[QUOTE=Chouan]
Why did we overthrow Saddam instead of another dictator?
A. Because he was an avowed enemy of the US, while some other rulers are our allies. Plus Iraq is rather centrally located in the region which we are attempting to help drag into the 21st century (out of the 14th century where it seems to reside)–an important strategic reason for going in there.
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That was the fantasy of the Wolfowitz term paper, but it was never really true.
[QUOTE=Chouan]
But wasnt Saddam a secularist who actually protected women’s rights, etc.?
A. At first he was, which was one of the reasons the US supported him against the theocratic state of Iran early on. But after the Gulf War, he increasingly characterized himself as a devout Sunni Muslim. As for women’s rights, Saddam had prostitutes publicly beheaded (according to the International Federation of Human Rights League and the Coalition for Justice), and who can forget Uday and Qusay’s lovely rape rooms? Besides, all the Kurdish and Shi’ite women who Saddam had killed didn’t get to enjoy their right to life.
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No realistic person (and no one posting to this thread) would describe Hussein as anything other than a thug. Nevertheless, in Iraq prior to March, 2003, women attended universities and ran their own businesses and Jews and Christians lived in the country without any more fear than their Muslim neighbnors. Since our idiotic invasion, women have lost most of their rights (in reality even if not on paper) and the non-Muslim citizens have been forced to flee the sectarian violence we introduced to the country.
[QUOTE=Chouan]
The US provided Saddam with WMDs in the first place!
A. We supplied military aid only during the Iran-Iraq war, at which time Saddam was the lesser of two evils. We didn’t know he would abuse those weapons and use them on civilians.
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We “didn’t know” that a thug who had demonstrated a ruthless policy of extermination toward all his internal “foes” and who had launched a war of aggression against a neighbor that had not threatened him, employing weapons banned by all civilized nations for over 80 years in the prosecution of his war, might decide to use those same weapons against his own people after we rashly advised them to rise up in rebellion while declining to offer them any support?
More fools, we, then.
[QUOTE=Chouan]
The US has alienated its allies and its reputation is irredeemably ruined.
A. The coalition of the willing was originally composed of 49 nations. And of these nations, we have the undying support of the UK. Even if you take away the other 48 allies in the coalition, we’d still have the British as our allies.
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The “coalition of the willing” was no more real than the Weapons of Mass Destruction in the fall of 2002. The “coalition” was a hodgepodge of nations we had bribed into joining (e.g. Poland who wanted our money and military support), and nations we had coerced into “joining” with threats of lost trade privileges (e.g., Micronesia, Marshall Islands), or with threats of sanctions as “supporters of terror” (e.g., Eritrea, Azerbaijan).
[QUOTE=Chouan]
And so it is today–as Al-Qaida is on the run, and Iraq is becoming a stable country once again, it’s not too early to say that the US–along with our old friends the UK–were right all along!
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There is no indication that Iraq is “becoming a stable country.” To the extent that some internecine fighting has fallen off, it is the result of ongoing ethnic cleansing that reduces the target of local violence with local hotspots held in check by massive U.S. Army coverage–coverage that we cannot maintain indefinitely. The Parliament has failed to address a single major piece of legislation to deal with the actual conditions of the country. al-Maliki, having bought the leadership by outbidding/outbribing Allawi, spends half his time telling the U.S. how much he appreciates their efforts and the other half of his time telling his fellow Shi’a that the U.S. will not be allowed to remain in Iraq while condemning the U.S. for protecting Sunni neighborhoods from attacks by Shi’a insurgents and militia. If that is stability, the Pacific is the greatest desert in the world.
[QUOTE=Chouan]
OK, one more post tonight.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that the 2003 intervention in Iraq was a bad idea.
That doesn’t get us anywhere! We’re in Iraq now, we can’t change the past. So we have to come up with solutions for the future. Complete withdrawal just isn’t an option right now.
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Except in passing, “what should we do now”?" is not the topic of this thread. You started out with bold (false) claims of victory everywhere we look. You are now reduced to saying “Well, we screwed this up pretty badly; we can’t leave now.” I take that as a serous admission that the OP was just so much neo-con, Bush Administration posturing that has been overwhelmingly destroyed by the facts.
