Don’t agree, at all. It was always going to be about establishing a base of operations in the Middle East, and expanding it until there was no safe haven for the radicals. If we had handed Japan and Germany back quickly after the war, things would very likely not have gone smoothly. It’s a legitimate argument that handing back a country like Iraq to those who can’t ensure ongoing control and suppression of extremism is irresponsible.
In all of those cases, not enough was done to purge the elements that caused war; in Iraq, even less was done and they were allowed to institute yet another Islamic constitution to govern the land.
I’m not buying Cruz’s version of “cut and run” myself.
Germany and Japan in 1945 weren’t run by savages who hated each other’s sects of the same religion.
Our approach to the WWII countries was far different than our approach to the Islamic countries is. Germany’s deity committed suicide because his execution was imminent, and the Japanese had to be firebombed and atom-bombed into neutering their emperor into a ceremonial figure.
With the Germans and Japanese, we attacked them at the source of their extremism, and crippled it. If we wish to end Islamic terrorism, we need to destroy its source: Mecca. Our politically correct “leaders” and our cowardly media refuse to admit this, and would rather have us submit to the brutes than have the brutes exterminated,
Agreed. We can’t blow it up and leave. We needed to keep a base of operation there. I do agree with the premise of no nation building, but we still need to provide the resources to keep the peace and give the new government a chance to survive. We see what happened now without any presence. We needed to win, ensure elections happened and then fade back to our bases into a support role a lot sooner. Go out and kill insurgents and train their forces to take over.
I always felt our biggest strategic mistake was to consider it a war and not a transition after Iraq was taken. We should have declared victory and then considered a rebuilding and transition period. I get why Bush did it. He wanted to keep people behind it and knew it would last awhile. What I am sure he didn’t expect was a protracted battle lasting beyond his term.
.......on the subject of Japan, I know a little something as I lived there from 1969 to 1971 or just 24 years after they were defeated.
There are significant differences between the Japanese people and the Muslim “factions” in the mid east.
First, there are FEW factions in Japan. It enjoys a homogeneous population. A very high % of the people respect and honor their Emperor’s (government) official policies. The “factions” in the mid-east hate each other and kill government leaders daily.
The family unit in Japan is strong. Parents are respected
and children grow up educated and not brainwashed to some religion bent on killing non believers. Not so in the mid east Muslim factions.
Japanese are sexually sane! Generally speaking they respect their women and don’t cover them up, beat them, kill them, stone them or rape them. Not so in the mid-east Muslim factions.
Japanese are imbued with an amazing work ethic from the age of babies! My experience in visiting mid east countries is that few want to work.
I could go on and on.
So, to your point, I know that we could have given it up in Japan early on for a lot of reasons and some I have named above. But, we are there today because official Japanese policy is that “we need American protection in our neighborhood”. Also, maintaining military forces in Japan is relatively easy because all servicemen and women want to be based in Japan. We loved it. Hated to leave. Japan provides lots of facilities free. Japan’s harbors are natural and defensible. Japan’s strategic location is second to none. So, America benefits too in the relationship.
Notwithstanding any of the foregoing, I agree with you that Iraq could have been and probably should have been considered a long term base of operations and OIL should have funded it all! But, again, our looney left Democratic Party and MSM drive policy in the US and so that is simply not possible. Anything that makes sense anymore, is not possible. What’s looney, becomes policy.