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What the Neocons Got Wrong - And How the Iraq War Taught Me About the Limits of American Power
Foreign Affairs ^ | 3/10/23 | Max Boot

Posted on 03/11/2023 5:45:38 AM PST by JonPreston

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To: jimwatx
He’s war mongering scum

you mean like Putin?


21 posted on 03/11/2023 6:23:16 AM PST by canuck_conservative (if Russia could just stop attacking its neighbors, we wouldn't need NATO anymore)
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To: laconic
The neocons such as Boot argued that Achmed Chalabi, a convicted swindler in Jordan and a Shia Iraqi, was the “George Washington of Iraq” who would lead the new participatory democracy.

Didn't he try to carve out something called Kurdistan near the Turkish border?

22 posted on 03/11/2023 6:23:37 AM PST by JonPreston
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To: canuck_conservative
you mean like Putin?

Stay on topic and stop arguing with American citizens.

23 posted on 03/11/2023 6:24:31 AM PST by JonPreston
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To: Berlin_Freeper

Hush, Neocon boob.


24 posted on 03/11/2023 6:25:26 AM PST by JonPreston
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To: JonPreston

They really thought the success in rebuilding Europe and modernizing Japan after WW2 were repeatable in Iraq and even Afghanistan. They were perhaps too optimistic. I don’t think history has settled that question just yet.


25 posted on 03/11/2023 6:25:53 AM PST by newzjunkey (We need a better Trump than Trump in 2024)
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To: JonPreston

“Sanctions are often unavoidable when the United States wants to impose a cost on rogue regimes for their wrongdoing, but (with only a few exceptions, such as apartheid South Africa) they generally are not effective in bringing down autocrats.”

I’m not sure that use South Africa as the gold standard for the effectiveness of ‘sanctions’ in improving countries.


26 posted on 03/11/2023 6:27:21 AM PST by BobL
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To: JonPreston

Max Boot is still a POS. Pro war in Ukraine, Pro China Trade, extremely anti-Trump, pro wet market theory, pro masking.

If Max boot now thinks Iraq was bad, it is time to question whether it was actually good, because the guy is wrong on everything.


27 posted on 03/11/2023 6:27:27 AM PST by Wayne07
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To: JonPreston

Since 1945 American power has been squandered not used.

If you think an objective is worth American blood and gold, use full power and achieve your end soonest.

This has rarely been done in my 64 years. Saddam maybe?


28 posted on 03/11/2023 6:28:25 AM PST by TalBlack (We have a Christian duty and a patriotic duty. God help us.)
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To: JonPreston

Considering that Ukraine is dominating the news and he sounds like some of the operatives here claiming that Zelensky is God - my take is the following:

“You can blame me for all of the Neocon screw-ups in the past, but we Neocons will get Ukraine right, I PROMISE THIS TIME!!!”


29 posted on 03/11/2023 6:29:35 AM PST by BobL
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To: JonPreston; jimwatx
I am on topic, Comrade

he was talking about warmongering scum, so naturally we thought of Vladimir Putin


30 posted on 03/11/2023 6:31:44 AM PST by canuck_conservative (if Russia could just stop attacking its neighbors, we wouldn't need NATO anymore)
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To: JonPreston

Yes, Chalabi organized the disastrous 1996 “coup” by the Kurds that got a lot of people killed. He was a key source of intel to CIA on Saddam and Iraq - reportedly almost all of it nonsense which they gullibly believed and which he later boasted got the US to invade Iraq in 2003. Chalabi couldn’t even win a single seat in the Iraqi Parliament after the invasion - the common people there knew exactly what kind of a lying swindler and conman he was which apparently went over the heads of our warmonger neocons, none of whom have ever faced combat in any capacity and if they ever did, it would be by attacking in reverse.


31 posted on 03/11/2023 6:34:57 AM PST by laconic
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To: JonPreston

Wow, Max. That was long & pathetic.


32 posted on 03/11/2023 6:41:36 AM PST by nuconvert ( Warning: Accused of being a radical militarist. Approach with caution.)
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To: canuck_conservative

I immediately thought of your queercomic PianoZ as the #1 warmonger, with Nuland #2... ymmv


33 posted on 03/11/2023 6:41:38 AM PST by PalominoGuy ( )
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To: JonPreston

Boot was born in Moscow.[5] His parents and grandmother, all Russian-Jews, fled from the Soviet Union in 1976 as refugees and moved to Los Angeles, where he was raised and eventually gained naturalized U.S. citizenship.[5][6] Boot attended the University of California, Berkeley where he graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1991 and Yale University with an MA in Diplomatic History in 1992.[2] He began his career in journalism writing columns for the Berkeley student newspaper The Daily Californian.[7] He later claimed that he believes he is the only conservative writer in that paper’s history.[7] As of 2005, Boot and his family lived in the New York area.[2]


34 posted on 03/11/2023 6:43:08 AM PST by euram (allALL)
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To: euram

Pure scum


35 posted on 03/11/2023 6:48:31 AM PST by JonPreston
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To: teeman8r

Iraq was not a theocracy. In fact, Christians did quite well there until the war destroyed their ancient indigenous communities, because destruction of this nature is what the united States does.


36 posted on 03/11/2023 6:54:06 AM PST by Romulus
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To: euram
Interesting biographic profile …

Russian-born … Jewish … raised in Los Angeles … undergraduate at Berkeley … Ivy League graduate degree … journalist … lives in NYC.

There’s nothing about this guy that would ever convince me he’s got a conservative bone in his body. He’s always been a propagandist for big-government, globalist interests.

37 posted on 03/11/2023 6:56:01 AM PST by Alberta's Child
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To: JonPreston

I tried.
I really tried to read Max’s copious mea culpa.
I ran off the highway when he called Zelensky “Churchillian’


38 posted on 03/11/2023 7:03:28 AM PST by silverleaf (It’s not propaganda just because you disagree with it. )
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To: Fury
"Was good of him to acknowledge that SECDEF Rumsfeld wanted no part of this nation building."

Traditional conservatives, such as U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, wanted to teach the Taliban and Saddam Hussein a lesson
and then depart each country as quickly as possible.

The neoconservative position—which eventually triumphed in the George
W. Bush administration
—was that the United States could not simply
topple the old regimes and leave chaos in their wake. The Americans had
to stay and work with local allies to build democratic showcases that
could inspire liberal change in the Middle East.

In this way, Washington could finally lance the boil of militant Islamism,
which had afflicted America ever since the Iran hostage crisis in 1979.


39 posted on 03/11/2023 7:09:59 AM PST by Bratch
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To: Timber Rattler
"Ah, so freedom and liberty are bad, and living under a totalitarian dictatorship is good!
Got it!"

"The walls are closing in” on your preachy death cult Snake.

40 posted on 03/11/2023 7:18:47 AM PST by wildcard_redneck (Biden will mess up the Ukraine worse than Afghanistan.)
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