Get your history right, GHWB didn’t finish the job, he left it for GWB. It has nothing to do with being an ‘armchair general’, it has everything to do with paying attention to the colossal screw up during the first Gulf War. It may have been a ‘strategic decision’ as you put it, but the results are clear for everyone to see.
Here’s a little mental exercise for you: If Saddam had been taken out like the garbage he was in February ‘91, how many innocent Iraqis might have lived, instead of being tortured and summarily executed by Saddam and his boys Uday and Qusay, how many Iraqi women might have escaped being raped by official ‘rapists’ on Saddam’s payroll, get the picture?
And do try to calm down, hero worship will wind up your blood pressure and nerves every time.
It is my own general opinion we should have finished Sadaam the first time.
However, as Iraq descended into chaos, and now very plainly is in the Iranian sphere of influence, one can make a pretty good argument for leaving the weakened and isolated Sadaam in power as a Sunni counterweight to Iran.
It’s not so simple as you started out, with epithets against GHWB. I’m well aware that GWB “finished” the job.
However again, he did NOT finish the job. We had enormous forces in Iraq, Iran eventually was involved in killing those forces. That was the time to turn West and take out Assad in Syria, I recall statements he would have fell in a week, much easier than Iraq. Next, we should have turned East and reduced Iran.
So while I’m glad Sadaam was defeated, “the job” isn’t so simple and it is far from finished.
BTW certainly Colin Powell played an enormous role, directly calling on GHWB to stop the fighting once the original objectives were met.
GHWB knew more about the international situation than us put together times 100. He did a masterful job and there is no reason to call a man who prepared, launched and won that war a “RINO”. Further, he achieved cleaner results and lost far fewer of our troops.
Not to mention he’s a legitimate war hero (not like traitor Kerry) and he’s an extremely good person.
It’s not hero worship, but the man is a hero.