Huh. So you think that both of the last two Republican presidents screwed up in their war policies re Iraq.
Everyone screwed up. Especially GWB. War was clearly the wrong policy for us and the war was waged incompetently to boot. But that does not mean containment was a wise strategy either. The correct strategy was to depose Saddam to begin with in 1991 and let the Iraqis work it out, which would get us pretty much to where we are today, without the deaths of a million Iraqis and 5000 Americans. The Shiites and Kurds rose up, all we had to do was just march to Baghdad, where there was nothing opposing us, and that would have prevented Saddam from being able to put down the rebellion.
Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and all. Bush 41 had a total diplomatic and military victory and marching to Baghdad would have sullied that. Plus at the time leaving Iraq to chaos wouldn’t have happened, so we would have probably stayed and occupied the place and what happened in 2003 would have happened in 1991, although we’d have more troops on the ground, so hopefully not as bad.
To the best of my hindsight, the goal of the war in 1991 was to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Mission accomplished.
Then why did we also seek to win the peace by “containing” Saddam? That’s where it got absurd. If a fifth-rate power is a threat, you don’t contain it, you destroy it. If it’s not a threat, then just end the war with no further repercussions.
Why don’t you ask that question of the countries that were our allies in that war?
Actually, I tend to agree with you on this aspect of it. If we were fighting Iraq, we should have just gone ahead and conquered them. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the way things worked out. Frankly, I have no doubt that Bush the Elder would have managed such a conquest far better than his son did.
I agree with that for sure. But anyway, my point isn’t that we should go to war willy-nilly, just that if we go to war, we’re all in. You can’t dip a toe in a war. But since we’ve gotten away with doing it without getting our toe bitten off, we get involved in far more wars than are advisable. Obama’s got us bombing like six countries now. And as I keep saying, it’s a strategy that seems smart until it doesn’t work, and at that point your choices are all disastrous.
But going all in would be even worse and make us much weaker. I still don’t understand how this makes anything better for anyone, unless the goal is to weaken America.
That depends on what your goal is. Russia’s going all-in in Syria and it looks like they might achieve their objective very quickly.
They went all-in in Afghanistan, too. How did that work out for them?
No country wins every war it fights in. All war carries risk, even when you try to keep a war at arms length. Just because we want to keep ground troops out of Syria and Iraq doesn’t mean we’ll be able to.
Our goal should be “don’t risk American lives unless America is under attack”.
Any such move would be a war of choice – there’s no “we won’t be able to avoid it”, there is only “we choose to send in ground troops and risk American lives”. And we can always choose not to.
You probably disagree with it anyway, but I still don’t think you understand my position – that any move to put ground troops in by America will make the situation worse for everyone but our enemies, including greatly weakening America. There’s no benefit, and only loss, to putting in ground troops.
And what is yours? Yes, we know the part about Obama being wrong no matter what he does, but what is *your *goal?
ISIS is attacking America, and we’re putting American lives at risk. For little gain, since we aren’t doing enough to defeat them.
Bombing gives them more incentive to attack us without actually doing enough damage to degrade them. And once they successfully attack the homeland, the ground troops go in.
The last time this happened to us was 9/11, which was caused in part by our ridiculous containment strategy of Iraq.
Care to name all the times ISIS has attacked America?
And speaking of my supposed agenda for Obama to be wrong all the time, I’d note that you seem to be implying that the President was lying about the threat of ISIS.
Not only were they not part of ISIS, they planned to leave the country.
2.
Absolutely no details of any of the claimed attacks. No links to the report.
Plus, that’s Europe, not America.
Europe’s easier for them to reach, but we are a target as surely as we were of Al Qaeda. Unless you’ve a) stopped trusting the President and b) stopped believing in the concept of blowback.
Attacking enemies without destroying them is extremely foolish.
To get back to the subject of Graham, I’d note that the warmonger charge was old when Reagan was running for President. “Get tough” rhetoric is not necessarily about going to war. The only wars Graham wants fought are the ones we’re already fighting.
He wants to do the same thing that hasn’t worked. Remember the definition of insanity?
If he really believes that an attack in this country is imminent, he should be doing something about the clown college at the TSA.
Have you noticed that before every major holiday, there’s announcements of numerous threats of attacks all over the country and then things are strangely quiet after?
Ever get the feeling the threat is being overblown?
Last I checked, we didn’t get bin laden with bombing.