Posted on 08/26/2015 5:08:23 PM PDT by markomalley
Understood.
And I am surprised at the amount of left wing bs flying around here. It was always anticipated that a residual ready reaction force would be left behind to stabilize Iraq. By both the US and Uraq and anybody saying that is not so is rewriting history with their left hand.
Dubya HUGGED our soldiers....he and his staff prayed to God...He saluted our people....
he was no pure conservative but he has more smarts and grace and integrity than Trump anyday....
but Trump is trying to start his swan song by destroying everybody in the pub party....
congrats to freepers for backing this maniac......shameful, but typical of many freepers....
Yes, you are correct there. We should have left the compassion at home and just brought the destruction. But that is no longer the world we live in.
Iraq was under control. Obamas total troop withdrawal for political purposes gave birth to ISIS and live head cutting.
Amen Cherry.
“When you see how quickly things began unraveling there after the U.S. troops left, you wonder if the people surrounding Bush in his administration were really so stupid as to think that place was ever going to be a normal, viable country. “
They were utopian liberal internationalists who never paid any attention to the underlying Islamic culture, so yeah, they really were that stupid. They believed democracy is like magic pixie dust that could transform an Arab Islamic society into, oh, Kansas.
By contrast Dubya’s father surrounded himself with foreign policy realists who understood that it was a really bad idea to grab on to the Iraq tarbaby. It was better to defang Saddam and let him continue to rule over that mess. He wasn’t going anywhere. He couldn’t even defeat Iran, he wasn’t a threat to us.
I agree. I think W is a decent guy. He was a wonderful leader after 9/11. He is also a great respecter of the troops.
That could be decades from now. But maybe it will never happen ... because as I sit here in August of 2015 and look back over the last couple of decades, I think a strong case can be made that U.S. policy in the Middle East has been orchestrated by foreign agents in high places in the last two administrations.
You are so right and the fact that Trump forgot is sad.
There’s something else that really irritates me regarding the pulling of all our troops. Many like to say Obama didn’t have a choice. BS. We fought a war and paid the price in blood and treasure for the right to set any terms we wanted. Period.
If that's the case, then we've witnessed a remarkable historical even between the two Bush administrations. One of the top people in the first Bush administration was a "foreign policy realist" Defense Secretary named Dick Cheney. And one of the top people in the second Bush administration was an incompetent fool Vice President named Dick Cheney. Pretty amazing, eh?
Bush made two big strategic mistakes and some other tactical ones. He did not SEAL the border after 9/11 and he spent too much damn money. But he conducted himself well as CIC and was loved by the troops because of that.
Obama could care less. Politics Trumps all. He is a political animal and a strategic moron.
Tinfoil hat time. And our military campaign in the Philippines lasted from 1899-1913, with a very close proximity of forces deployed there as a percent of total forces. These wars take time. A study of ten major communist insurrections (I know, not Muslim) showed an average of 5-6 years, but the government/good guys won 7/10. Lesson? These wars are completely winnable, but it takes real staying power.
Everything I've posted here comes from the exact text of the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement. If you want to sit there and tell me that this is "rewriting history," then I don't think there's anything I can do to help you. If you can cite me any documentation about another agreement about a "residual reaction force," then please do so. Until you can do that, I think you're just deluding yourself.
I know the current occupant has given it all away in Iraq (winnable) Turkey (winnable) Libya (winnable) Egypt (winnable) Syria (winnable) Venezuela, Cuba and Afghanistan , the Stan being the only one I doubted.
We have more dead, more losses and more threats under this currant chucklehead.
I know Libyans that are terrified.
I like what Trump is saying, but I also have respect for GW Bush and what he did after 911.
He also gave us Alito and Roberts (Roberts a disappointment so far on a couple biggys) but no way he (Bush) could have known that.
I remember when Roberts was appointed and it was hard to find Conservatives that were not happy at the time.
So I like GW for a number of things, I like Trump, I love Cruz
You’ve hit on a truly amazing transformation. When you hear a tape of Secretary of Defense Cheney explaining how unwise it would be to occupy Iraq you can hardly believe it’s the same guy who was VP.
I agree with a growing number of Freepers who now recognize that the U.S. was on the wrong side in the Middle East even as far back as 1990.
Lol. You make the same bs argument that Chris Hayes, the MSNBC leftist moron, made a couple of years ago. You are a joke just like that leftist puke. A Status of Forces Agreement does not forestall another Agreement pal. Are you Chris Hayes?
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