The Iraq War in retrospect: Victory on almost all fronts

Great Debates
101

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
On an entirely unrelated note, I’ve heard that al-Qaeda is building up a dangerous presence in multiplayer online RPGs. Seriously, they’ve got training camps in there and everything. Some authorities have already concluded that Saddam’s WMDs were smuggled out of Iraq into the enchanted land of Norrath in Everquest. Furthermore, there are definite verified rumors that Iran’s secret nuclear enrichment program is hidden somewhere in the World of Warcraft.

[/QUOTE = Chouan]

VC/Deadmines needs cleansing again, I see.

OP: I initially supported the war, back in '03. I believed Colin Powell, when he went before the UN to make the case of WMD’s in Iraq. I trusted the US government as knowing what the heck it’s doing. (Watching Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible stuff and Matt Damon’s Bourne Identity stuff makes you think that the US government is super talented and technical.) Now, I am not as confident.

Now, however, I feel stupid. Taken advantage of. But I don’t know how we can make things OK again. We invaded. We shouldn’t have, but the question now should be, what is the best way to clean up this mess we made?

Ummm. The US went in, and ousted Saddam, who, in retrospect, seemed to have kept Iraq stabilised. With Saddam gone, and the other factions are either too weak to hold on to rule, and/or are fighting amongst themselves as a result of the vacuum, and things don’t seem to rosy there right now. (Think Austria-Hungary of 1914, MidEast style. So many internal political players…)

People are still dying in numbers that should not be acceptable in a stable country, and the MidEast as a whole does not appear more stable now than it was 5 or more years ago.

I blame the current administration for not foreseeing this.

It appears the administration entire strategy was that Saddam’s supporters were a small minority, that the opponents of Saddam would take over, thank the US, and build a functioning, working government and country in a peacable fashion. This has not happened, and doesn’t appear to be going to in the foreseeable future.

Saddam’s connections with Al Qaida were incidental at most, and once again, it appears the U.S. policy maker(s) only saw what they wanted to see when they looked across the ocean.

Choosing to make Iraq (which was not the source of Al Qaida warriors) as a proxy battleground for the War On Terror doesn’t seem too fair to the people that actually have to live there, does it?

I think this “proxy battleground” reason was an attempt to put as best of a PR trial balloon (of a series of trial balloons) on a decision (to go to war) that turned out to be based on a series of faulty assumptions on our part.

Nobody would have approved the invasion of Iraq if the POTUS had tried this reasoning (of using Iraq as a proxy battleground against AQ) as his very first one.

102

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
On an entirely unrelated note, I’ve heard that al-Qaeda is building up a dangerous presence in multiplayer online RPGs. Seriously, they’ve got training camps in there and everything. Some authorities have already concluded that Saddam’s WMDs were smuggled out of Iraq into the enchanted land of Norrath in Everquest. Furthermore, there are definite verified rumors that Iran’s secret nuclear enrichment program is hidden somewhere in the World of Warcraft.

[/QUOTE = Chouan]

VC/Deadmines needs cleansing again, I see.

OP: I initially supported the war, back in '03. I believed Colin Powell, when he went before the UN to make the case of WMD’s in Iraq. I trusted the US government as knowing what the heck it’s doing. (Watching Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible stuff and Matt Damon’s Bourne Identity stuff makes you think that the US government is super talented and technical.) Now, I am not as confident.

Now, however, I feel stupid. Taken advantage of. But I don’t know how we can make things OK again. We invaded. We shouldn’t have, but the question now should be, what is the best way to clean up this mess we made?

Ummm. The US went in, and ousted Saddam, who, in retrospect, seemed to have kept Iraq stabilised. With Saddam gone, and the other factions are either too weak to hold on to rule, and/or are fighting amongst themselves as a result of the vacuum, and things don’t seem to rosy there right now. (Think Austria-Hungary of 1914, MidEast style. So many internal political players…)

People are still dying in numbers that should not be acceptable in a stable country, and the MidEast as a whole does not appear more stable now than it was 5 or more years ago.

I blame the current administration for not foreseeing this.

It appears the administration entire strategy was that Saddam’s supporters were a small minority, that the opponents of Saddam would take over, thank the US, and build a functioning, working government and country in a peacable fashion. This has not happened, and doesn’t appear to be going to in the foreseeable future.

Saddam’s connections with Al Qaida were incidental at most, and once again, it appears the U.S. policy maker(s) only saw what they wanted to see when they looked across the ocean.

Choosing to make Iraq (which was not the source of Al Qaida warriors) as a proxy battleground for the War On Terror doesn’t seem too fair to the people that actually have to live there, does it?

I think this “proxy battleground” reason was an attempt to put as best of a PR trial balloon (of a series of trial balloons) on a decision (to go to war) that turned out to be based on a series of faulty assumptions on our part.

Nobody would have approved the invasion of Iraq if the POTUS had tried this reasoning (of using Iraq as a proxy battleground against AQ) as his very first one.

Hamsters seem to be messing with my post

103

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
On an entirely unrelated note, I’ve heard that al-Qaeda is building up a dangerous presence in multiplayer online RPGs. Seriously, they’ve got training camps in there and everything. Some authorities have already concluded that Saddam’s WMDs were smuggled out of Iraq into the enchanted land of Norrath in Everquest. Furthermore, there are definite verified rumors that Iran’s secret nuclear enrichment program is hidden somewhere in the World of Warcraft.

[/QUOTE = Chouan]

VC/Deadmines needs cleansing again, I see.

OP: I initially supported the war, back in '03. I believed Colin Powell, when he went before the UN to make the case of WMD’s in Iraq. I trusted the US government as knowing what the heck it’s doing. (Watching Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible stuff and Matt Damon’s Bourne Identity stuff makes you think that the US government is super talented and technical.) Now, I am not as confident.

Now, however, I feel stupid. Taken advantage of. But I don’t know how we can make things OK again. We invaded. We shouldn’t have, but the question now should be, what is the best way to clean up this mess we made?

Ummm. The US went in, and ousted Saddam, who, in retrospect, seemed to have kept Iraq stabilised. With Saddam gone, and the other factions are either too weak to hold on to rule, and/or are fighting amongst themselves as a result of the vacuum, and things don’t seem to rosy there right now. (Think Austria-Hungary of 1914, MidEast style. So many internal political players…)

People are still dying in numbers that should not be acceptable in a stable country, and the MidEast as a whole does not appear more stable now than it was 5 or more years ago.

I blame the current administration for not foreseeing this.

It appears the administration entire strategy was that Saddam’s supporters were a small minority, that the opponents of Saddam would take over, thank the US, and build a functioning, working government and country in a peacable fashion. This has not happened, and doesn’t appear to be going to in the foreseeable future.

Saddam’s connections with Al Qaida were incidental at most, and once again, it appears the U.S. policy maker(s) only saw what they wanted to see when they looked across the ocean.

Choosing to make Iraq (which was not the source of Al Qaida warriors) as a proxy battleground for the War On Terror doesn’t seem too fair to the people that actually have to live there, does it?

I think this “proxy battleground” reason was an attempt to put as best of a PR trial balloon (of a series of trial balloons) on a decision (to go to war) that turned out to be based on a series of faulty assumptions on our part.

Nobody would have approved the invasion of Iraq if the POTUS had tried this reasoning (of using Iraq as a proxy battleground against AQ) as his very first one.

Sorry for the empty replies. The Hamsters seem to be messing with my posts

104

[QUOTE=Chouan]

Let’s look back on the victories the coalition and Iraqi forces have achieved, on numerous fronts, over the past five years:

1.) Victory for human rights. We overthrew a vicious and dangerous dictator who threatened the safety of Middle East and America. Saddam Hussein was responsible for at least 500,000 civilian deaths, especially among the Kurds and Shi’ites (that number doesn’t include Iraqi deaths from the Iran-Iraq war, so the total number is probably much higher). Therefore, over his 24 years of rule, Saddam killed about 20,000 of his own people EVERY YEAR.

[/quote]

This really is a terrible analysis.

You don’t seem to know who put Saddam into power - the US did.

You don’t seem to know who sold Saddam weapons of mass destruction and encouraged him to kill about a million Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war - the US.

The US does **not ** have a human rights strategy for Iraq.

Also, extrapolating in the bizarre way you choose means ‘Saddam killed 40,000 Iranians every year’.
What on earth does that mean?

After the first Gulf War, the US hoped that the Iraqis would overthrow Saddam. There was a rebellion and Saddam killed masses of people. At this point the massacres stopped. **10 years later ** the US went in, claiming Saddam has WMD’s. The second war had nothing to do with overthrowing a dictator.
If you think Bush cares about human rights, when do you expect the US to free Tibet?

[QUOTE=Chouan]

It’s difficult to estimate how many American lives were saved by deposing Saddam.

[/quote]

No it isn’t. None.

[QUOTE=Chouan]

Remember Saddam hated America, so much so that he once tried to assassinate an American president! His hatred of the US, and his tendency to use chemical weapons on HIS OWN people, were a frightening combination.

[/quote]

He used chemical weapons, supplied by the US, twice. Once on Iran and once on a rebellion.

[QUOTE=Chouan]

Despite the naysayers, there was a good possibility Saddam would have collaborated with Al-Qaida–“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”–and would have provided them with the tools or instructions for making WMDs. After all, Saddam had demonstrated his support for terrorists in the past, especially Hamas. It’s not as big a leap as some people say for Saddam to have provided assistance to Al-Qaida because of their shared hatred of the US.

[/quote]

Perhaps the American Indians could have joined this coalition, claiming back the land stolen from them. And all those descendants of slaves would obviously fight on the side of Al-Qaeda. Harlem and Islam - united with a common cause… :rolleyes: :smack:

[QUOTE=Chouan]

Terrorist after terrorist has come to Iraq, determined to try his luck against the coalition and Iraqi security forces. And time after time, he’s been defeated and humiliated.

[/quote]

Have you got any evidence for this assertion?
Did Al-Qaeda advertise package trips to Iraq?
Or was the violence against the US because there are major religious rivals in Iraq and the US had no plan how to make Iraq safe?

[QUOTE=Chouan]

The biggest reason Bush led this coalition into Iraq was in the endeavor to completely transform the Middle East.

[/quote]

The biggest reason Bush went into Iraq was oil.
Perhaps you could outline how Bush has worked to solve the Palestinian question for example.

[QUOTE=Chouan]

By replacing Saddam’s dictatorship with a friendly, pro-Western democracy, we’ve taken a major stride towards eliminating Islamist terrorism. Besides seeing our military might, the Islamists now are watching in despair as Iraqis embrace a way of life that completely goes against their fascist dreams of a global caliphate.

[/quote]

Do you write political speeches? :stuck_out_tongue:
Iraq has been wrecked as a country since the invasion, with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. The ‘Government’ has little control and American troops are stuck in a quagmire.
There have been bombings all over Europe because of the Iraq invasion.

But most importantly of all, you claim that ‘the Taliban have been driven out of Afghanistan’.
You can search for threads on that debacle here, but:

  • the Taliban control most of Afghanistan
  • heroin production has massively increased to record levels since the US coalition invaded
  • there is no effort to find Bin Laden (who is in Afghanistan, not Iraq!)
105

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
Fair enough. How will we know when victory in Iraq has been achieved?
[/quote]

When there is a government stable enough to maintain order within it’s own borders and also to protect itself from outside invasion (with U.S. help would be OK, U.S. troops should not be involved in the day to day security of the nation). Such a government should (hopefully) be sympathetic to the west, but it must be able to do what it wants to do, even if the west may not like it. (South Korea really is the model here, but-big difference-South Korea faces a constant external threat. Iraq does not, at least, not in the same manner or to the same degree. Arguing that Syrian and Iranian attempts to destabilize Iraq are not external threats is foolish).

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
The Iraq war has already cost hundreds of billions of American dollars and thousands of American lives.
[/quote]

I really, really hope that you can take this as I mean it, because I am in no way taking away from the sacrifices that American servicemen and women have made and continue to make, but looking at America, as a whole, the way an accountant might…the cost of the war has been trivial, both monetarily and manpower wise. Please understand that I am not saying we shouldn’t be aware of the lives spent, that we shouldn’t consider that what we have achieved might not be worth those lives and money or anything like that. I understand these arguments, they are legitimate points for discussion, and the answer may not be “Yea, it was worth the cost”, but I see the argument “Look what this war has cost us! We can’t afford it!” over and over again. As a point of fact, we can. Weather or not we should is another matter.

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
You propose that we should keep doing what we’re doing for at least ten more years.
[/quote]

Actually, my position has always been “If we do this, it’s a 15-20 year commitment, we need to be aware of that before we start”, but since we have started, then yes, I would say that we should keep a presence in Iraq for ten or more years. I think the nature of that presence will change over time.

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
Do you think that there is any limit to the amount of lives and money the United States should sink into this venture?
[/QUOTE]

Theoretically, no, since we created this situation, we are responsible to see it through. Practically, I realize that there is a point beyond which the price of Iraq becomes too high. I don’t know that I could say off the cuff what that price would be, however.

106

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
On an entirely unrelated note, I’ve heard that al-Qaeda is building up a dangerous presence in multiplayer online RPGs. Seriously, they’ve got training camps in there and everything. Some authorities have already concluded that Saddam’s WMDs were smuggled out of Iraq into the enchanted land of Norrath in Everquest. Furthermore, there are definite verified rumors that Iran’s secret nuclear enrichment program is hidden somewhere in the World of Warcraft.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Chouan]

VC/Deadmines needs cleansing again, I see.
[/quote]

OP: I initially supported the war, back in '03. I believed Colin Powell, when he went before the UN to make the case of WMD’s in Iraq. I trusted the US government as knowing what the heck it’s doing. (Watching Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible stuff and Matt Damon’s Bourne Identity stuff makes you think that the US government is super talented and technical.) Now, I am not as confident.

Now, however, I feel stupid. Taken advantage of. But I don’t know how we can make things OK again. We invaded. We shouldn’t have, but the question now should be, what is the best way to clean up this mess we made?

Ummm. The US went in, and ousted Saddam, who, in retrospect, seemed to have kept Iraq stabilised. With Saddam gone, and the other factions are either too weak to hold on to rule, and/or are fighting amongst themselves as a result of the vacuum, and things don’t seem to rosy there right now. (Think Austria-Hungary of 1914, MidEast style. So many internal political players…)

People are still dying in numbers that should not be acceptable in a stable country, and the MidEast as a whole does not appear more stable now than it was 5 or more years ago.

I blame the current administration for not foreseeing this.

It appears the administration entire strategy was that Saddam’s supporters were a small minority, that the opponents of Saddam would take over, thank the US, and build a functioning, working government and country in a peacable fashion. This has not happened, and doesn’t appear to be going to in the foreseeable future.

Saddam’s connections with Al Qaida were incidental at most, and once again, it appears the U.S. policy maker(s) only saw what they wanted to see when they looked across the ocean.

Choosing to make Iraq (which was not the source of Al Qaida warriors) as a proxy battleground for the War On Terror doesn’t seem too fair to the people that actually have to live there, does it?

I think this “proxy battleground” reason was an attempt to put as best of a PR trial balloon (of a series of trial balloons) on a decision (to go to war) that turned out to be based on a series of faulty assumptions on our part.

Nobody would have approved the invasion of Iraq if the POTUS had tried this reasoning (of using Iraq as a proxy battleground against AQ) as his very first one.

Hamsters seem to be messing with my post

107

[QUOTE=glee]
You don’t seem to know who put Saddam into power - the US did.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t think that’s correct, but I’ll have my ignorance fought if you have a cite for that.

We backed him during the Iran/Iraq war, but I don’t believe we engineered his rise to power in the Ba’ath party.

108

Why are my posts empty? I am really trying to say something…

109

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Keep the discussion to the discussion, not characterizations of one’s opponent.
[/QUOTE]
What if we strongly suspect that the poster is not “trolling,” exactly, so much as deliberately, even professionally, shilling for a position? What if we believe this is a visitation from a hired mouthpiece — either a State Department apparatchik or a private think-tank propagandist — consciously engaged in the effort to rewrite (or, rather, pre-write) history by planting sound bites and slanted interpretations in the blogosphere? (And you know the Bush Admin and its ideological allies have staffs of people depositing self-serving loads like this on message boards, because it’s just too evil for them not to do.) It’s not precisely “trolling” as the term is usually understood; the typical self-absorbed chain-yanking troll doesn’t care what kind of attention he attracts as long as he attracts it. This is something else entirely, more pointed, more calculating, more external, I guess, for lack of a better term. So what then?

110

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
On an entirely unrelated note, I’ve heard that al-Qaeda is building up a dangerous presence in multiplayer online RPGs. Seriously, they’ve got training camps in there and everything. Some authorities have already concluded that Saddam’s WMDs were smuggled out of Iraq into the enchanted land of Norrath in Everquest. Furthermore, there are definite verified rumors that Iran’s secret nuclear enrichment program is hidden somewhere in the World of Warcraft.
[/quote]

VC/Deadmines needs cleansing again, I see.

OP: I initially supported the war, back in '03. I believed Colin Powell, when he went before the UN to make the case of WMD’s in Iraq. I trusted the US government as knowing what the heck it’s doing. (Watching Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible stuff and Matt Damon’s Bourne Identity stuff makes you think that the US government is super talented and technical.) Now, I am not as confident.

Now, however, I feel stupid. Taken advantage of. But I don’t know how we can make things OK again. We invaded. We shouldn’t have, but the question now should be, what is the best way to clean up this mess we made?

Ummm. The US went in, and ousted Saddam, who, in retrospect, seemed to have kept Iraq stabilised. With Saddam gone, and the other factions are either too weak to hold on to rule, and/or are fighting amongst themselves as a result of the vacuum, and things don’t seem to rosy there right now. (Think Austria-Hungary of 1914, MidEast style. So many internal political players…)

People are still dying in numbers that should not be acceptable in a stable country, and the MidEast as a whole does not appear more stable now than it was 5 or more years ago.

I blame the current administration for not foreseeing this.

It appears the administration entire strategy was that Saddam’s supporters were a small minority, that the opponents of Saddam would take over, thank the US, and build a functioning, working government and country in a peacable fashion. This has not happened, and doesn’t appear to be going to in the foreseeable future.

Saddam’s connections with Al Qaida were incidental at most, and once again, it appears the U.S. policy maker(s) only saw what they wanted to see when they looked across the ocean.

Choosing to make Iraq (which was not the source of Al Qaida warriors) as a proxy battleground for the War On Terror doesn’t seem too fair to the people that actually have to live there, does it?

I think this “proxy battleground” reason was an attempt to put as best of a PR trial balloon (of a series of trial balloons) on a decision (to go to war) that turned out to be based on a series of faulty assumptions on our part.

Nobody would have approved the invasion of Iraq if the POTUS had tried this reasoning (of using Iraq as a proxy battleground against AQ) as his very first one.

Hamsters seem to be messing with my posts

111

Its a common confusion - Satan, Great Satan, its easy to get them mixed up.

112

University students in Iraq before the invasion were 50 percent women. Women worked and most wore western clothes and could drive and live fairly normally. Baghdad was a beautiful city and is a mess. A million Baghdad professionals left . They can not maintain and run whatever projects we actually did build.
My neighbor was jailed by Saddam. He said it was like living with a crazy uncle. He was a nut . The life in Baghdad is much worse. There are walls separating the peoples. It is not settled by any definition. before the war ,the first question was not ,Are you Sunni? People intermarried. Now they are at war with each other. Neighborhoods that were mixed are now not so. You wake in the morning and find a bullet and a note on the door. You leave or risk getting killed. Hardly my definition of a success. And they have a long ugly scary future sorting these things out.
No water,lights etc for how long? This is a success. The bloggers are hit and miss with the availability of electricity.

113

[QUOTE=Weirddave]
When there is a government stable enough to maintain order within it’s own borders and also to protect itself from outside invasion (with U.S. help would be OK, U.S. troops should not be involved in the day to day security of the nation). Such a government should (hopefully) be sympathetic to the west, but it must be able to do what it wants to do, even if the west may not like it.
[/QUOTE]
I am not clearly understanding your criteria. This is a description of Iraq as it was under Saddam Hussein, isn’t it? Except that they weren’t able to defend themselves against invasion.

114

We have achieved victory on all fronts: the enemy is us! A true Republican triumph!

115

I am shocked and appalled by the amount of misinformation that has been spread in this thread.

Dinsdale claims that the United States has spent $500 billion on the war in Iraq. Brainglutton says that the death toll of the Iraq war was 655,000 people.

In fact, the cost was 1.3 trillion dollars, and it may rise considerably in the future, while the death toll stands at 1,220,580 as of last September.

116

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
I am not clearly understanding your criteria. This is a description of Iraq as it was under Saddam Hussein, isn’t it? Except that they weren’t able to defend themselves against invasion.
[/QUOTE]

You asked me how we would know victory has been achieved, and I answered. What’s not clear?

117

[QUOTE=Cervaise]
What if we strongly suspect that the poster is not “trolling,” exactly, so much as deliberately, even professionally, shilling for a position? What if we believe this is a visitation from a hired mouthpiece — either a State Department apparatchik or a private think-tank propagandist — consciously engaged in the effort to rewrite (or, rather, pre-write) history by planting sound bites and slanted interpretations in the blogosphere? (And you know the Bush Admin and its ideological allies have staffs of people depositing self-serving loads like this on message boards, because it’s just too evil for them not to do.) It’s not precisely “trolling” as the term is usually understood; the typical self-absorbed chain-yanking troll doesn’t care what kind of attention he attracts as long as he attracts it. This is something else entirely, more pointed, more calculating, more external, I guess, for lack of a better term. So what then?
[/QUOTE]

Got a new tin-foil cap for Christmas, did you?

118

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Is it? I don’t have any dead tree dictionaries to hand, but the online ones I consulted appear only to mention led as a variant of lead.
[/QUOTE]
Take another look; you’ll find that led is the past tense of lead, not a variant. That’s been the case for at least the 42 years I’ve been literate.

tomndebb, sorry about my psych ward joke; bad road to go down in Great Debates. We have to be able to deal with every poster in a civil manner, regardless of how much at odds with reality the statements involved might be.

119

My apologies, everyone.

My posts were empty because of a screwed up attempt to use the /quote feature.

The hamsters at fault are the ones that power my braincase, not the SDMB’s equipment. :slight_smile:

120

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Got a new tin-foil cap for Christmas, did you?
[/QUOTE]
Careful; I just got a mild reprimand for doing that.