For all the times I’ve disparaged George W. Bush’s intellect, I never quite reached your level, casting him in the role of the protagonist of the “There’s More Light Here” joke.
Obviously, providing dictators with an “American Imperialists!” card with which to prop up those houses only delayed reforms.
Copper, schmopper – if we properly harnessed your spin, we could use it to send warnings back in time and avoid the whole mess.
I never said that I wanted to criticize your points about Afghanistan.
What it seemed to me is that the strategy that was reached by Bush was also to stop questions about how Osama Bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora and what we were doing about Al-Qaeda. Something else needed to be done.
One answer was made out of whole tortured cloth: That Osama and Saddam were in cahoots with each other and that was made into a bigger tall tale by Powell at the UN.
And if you are referring to Iraq as a cause of the middle east spring, I would have to say that it has been harder for the protesters to demand reform in **Iraq **as others are doing elsewhere, thanks to the corrupting mess and unrest we are leaving.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/26/AR2011022601854.html
If you guys had invaded the States in 2002, put George Bush’s head on a spike, and declared the US a vassal of the Greater Canadian Empire, I’d have been happy George Bush was gone, too. That doesn’t mean I’d view your conquest of my nation as desirable or justified.
Of course politicians determine tax rates and trade policy too not economists and politicians determine environmental policy not scientists. But at the same time all good leaders know the wisdom of listening to experts.
Because the task is now largely conditioning the Afghan populace against terrorism. And the Taliban does not have support of the most of the people of Afghanistan considering its largely Pashtun and Afghanistan is not majority Pashtun.
They also didn’t want to pull out as soon as the war became unpopular like some politicians wanted and as a result of Petreaus, Gates, and Bush the US won in Iraq/
How does it not have military consequences? It will determine how the Taliban will act and the whole course of the war.
As others have said that’s a very inaccurate assessment.
Of course I don’t think most Iraqis want to go back to Hussein II either.
Most of the other surveys have it in the 100,000 range. Plus most Iraqis died from other insurgents and sectarian fighting not American troops.
And propping up thugs and killing Afghans pretty much at random does this how?
“Won”? We manufactured a failed state full of people with excellent reasons to hate our guts.
In other words, from things that were our fault.
We can ally with India and cut off all aid to the Paks, and if things keep going where they are I think the US ought to do it.
No if anything Iraq’s government is not as authoritarian as formerly that of Egypt or Tunisia, yet it has succeedeed in keeping order far better.
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Are the only two options for every issue in your universe a kiss and a knife in the neck? Why do you think our foreign policy goals will be enacted if we piss of Pakistan? Do you think there will be more or less stability in the region if we piss them off? Do you think they will embrace more or less radicalism if we piss them off?
It has kept order with the help of Coalition (heh) soldiers and a costly war that killed upwards of a hundred thousand of their people. When did hundreds of thousands of western soldiers keep the peace in Egypt?
By allying fully with India will we have the world’s largest democracy as a friend, and India does have influence in Afghanistan.
I mean its keeping the peace right now and Egypt is far more homogenous than Iraq anyways.
Just leave the place and never go back.
We are allies with India. And India’s influence in Afghanistan is far, far, less than the people who actually share a border, language and cultural heritage with it.
So your plan is to take a country that already has trouble fighting the radical Taliban elements in its western parts and piss it off and make it so the Pakistani on the street hates America. Don’t take this the wrong way, but that’s not really striking me as a great idea.
Yeah, but we killed off a lot of the people who would have roused the rabble. I’m glad Iraq has what appears to be a functioning government, but the cost was great, especially since the Arab Spring might have toppled Saddam without as great a loss of life (not to mention the cost in dollars we’ve had to pay).
Sam and others have used that magazine before to support their points in the past. But only one called it inaccurate, without looking at why are the reasons why Iraq is where it is.
As Miller said:
No, if Pakistan continues its ungrateful behaviour, we’ll cut off all aid to them and as a result we can be for comfortable in supporting India. We certainly won’t go to war against them or impose sanctions or anything.
On the other hand Hussein might simply have suppressed the rebellion or the revolution might have established an Iran-style theocracy or there might have been no Arab Spring due to the Butterfly Effect.
Again considering some of the rankings of other countries, I can’t see how that assessment is exactly dependable.
That assumes somehow that George W Bush was comparable to a mass murderer like Hussein.
He IS a mass murderer just like Hussein. Just ask all the dead Iraqis.
The vast majority of Iraqis died from sectarian conflict as noted.
Conflict which occurred because of us. And there were plenty of deaths from disease and untreated injuries and general disorder.
Hannah Arendt shakes her head at this thread. You were barely alive when this started and you’re already so well programmed, so casual with your plans for visiting death upon others.
Why are you worried though? Obama is gonna leave office with more troops in Afghanistan than when he started. The U.S. is gonna kill a lot more anonymous people on the other side of the planet for years and years for extremely dubious reasons, so don’t fret. “We” (hahaha!) will be there, and Iraq, for the foreseeable future. I can understand why drone bombings just doesn’t give the same visceral thrill, but you can have both.
None of which is the same as Hussein directly ordering killings.