So, what happened to the WMDs that the Democrats were so worried about?
No, Congress did not “[vote] for the wars.” Congress authorized the use of force if necessary. The Bush Administration misled the American people about the necessity of the war. The choice to go to war was Bush’s alone.
This topic - it’s too easy. It’s easier than being a patriot for the war putting American flag on a truck. How about examining what does it mean to have an opinion - any opinion - on important things?
See, after 10 years –hundreds of thousands dead, a country destroyed, a region further pushed toward abyss – the only thing that matters, to an individual, that he/she was right?
Is that the best an American can hope for, to be able to say “I voiced my opposition on an anonymous forum and damn it I was right”? US Army gives awards to soldiers for less so, I guess, it IS something.
Should average Canadian feel million times better than that – 10 years ago Chrétien said “No” to Bush. In his face!
What’s the “freedom” and “democracy” if you don’t get to participate in the process of deciding important things? What’s to be proud of – beyond, of course, knowing full-well that nobody will shower your hometown with grenades in any foreseeable future? Is the price of you not being showered with grenades having someone else take it?
What difference does it make if you are for or against the war on Iran? Is the meaning of life to be able to say in 2020 you were agianst the war with Iran?
Saddam destroyed what WMDs he had, long before the invasion. The Clinton sanctions worked.
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I too opposed Iraq, but I’m not really comfortable about my “side” gloating about it.
Many of the people that opposed this military action oppose every action, and I never hear them admit to being wrong, whether it’s:
a) The US turns a blind eye to a conflict, and the situation goes FUBAR
b) A military intervention is relatively successful and an ugly rebellion / militia is put down pretty effectively
Well, what do you think the take-away lesson should be? Don’t trust George W. Bush again? Okay, but that’s not really an issue anymore.
Don’t believe any President ever again? Don’t ever go to war again? Don’t ever trust anyone again? If those are the lessons you learned, you’re as wrong now as the invasion supporters were in 2003.
Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
Require evidence, understand that the UN Security Council was designed by the permanent members for exactly that kind of (imperial) purpose, know that US media outlets are more interested in not being excluded than in an approximation of the truth, trust that any person and organisation will apologise for getting things ‘wrong’ after they have what they want.
And finally - a hopeless wish in relation to the US - don’t ever let a businessman run the country, esp. a spoilt, non-achieving, ivy league bum.
How about the War of Bush’s Pretzel?
Well, it was more than a year before Iraq, but it still could’ve ben a contributing factor.
Same here - it would have been perfectly logical to have few thousand chemical rounds stashed away. Never considered that a proper reason for a massive air, land and sea invasion. I think I even warned people not to be too cocky when the first reports of no WMD arrived.
The wild-eyed reports of 45 minutes to launch , the aluminum tubes of doom etc. etc. were of course so much blustering.
That, and UNSCOM helped quite a bit in the 1991-1998 timeframe.
Include me among those who assumed Iraq had WMDs like nerve gas. Even Saddam thought he had WMDs! – his officials were afraid to tell him the truth. The fact is that many countries have WMD’s: Chile, Indonesia and Serbia all may have chemical weapons; Bulgaria and Cuba may have biological weapons; etc. Iraq was attacked by the U.S. in 2003 not because it was a threat, but because it wasn’t! (It was intended as an easy demonstration of Bush’s Bible-based fight against Gog and Magog.)
Give the C.I.A. credit for being among the few to figure out that Iraq’s WMD threat was exaggerated. The way its analysis was abused by the Cheney-Rove Administration is criminal.
Your way of seeing the Afghanistan War is how I saw it in 2001: Al Queda attacked us, so it was right and necessary for us to invade Afghanistan to root out Al Queda.
What I didn’t understand at the time was the nature of the conflict and worldwide political reality. Islamic terrorist groups exist in dozens of countries. Many of these groups had and still have some connection to Al Queda, but Al Queda is not an organization like the one’s we’re familiar with. Even after we took out the Al Queda leadership in Afghanistan, the ideology behind it continued to grow. Meanwhile, as the Afghanistan War dragged on, there were more and more instances of America dropping bombs on civilians, torturing innocent people to death, etc… Each of those things hurt America’s image worldwide while encourage Islamic terrorists. Thus, on the whole, the Afghanistan War was bad for the effort against terrorism.
The lesson is to be skeptical. I was sure that there were no WMDs because the UN inspectors found none, even with free run and access to the list of sites that our intelligence claimed had WMDs, and that other countries, with access to the raw intelligence (unlike Congress) didn’t buy in to the war.
The other reason was that Bush declared the invasion an immediate necessity, despite the fact that the UN inspectors were running all over the country and that there was no imminent threat. That’s a sign of someone who knows they don’t have a case.
As for public support, my recollection is that there was majority support for an invasion only with UN sanction. After it started of course almost everyone supported it to support the troops. So even the public was not that far off.
But the tricky thing is: what should have happened next?
So: America has one of the most devastating terrorist attacks of all time happen right in the middle of its premier city, killing thousands. It’s both terrifying and…kinda humiliating.
The American public would never have been satisfied with just, say, surgical strikes against key Al Qaeda leaders.
Now that’s obviously no defense of invasion. All I’m trying to say is, realistically, there was only one option on the table and it was a significant military action to try to reassure the public and show the world that the US fights back. I don’t see how anything less stupid than the afghan invasion could have happened.
One thing still nags at me. We invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban because they wouldn’t hand over bin Laden. Did they ever actually have such custodial power, could they have handed him over if they had wanted to?
I totally agree with you that things like Guantanamo and torture are/were moral outrages that hurt us. There isn’t any debate on that.
But what are you saying here: that we are now more threatened by terrorism by various splinter groups dispersed around the Bad Guy Belt than we were by the Al Qaida leadership in Afghanistan? I don’t buy that for a single second. I’m not saying the threat of terrorism is gone, I’m saying that we have been extremely successful in dismantling core Al Qaida, which was a hundred times more dangerous than any group you can name out there today: the WTC in 1993. The Africa embassy bombings. Probably Khobar Towers. USS Cole. 9/11.
The alternative to invading Afghanistan was some mixture of doing nothing and waiting for law enforcement to capture the next hijackers; lobbing more cruise missiles into Afghanistan every once in a while (which was never shown to be effective); or… well, there aren’t a lot of other options.
Interesting question, elucidator, and I’m not certain I have the answer. ISTR the Taliban responding with a request that we show them proof that it was ObL, and they’d try him themselves.
It’s possible that this was all just bluster, and they didn’t have the custodial power to even try him. And it’s understandable that if they were limited in their ability to control his movements they might not feel motivated to volunteer the information. You would kind of expect the approaching bombers to provide that motivation, but there ya go.
I think the problem with Afghanistan was there wasn’t anyone to do business with - no conventional political hierarchy, just a bunch of warlords and assorted wackos.
It just wasn’t a ‘country’ - a governed entity as we understand it . Arguably it’s barely that now, but at least the West can pretend to talk with a legit leadership.
Another question: how many members of the upper ranks of the Karzai administration have more than one passport? We may have to air lift our troops out, but the government will fly commercial. First class, I’m betting.