awaiting a resolution of its own war against Iraq. Anyone who thinks this situation was stable is simply mistaken.

That the outcome of the war, a crushing victory in an astonishingly short time, was mismanaged is quite another question. Had we left the defeated Iraqi army armed and in the position to establish a certain stability in Saddam's absence we might not be having this conversation. But we did not, and so, although Powell denied saying it, "you break it, you bought it" is a terse but accurate description of the outcome. Nation-building as a concept was doomed from the start. But Iraq as a killing ground for a resurgent Islamic militancy that had not, to this point, tasted defeat, turned out to be an overall strategic victory.

If it fell apart afterward as it did (not completely, but bad enough) the Iraqis themselves bear a considerable share of the blame. You cannot build a nation that does not wish to be built. And a U.S. administration more willing to get out for domestic political considerations than was called for by the situation on the ground must shoulder its share as well. We must remind ourselves that 0bama's pullout was, however, some six months behind Bush's plan. But if the region had any hope of recovering any semblance of stability that pretty much killed it.

Hence ISIS, itself a tag end of Saddam's power structure leavened by foreign cash and a total power vacuum. Basically a bunch of murderous morons in Toyota pickups rolled in and took the place over. The problem was the power vacuum. The government was not there to oppose, the U.S. troops were not there to oppose, the tribes, rather than opposing, contributed; it was a perfect storm of incompetence. But it was not a natural consequence of the original intervention.

The question then becomes what position we would be in, thirteen years later, with Saddam still in power: would we be here? Strategic considerations have undergone a sea change: suddenly the Straits of Hormuz are no longer a flashpoint for the destabilization of the entire world economy. That's done, I hope, for good. Iran no longer holds the world's energy supply by the throat there. What we bought in Iraq was, despite its absurd management, time, and if now we have the luxury of deciding whether or not the stability of the region is worth a new commitment of resources, we bought and paid for that luxury. In consideration of whether the thing was a good or a bad move, I'll echo Chou En Lai's comments on the French Revolution: "It's too soon to tell."

[Elyse]

That was interesting. Thank you