I expect that they’ll “blame us forever” regardless. They should, after all. If they do “get it together”, I expect that a major unifying factor would be a burning hatred for America.
I don’t think that’s automatic. We’ll see.
We slaughtered their friends and families, wrecked their country, and in general screwed them over in a war of pure aggression. All the while lecturing everyone about how good and pure our motives were. Why wouldn’t they hate us ? We’d certainly hate anyone who did that to us. If aliens attacked America tomorrow, killed tens of millions, wrecked the infrastructure, and imposed their own according-to-them-superior government we’d sure hate them. Regardless of what came after.
You are simply trying to pretend that they are going to buy into America’s self delusion that it is a heroic rescuer, and not a thuggish aggressor. No matter what lies we tell ourselves, our victims don’t believe it and never have.
It’s pretty much an objective fact that the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam than they have been at any point in the last six years. Given the stated goals and time line of the neocons in the Bush administration, that makes it a failure. No amount of positive developments now or in the future can redeem that.
Let me put it this way: if I’m leading an IT project at work, and it gets completed after meeting a tenth of the initial scope, costing twenty times the initial budget, and missing the deadline by an order of magnitude, would I be at all justified in calling the endeavor a “success”? Hell no I wouldn’t.
That doesn’t at all mean that. War is a messy process and building it back up takes longer than tearing it down. That’s just the reality. Anyone who expected this to take less than a decade walked around with blinders on.
Depends on whether you promised to roll out 150 servers in a week or not. The initial time estimates were obviously outright lies. But if Iraq in ten-fifteen years is a flourishing Democracy things will look a lot different in retrospect.
And if the people we killed all rise from the dead, and all the infrastructure we blew up magically reassembles itself things will look different as well. But that’s not going to happen, nor is Iraq going to become a flourishing democracy - or flourishing anything - anytime soon. We laid waste to it, scattered and impoverished the people, unleashed the fanatics and the criminals. And as I said, if it did become a democracy, it would be our enemy; only a dictatorship ruled by an American puppet would not be our enemy.
Except that this is not what we were told at all. In fact, we were told that it would be short and sweet and cost close to nothing because the Iraqis would open their arms and buy flowers for the Americans with their own money. So, with that measuring stick, it has been a failure.
They’re 0 for 3 on the triple constraint. How the hell is that not a failure?
Whether Iraq becomes a flourishing democracy five or ten or fifteen years from now is immaterial. Invading was an idiot move from the get-go, and the Bush administration compounded the idiocy by their gross ignorance of what it would take to actually execute their plan. Any future “success” will be despite, not because of, the initial decision to invade.
I mean, if one of my cats shits on the carpet, and I come around and clean it up, should my cat get credit for the fact that my carpet is clean?
I don’t understand what this means. What assembly lines? And are you saying they are good or bad? It is not a loaded question; I honestly don’t understand the point you are making here.
And if Iraq, instead of turning into a “flourishing democracy” like mswas is talking about completely collapses in civil war, I’m sure we’ll be told that’s a victory. And if it turns into an Islamic dictatorship we’ll be told that’s a victory. If Saddam rises from the dead and Iraq becomes the center of a new zombie empire, we’ll be told that’s a victory.
I’ve never heard Baghdad described that way before. Maybe it was, in the Middle Ages . . .
“One of the more historic cities in the world” would be perhaps a better claim.
The Failed State Index was started in 2005.
Iraq’s ranks so far:
2005: #4
2006: #4
2007: #2
2008: #5
Sure you would…as long as the customer signed off on the changes, and most importantly of all…as long as they paid. 
-XT
By the 12 indices used to evaluate Iraq is considerably worse in pretty much all of them.
I mean you have to be totally brainwashed and misinformed to say Iraq is better off today than ten years ago, even with the sanctions in place then.
Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster.
Sir! Some IT-type persons are the very paragons of strictly ethical behavior. Even faced with the sore temptations of customers who haven’t the foggiest notion whether they are being screwed or not, they stand firm against the twin perils of greed and sloth. I know such as these exist, though I haven’t actually met either of them.
It is also wise not to belittle that ilk, they are subtle, and quick to anger. I am very careful, and when I call tech support, I get a hot young MIT grad with a voice like silk rubbing itself off. She answers the phone after two rings, fixes the problem in 2 minutes, and then talks dirty to me for about half an hour.
You, your call gets routed to the Punjab, you listen to Barry Manilow till you weep, then a guy comes on who talks like Gunga Din but swears his name is “Chuck”. And its a hardware issue, consult your vendor.
You have been fairly warned.
Like it or not, this was the inevitable result of a free Iraq. The Shia had been repressed and victimized by the minority Sunni for years. With democracy the Shia are now in charge of the country. The West might not like what they do with power but the country is still far better off than under the tyrant Saddam.
As pointed out by sailor and others, no it’s not. It’s worse.
Yes you’re right, the unrealistic expectations they cynically sold us in order to get us to sign off on something that they knew would be nastier than their sales pitch, were unmet.
What makes you think they knew it would be nastier than they claimed ? They seem to have believed their own propaganda about how easy it would be, that the Iraqis would just roll over and become our friends, that no large occupying force was needed, that no investment for rebuilding would be needed and so on.