Well, tens of thousands of US citizens are currently at a very high risk of terrorist attack in Iraq and they’re being attacked almost daily. That’s a risk they wouldn’t have faced before, and one that the US is now committed to for some time.
Somehow I don’t think the point of this war was to topple Saddam just in case two years down the line we might be able to tell if it acheived any security goals or not. I mean come on, why don’t we just roll the dice the next time we pick a country to invade? Beacause, who knows, maybe retroactively we can figure out how it helped our security interests two years down the road.
It seems to me that either:
A. we didn’t have any clear verifiable security objectives
or
B. We didn’t accomplish them because US citizens are dying and we don’t know where the big bad WMD’s are.
Well, these tens of thousands of US citizens in Iraq are armed to the teeth, highly trained, very motivated and are in good spirits overall. They are the protectors of those citizens who are not as armed or trained as they are. It is their job to be at risk and to handle that risk with all means available. They go where the risk is instead of waiting for it to go to them.
Dont think that if we had not invaded Iraq that risk would not have existed. The very real threat of Saddam is evident in his decades long belligerancy. Better now than to have to fight a world war later.
Yes, US citizens are dying and some quite violently. They know the risks and are there in spite of it. The trick is not not let them die in vain.
That’s funny. I don’t remember this many soldiers dying before the war. Must have been dumb luck, huh?
Keep in mind the OP address the risks to US citizens not US hegemony. Therefore Saddam’s beligerence needs to be quantified in those terms. How exactly was Saddam threatening US lives before?
I would hope this is the case, but I have my doubts. The sister of a good friend of mine just got back from a USO-style tour through the Middle East and Central Asia with the USA Express Touring Band. She encountered the lowest morale in Iraq that she has ever encountered anywhere in the military. One thing that particularly struck her was that, unlike soldiers at other bases throughout the region, soldiers in Iraq seemed so depressed that they remained huddled in their chairs for most of the show.
Things like morale are of course incredibly difficult to quantify, but to hear her tell it things were Pretty Damn Bad.