Posted on 07/17/2017 5:43:41 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Walk into almost any market in Iraq and the shelves are filled with goods from Iran milk, yogurt, chicken. Turn on the television and channel after channel broadcasts programs sympathetic to Iran. A new building goes up? It is likely that the cement and bricks came from Iran. And when bored young Iraqi men take pills to get high, the illicit drugs are likely to have been smuggled across the porous Iranian border.
And thats not even the half of it. Across the country, Iranian-sponsored militias are hard at work establishing a corridor to move men and guns to proxy forces in Syria and Lebanon. And in the halls of power in Baghdad, even the most senior Iraqi cabinet officials have been blessed, or bounced out, by Irans leadership.
When the United States invaded Iraq 14 years ago to topple Saddam Hussein, it saw Iraq as a potential cornerstone of a democratic and Western-facing Middle East, and vast amounts of blood and treasure about 4,500 American lives lost, more than $1 trillion spent were poured into the cause. From Day 1, Iran saw something else: a chance to make a client state of Iraq, a former enemy against which it fought a war in the 1980s so brutal, with chemical weapons and trench warfare, that historians look to World War I for analogies. If it succeeded, Iraq would never again pose a threat, and it could serve as a jumping-off point to spread Iranian influence around the region. In that contest, Iran won, and the United States lost.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"It's not our job to turn Iraq into Switzerland." -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
I've never been disappointed in a president as with Bush 2. I really had great expectations of him. I remember waiting, waiting, waiting for him to do something about the border and illegals. Crickets.
And that war, useless loss of American lives, wasted treasure. 16 years later, a weaker America.
on the campaign trail, Trump had the best foreign policy ever.
sort out ISIS and then get out.
make America Great Again.
Obama was a de facto agent of Islam who intentionally handed Iraq over the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and Iran.
Bush saw what happened to Iraq when Clinton took over from his father and screwed Iraq post Desert Storm . Had Clinton not screwed up the post Cold War world so badly, there would have been no need to go back to Iraq.
Bush knew Obama would be even worse than Clinton. Bush could have set up a long term troop agreement to stabilize post war Iraq but he refused because he wanted to be courteous to Obama and not tie his hands on Iraq, but more than anything else, Obama needed his hands tied on the post war stabilization of Iraq.
I disagree with your assessment of “two Bush presidencies.” Iraq was destined to be a disaster from the start, and a lot of folks were banned here on FreeRepublic (or left on their own) because they pointed this out all the way back in 2002 when the Bush Kool-Aid drinkers insisted that it was all going to be a piece of cake.
Donald Trump owes the success of his campaign to three people: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush.
The Valerie Jarrett Doctrine is working throughout the Mideast.
For the right purpose, they could have done a lot of good. But not for “spreading democracy”, obviously.
Not even Iraqi Sunnis see themselves as Iraqis. They see themselves as part of the Arab League, a terrorist alliance in its own right, and the longer-standing cause of terror in the region and against the USA.
Iran is a Shiite majority country, Iraq is a Shiite majority country. Once we toppled the Sunni minority that was keeping a boot on the Shiite neck then moving closer to Iran was inevitable. Even if Obama and Bush had handled the war and occupation competently this situation would have happened anyway.
The only “right way” was to use Afghanistan and Iraq as pincers for the purpose of eliminating the Iranian threat, thus weakening even the Arab terror threat greatly in the process. But Bush went along with the Democratic Party’s plans instead.
Only time will tell. In 2014, some Freepers were predicting a doomsday takeover by ISIS. One thing is certain now — Iraq is at peace with its neighbors and the USA, unlike under Saddam.
Iraq’s at peace with Israel? No place with an Islamic constitution is ever at peace with what they call the “Zionist entity”.
This is ultimately a spiritual battle, not simply a political one.
It started with the old hands. Paul Bremer was in over his head from the start. There should have been a military proconsul a la MacArthur in Japan for at least 3-4 years.
I think that history will ultimately show that Bush II was at the point of no return, and flew us over the horizon. That was the time we could still reverse course. And we didn’t.
Trump may buy us time, but the American, and Western, rot seems terminal at this point.
“..and when you see Israel encompassed by armies...” It is happening, folks. The chess pieces are being put into place.
Luke 21:20 references Jerusalem specifically. So that means the armies therein mentioned are already on Israeli soil.
Really?
Must we stoop to the level of the Left in criticism of GWB? Do we need to speculate on how Al Gore would have handled 9/11?
No, this is not a knee-jerk defense of 43: his handling of immigration was atrocious, and his tendency toward government solutions over the free market (ie. 'compassionate conservatism') was troubling in the least. Actually, his biggest failing IMO was his inability to hit back at his detractors: something DJT understands at his core.
All thanks to GWB and Oblahmao. All those American lives and treasure for what? So the mad mullah’s can have Iran. Stupefying.
I think as history unfolds the destruction of Iraq and execution of Hussein will go down as one of the most colossal blunders of all time. Not to be outdone Obama repeats blunder in Libya.Such forlorn imbecilic leaders we come up with.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.