“Some” are being hopeful that this makes it all a wash. Since he had the weapons or the control of the country necessary to do so, he wasn’t going to pull off mass killings like he did in the '80s or early '90s.
You missed the bit about extraordinary rendition, torture, and Guantanamo.
More generally, you folks seem to be missing the point that Iraq is in crisis right now - nothing is ‘over’ at all. Not least becasue Iran is the most powerful influence on Iraqi national politics.
Who folks? I don’t care if Iraq is paradise itself, our invasion wasn’t worth it. It doesn’t matter to me what shape Iraq is in. The ends do not justify the means.
I think it will wind up being a good thing, but it’s gonna take some time before we see all the long-term results.
Those things were all going on before the war. Remember how a bunch of the bullshit evidence for the Iraq war was obtained by torturing the detainee they called Curveball?
I agree with you, Iraqi’s have a value. This cannot be denied.
However, as an American, my loyalty to my tribe is such that I agree, whatever else was going in with Iraq at the time of the invasion, it was not worth the loss of one American servicemembers life to fix it.
It’s cold, and cruel, and very “un PC”, but it’s also the world we live in.
We certainly don’t act like they do.
Holding American lives as being of value and Iraqis as being less valuable than humans or even animals is very PC; it’s the attitude most Americans have. Most Americans would be more outraged if the Iraqi casualties had been dogs or cats.
As for me, i have no “loyalty to my tribe” at all; the Americans were the invaders, so their deaths are not only not negative, they are positive. The deaths of Iraqis were tragedies; the deaths of their American killers were not.
No, it was a horrible mistake. Even if Iraq looks like Turkey in 50 years, it was a horrible mistake.
Those 300,000 deaths wasn’t going to bring back the 2 million already dead.
The Iraqis could have revolted.
It might be a net positive if you discount any effects outside of iraq. If you include the costs to the costs to the US and around the world, I’m not so sure especially considering that it might have fucking happened anyways with less bloodshed a la Egypt or Libya or Tunisia and hopefully Syria soon.
We could easily have supported a revolution against Saddam Hussein and we might be in a position to get paid for all that stuff like we are with the Libyans.
I don’t know that we got paid for most of the stuff we sent over there on lend lease.
A bad idea executed poorly.
Agreed the cost to the Iraqis is not the only cost we shold consider.
+1
[QUOTE]
You’re correct for once, we don’t gas civilian populations.
You seem to think most Americans have the mentality of Genghis Khan or Timurlane.
Although the Iraq War was a mistake, its absurd to think America was eviller than the Islamist ideology of Al Qaeda in Iraq who attacked American soldiers.
No; we shoot them, shred them, and set them on fire. As well as starve them and subject them to disease. We also destroy their property, their cultural heritage, and unleash general chaos.
Pretty much. Genghis seems to have been better at actually ruling over conquered territories than we are though.
We killed far more people than Al Qaeda ever did, and Al Qaeda was a minor factor in Iraq that was only there because we let them in.
Colossal understatement.
This is a great contrapositive for sanctions. All it effectively does is hurt the common people of a nation while generally uneffecting the monsters in charge.
Foreign Policy is something I’m thankful I have no say in. Such complicated stuff.
You do realize the overwhelming majority of the casualties of the Iraq War came from Iraqis shooting at each other.
I didn’t know Mongols put vast sums of wealth into rebuilding the areas they occupied.
The terrorists who were shooting at US troops were largely Al Qaeda and copycats. The Shia militas and the Sunni militias tended to shoot at each other.
I wouldn’t trade the life of one American for a dirtball, so no, it is not a wash.
We deliberately completely destroyed the order of their country; we guaranteed that would happen. So yes, it’s our fault. America would be plenty bloody too if you fired all the cops, legal system, National Guard & soldiers then replaced them with nothing.
We certainly didn’t; we just used the war as an excuse to funnel huge sums of money to Republican cronies. There was no real attempt at “rebuilding”; what little we built tended to be useless and uninhabitable. Poorly made and toxic; slapped together as cheaply as possible so we could point to it before it fell over and claim we were doing something.
No, that was just propaganda; they were no more than a few percent at most. The Iraqis were shooting at us, because the majority of them quite reasonably wanted us all dead.
And shooting at American soldiers who are occupying a conquered country is not terrorism.
Which really has fuck all to do with the invasion of Iraq.
Der Trihs’s ‘invader is always culpable’ position is weak, but you’re doing yourself no favors citing bullshit.
The police remained in place. And after other totalitarian regimes have fallen similar total reconstruction has occurred.
Oh really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_in_post-invasion_Iraq#Current_status_of_reconstruction
Overall reconstruction is at the same pace as German and Japanese reconstruction post World War II.
What about if there had been Japanese guerrillas after US occupied Japan after World War II? The exact same thing could be said for them.
Oh, I don’t know…
Imagine watching your family blown up to pieces and your children’s brains blasted on the walls of your house because some war-mongererers from the other side of the planet wanted to see this invasion since the early 1980’s … just to feel important for themselves that they could kill so many thousands of dark skinned people and prove they were looking after the interests of white Christians.
“Intervention” talk is nice if there are other people dying for it.
:rolleyes: Would do one now with Kurds getting gassed?
What does that mean?
If you really know what I mean you’re being coy.
If you really don’t know what I mean you’re myopic.
Either way, what you wrote was ridiculously obnoxious.