Maybe Bush believed it, but I don’t believe Cheney or Rumsfeld did.
Well I think they just didn’t give enough thought to the occupation when they dissolved the Baath party. I just find it strains credibility to believe that they were as similarly naive as their partisan base.
Why ? They demonstrated their ignorance and self delusional nature often enough.
So I think we can agree that Iraq is a success by the standards of everyone who said it would take 15 years, a couple trillion dollars, and cost half a million lives. Which is exactly no one.
You are quite wrong. I know people who think that it would be worth any cost…as long as it all works out in the end. It’s like the folks who feel that we should have stayed in Vietnam, regardless of the cost, and that it was a mistake for us to pull out and let the country go communist.
-XT
I find that level of being delusion to not be credible amongst guys who have been involved in every American conflict for the past several decades. I’m more willing to believe deceit than naivety.
Anyone can jigger the definition of success as they go to support a point of view they think is correct regardless of evidence or outcome. Can you cite someone who said in 2002 that is wold take this long and cost this much and still thought it was a good idea?
Probably not. But you are disregarding how the goal posts can shift. What I was saying is that there are people out there who, while thinking it wouldn’t take this long, would be quite happy calling it a ‘success’ if things all work out in the end. That said, I’m sure if I were to dig enough I could find someone who said (in 2002) that it would be worth any cost to get Saddam out of there…if I were interested in digging around enough, which I’m not.
-XT
Ahmed Chalabi certainly thought so. Remember him, the guy who looked like he spent all day frying fifty pounds of bacon in a small closet? Had that special box in the State of the Union Address, right next to Laura? Got a shout out from GeeDub, about what a patriot he was.
Of course, getting rid of Saddam was only half the battle, the other part was ensuring that a friendly and reliable government was installed in its place. He had invaluable suggestions on that score as well. A short list, as it were. Quite short, actually.
Yes. Dismantling the Baath infrastructure was stupid on the part of the Bush administration. I think that’s the central point of where it all went wrong. I mean the prosecution of the war going wrong. Also from what I understand, and I don’t have a cite for this, the military actually had a nation-building corp that was gutted and dismissed in favor of hiring outside contractors.
Yes, yes, I know slogans about MWDs and how you can’t win an unjust war go here____________________.
Of course you can win an unjust war! You shouldn’t, is all. Frankly, I’m of the radical opinion that not only we shouldn’t win an unjust war, we shouldn’t even start one! But I’m kinda out of the mainstream on that one.
Well I am of the opinion that since we started it, it’d be nice for Iraq to end up in a better state than we found it in.
Since we’ve already started it, saying we shouldn’t start it is moot.
Well, one hopes that those who refuse to learn from history will not make the rest of us repeat it. If you are of an age, ancient of daze, this all seems like deja voodoo all over again. Back then, I had friends and relatives getting fucked up or killed. Now, its my friend’s chidren. Its not an improvement.
Unless we gain to ability to raise the dead, that’s impossible.
Pow.
My Gawd, the stupid arguments just keep repeating themselves and just never go away. The stupidity of this argument is just astounding.
So starting a war and invading a country gives the invader the right to stay there until things were “fixed”? By that line of reasoning all the third world would still be colonies.
So if a man invades your home, kills your wife and destroys all the furniture and half the building you think the appropriate thing to do is make him live in your house until he has fixed everything?
America does not have the ability to fix Iraq. It only had the ability to break and kill and destroy.
I mostly agree with you (on this) sailor, but you seriously can’t make meaningful comparisons between the actions of an individual and those of a nation state. This…
…is a totally ridiculous analogy IMHO.
Where does ‘right’ come into it? What ‘right’ does any nation have wrt invade or not be invaded?
As for staying to fix the mess we made…I have to say I’m of two minds on this one. Having already fucked things up I’d have to say that IF, by staying, you MIGHT be able to make things better, then it’s probably your obligation to do so, as a nation state. Of course, Der is going to leap in and say that the US, by staying, will only make things worse…and, though he’ll probably use completely hyperbolic and over the top language, he’ll actually have a point.
No…by this line of reasoning our European buddies (and to an extent ourselves) would have been obliged to help those former colonies out until they were stable enough to not be hell holes today. Instead of doing what they (and we) did…cut them loose to sink or swim on their own because it was no longer on our agenda to remain.
The problem is, there is a fine line between cutting and running after creating a huge mess while leaving the locals to face the music, and knowing when those locals are in good enough shape and it will be in THEIR best interest for us to get out of dodge and leave it up to them. The problem in Iraq (besides the fact that we went there at all), is that until fairly recently, a US pull out would have sent them over the edge. Even leaving aside the whole ‘they have a fifth of the worlds oil reserves’ thingy, this wouldn’t exactly have been a very moral choice for us, IMHO, since we are the ones who made the mess.
-XT
The same one that’s been pointed out any number of times in recent years ? Afghanistan harbored people who attacked us, therefore invasion was justified; Iraq did nothing of the sort, and therefore it wasn’t justified.
It is totally disingenuous to claim there is no right to not be attacked or invaded and then claim there is an obligation to stay and fix things. Gimme a break.
America is just trying to keep whatever measure of control it can. It does not recognise it did wrong by invading and it does not care at all for the welfare of the Iraqi people. This has been shown again and again. America’s invasion has caused a huge humanitarian and refugee crisis and America has done close to nothing to alleviate this. It would rather try to keep military control in whatever measure it can (which every day seems less and less.)
Is it night or day in your black and white world? It’s approaching dusk here, that’s almost the transition to night, sunset is in about an hour. But it’s been dark all day so should I consider it day even though it was darker at 4 than it is now? Hmm, how do we account for things that are not quite black, not quite white, and not even really grey? If only there were some kind of chart that we could use to measure gradations between extremes. :rolleyes:
You’re ranting and just spouting assertions.
It is in the world’s best interests to have nations that can play the globalistic game. It engenders peace overall more than anything. I for one would like to see a stable Democratic Iraq/Iran, I think it would be a very good thing for the world.
Starting wars and invading countries is “playing the gloalistic game”? I would rather say it is the “fuck the world” game and that is what America was saying when it invaded.
