It’s Hard to Continue to Support the War in Iraq after Obama Lost It

I thought George Bush made an excellent case for the war; he gave Saddam every chance to avert the fight; he bent over backwards to bring in more allies and he took his case to Congress and got approval to go to war.

Knowing what we know now, it’s very unfortunate that the linchpin of his case was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. At the time we went in, that wasn’t very controversial. Saddam was trying to make everyone think he had WMDs, Intelligence agencies all over the world believed he had them and the Democrats who looked at the same intelligence reports Bush did drew the same conclusions. For example, here’s Hillary Clinton – who also voted to go to war – making the case for war (Emphasis mine).

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.” — Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002

Yes, Iraq did actually have WMDS – but, they were old weapons from before the Gulf War. Saddam also had all the pieces in place to restart his program and fully intended to do so. If we hadn’t stopped him then, we’d have had to stop him later – and there were a lot of reasons beyond that to go after Saddam.

He was an avowed enemy of America; he tried to assassinate former President Bush; his men were regularly firing on American aircraft; he provided a safe haven for terrorists of global reach including the men behind the 1993 WTC bombing and he provided Al-Qaeda training, shelter and contacts.

The world, the Middle East and Iraq are all better off without Saddam Hussein in it.

However, like most of the American public, I was unpleasantly surprised by the fact that we had to station large numbers of American troops in Iraq over the long term. The Bush Administration did nothing to prepare the American people for that possibility. I later found out from Donald Rumsfeld that was because the Bush Administration thought it was very unlikely. Here’s an excerpt from our interview.

As someone who supported the war from the beginning all the way to the present, there’s one thing I found particularly disappointing and puzzling. In the run-up to the war, the Bush Administration really didn’t do much to prepare the public for the idea that we’d be spending blood and treasure fighting an insurgency there for years to come. How did that come to be the case?

“Well, first I would say that the intelligence assessment did not suggest that would be the case. As a result, the people involved did not raise that to the public as a high likelihood. George Tenet, in his book, acknowledges that fact and says that had they thought that was a high probability, they would have presented it as a serious probability and put it in the executive summary to make sure that it was considered and evaluated.

If one goes to my Web site Rumsfeld.com and looks up the memo that since then is described as the Parade of Horribles…I sat down before the war and wrote down a series of things that could be serious problems. One of them I included would be not to find weapons of mass destruction stockpiled. I put down the fact that the war could last eight to 10 years because of exactly what you’ve said. There’s a list of about 20 or 30 other things that people can go and see. I sent it to the President and sent it to the members of the National Security Council — so people were thinking about those problems. They just were not considered high probability.” – Donald Rumsfeld

Like most Americans, I was not happy to have American soldiers bleeding and dying in the streets of Iraq year after year. It is one thing to invade, depose a tyrant and try to start a fledgling democracy, but it’s another thing entirely to commit north of 100,000 American soldiers to a long-term guerilla war/police action in another country. Had Americans known that was going to happen, even Republicans wouldn’t have supported the war in the first place.

However, once we were there, it didn’t make sense to give up and signal to the world that we were paper tigers by abandoning Iraq to Al-Qaeda and the insurgency. Had we simply turned tail and run, it would have been a disaster.

So, I supported hanging in there – and contra what you heard from John McCain – like the majority of Republicans, I supported the surge. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were all against it.

Had that been the end of the story, despite all the soldiers who died, despite all the money we spent, I’d have still felt like we made the right decision. We had largely neutralized a threat in the Middle East, set up a shaky republic in Iraq, demoralized Al-Qaeda and killed massive numbers of Jihadis while drawing them into a fight away from America. It was far from an ideal situation, but at least we had a significant pay-off in hand for all the blood and treasure we spent in that godforsaken country.

He was told over and over again that it was extremely risky to pull all of our troops out of Iraq for political reasons. Our own generals told him he should leave a residual force of 23,000 men there like we do in nations like South Korea, Japan and Germany. There would have been no need for them to police the country and casualties would have likely been extremely light. Our troops could have continued training the Iraqis, provided key intelligence, and helped lead Iraqi troops. A lot of us tried to tell him that it was essential we keep troops in the country to keep things from falling apart.

“There’s a big problem with timetables — and for that matter, the whole “Are we gonna stay or are we gonna go?” debate.

...When we, as Americans, make it clear that the Iraqis can’t rely on us to honor our commitment to help them build a democracy, the Iraqis are going to start trying to figure out who’s going to be around after we’re gone and guess what? A lot of the groups that will be around, like Al-Sadr, Al-Qaeda, the Badr Brigade, etc. are bad actors. But, if America is going to run and they’re going to stay, the Iraqis are going to feel like they have no choice except to turn to the people who are going to be around long-term.” – John Hawkins, 2007

“Now, if Obama can get all of our combat troops out in 16 months without Iraq flying apart at the seams, more power to him — and who knows? Maybe the situation will improve enough in the coming months that we can have our combat soldiers out by May of 2010. If so, that would be fantastic.

But, if not, Obama should remember that he is inheriting a war that is being won. If it’s lost, it will be Barack Obama not George Bush, who gets the blame — and make no mistake about, whatever the American people’s feelings about Iraq are today, their fury at seeing defeat snatched from the jaws of victory because of political gamesmanship would be absolutely titanic.” – John Hawkins, 2008

I don’t know if the public is furious that Obama’s incompetence has “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because of political gamesmanship,” but I am.

Had Obama left residual troops in place, ISIS would have never been able to invade Iraq and it would be fighting and dying in a proxy war against Iran in Syria, a country that was already hostile to us.

Instead, Obama has frittered away all the blood, sweat and tears our troops shed to get Iraq under control and has allowed Iraq to devolve into a winner-takes-all fight between Iran and ISIS. Despite Obama’s halfhearted bombing, ISIS is still gaining ground and what will happen over the long-term is unknown. Whatever it may be, it’s unlikely to be good for us or the Iraqi people. Worse yet, the only real fix for it would be a time machine because there’s no way we can morally ask our troops to go back into Iraq in large numbers after Obama carelessly tossed their victory away because he thought it polled well.

Barack Obama lost Iraq after a Republican won it, just like the Democrats did in Vietnam and knowing THAT, I can no longer say it was a good idea to go into Iraq.

In response to the Media’s question to Republican Presidential Candidates “knowing what you know now should we have went to Iraq?” The answer should be something like this - If we had known that the next President was going to double cross us and lose everything we fought for then no we shouldn’t have went. We will just pick up the dead bodies as they kill us here and “Hope” they don’t kill too many of us.

The Iraq war was won, and Iraq was successfully pacified. The destruction of Iraq, and the Isis horror, results from the fact that Obama withdrew American troops from Iraq.

Is the war was won we could have left without the nation disintegrating. We lost big time.

America and our Constitution has been stabbed in the back by Democrats since the Andrew Jackson Administration. What else is new?

The cancer has been in our country for a long and is now metastasizing quickly.

No one disputes the United States won WWII and we still have troops in Germany. After WWII, there were thousands of troops left in Germany to stabilize the nation.

"we should have imposed someone of our choosing at the top."

I think that was going to be Ahmad Chalabi. You remember he was one of the Iraqi dissident leaders leading up to the war and he ended up being one of the liars who lead us to believe that Sadaam's nuclear program was in full swing becuase he just wanted Sadaam overthrown. Then we tried to put Allawi in power and he lost that first election to Malaki. I think Allawi would have done a better job and perhaps we rushed them to the elections. Everyone was so happy to have "free elections" in Iraq, but in retrospect that may not have been the best idea. Sometimes, people are just not ready for self government. It's a process.

"How many of our troops were blown up by German IEDs? You compare apples to rocks."

No, what I believe he was comparing was Germany at the end of WWII and Iraq at the end of 2011, not 2005 or 2006. At the end of 2011 there would have been almost zero casualties as there were pretty much after 2010.

There were some killed by German snipers. They killed the snipers. Your point was that if Iraq still needed American troops, then we didn’t win. We won as long as we were there. There would be no Isis in Iraq if American troops had remained, as they remain in Germany even today. Now, I agree with you, it was useless, and laughable, to try to build a Western democracy in Iraq, which has no tradition of democracy, and a dislike of Western ideas. The best hope was to install a somewhat benevolent military government.

Since we are comparing WWII to George and Dicks excellent nation building adventure, google up pictures of Japanese and German cities circa spring 1945. That is how wars are won. Not by building schools, roads and Muslim democracies.

What COULD Bush have done about Iran, Pakistan and Saudia Arabia? He had less than 1/100th the support FDR had when he was fighting to win against Germany, Italy and Japan.

From the moment congress voted to remove So-damned Insane, the hypocrats undermined the war and slandered the president, treasonously and poisonously declaring the war lost, etc.

Looking back, it’s amazing what was gained in Afghanistan, Iraq and globally against al-Qaeda.

Islam is the root problem.
None of this goes away until we realize that.
I’m not holding my breath, America has lost its resolve against evil because when you as a national majority turn on God you become blind to truth.
The truth is Islam is the problem and Islam needs to be discouraged in the strongest terms possible but, it’s not happening.
Islam is from Satan as is Communism, facisim and all forms of tyranny.

What a waste of my time preaching to the choir here.
Since our fist ammendmant is null and void we cannot even discuss what really needs to happen.
Damn it all to hell.

I have no clue; I give up. We are on the same page, probably believe the same thing. Saddam Hussein was no where near the powerful enemy Japan and Germany were. Not really much nation building with either; they were already built. They just needed to be defeated. Viet Nam wound up as a defeat (although not militarily). Isis will require at least the same effort to defeat as Saddam Hussein, if not more; then there is Iran. George W Bush refused to deal with Iran; Obama wants to build up Iran and he created the disaster in Iraq when he removed American troops (a non-military Obama caused defeat if you insist). Now the whole Middle East is in reality now a ticking time bomb. They will start terrorist activities in the United States at any moment. What is going on with terrorist activities in the Middle East was forecast by American intelligence at least in the late 80s, when I first read about their predictions.

Let alone forgetting the recent (< 6 mo) stories of finding WMDs+ buried in no-man’s land?

Tell a lie often enough

Not that I think we should have gone in there to begin (Saudi on 9/11, not Iraqi); let alone ham-stringing our guys with asinine ROE. You go in, you go in to WIN, not ‘win minds’/nation build/etc.

ham-stringing our guys with asinine ROE. You go in, you go in to WIN, not ‘win minds’/nation build/etc.

I'd like to join Commander Riker in applauding your most excellent post:

Limited Vietnam style wars like the one in Afghanistan that leadership wants to end with peace talks ala Vietnam at this point are not the right kind of wars.

They fit policing the world for a New World Order under international (United Nations) law, not the decisive defeat of enemies like Japan and Nazi Germany in WWII.

Rumsfeld said the war after 9/11 was not like World War II.
We could imagine it was if we watched Fox News or used other pro-RINO media.

But in the end it wasn’t, just a higher tech low casualty version of Vietnam.

of course but ANY war requires more than just some people voting for it for political expediency, then turning around and subverting it.

At least successful ones anyway require at least some effort from the people in power to recognize at least which side they’re on.

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