I have strongly opposed attack on Iraq from day one, so I’m biased against any Cheneyesque or Rumsfeldian spin about how good this war is for whole world.
But, I think it’s fair to step back and consider **the good things ** that will result from this war. I’ve come up with six reasons why the war is good.
Saddam is gone.
The people of Iraq can vote.
If Iraq stays friendly, the US will likely have easy access to Iraq’s huge oil reserves.
Future terrorists will know we mean business if they attack us again. Osama didn’t like the US air base in Saudi Arabia or American support of Isreal. Now they have American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. What will we do next time?
A new generation of Americans (and a myopic older generation) gets to learn some of the wonderful lessons of Vietnam all over again. That is, dont get into a war that you dont have too be in, dont assume its going to be a cake-walk, dont get involved in a guerilla war where time is on the side of the opponent, and dont get intangled into a conflict where you have no exit plan.
Its going to be **really hard ** for Bush to start a new unprovoked war. Aside from his hard core 35% Bush-loving Republican crowd, no one will believe his justification for war, and no one will think its going to be a fun watch-it-on-TV Gulf War-type slam dunk.
Hollywood has a brand new setting for dozens, if not hundreds of action-packed, morally ambiguous war movies. Let’s face it: we were getting a bit tired of Vietnam flicks, weren’t we?
Yup, good points. I was for invasion, but points 5 and 6 I agree are important. Wars need to be politically hard to wage, and there should always be healthy debate and opposition.
I will quibble with the last bit of point 5: they do have an exit strategy. They’ve won the war (hadn’t done that in Vietnam), so now it’s train local police, set up a democracy, and then move most of the troops out once the first two parts deal with the insurgency. It may be slow, or it may be doomed. But I still think it’s an exit strategy, unlike the “we’ll just wait in this here southern half forever without ever invading the enemies’ own land” plan in Vietnam.
I think there’s a (real) 7th point:
American influence in the Middle East has increased, and may (just may) provide key pressure to motivate reform in the authoritarian governments that rule there. Hence the cursory efforts at democracy in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Syria might also have felt a little more pressure on the subject of Lebanon due to a nearby US army, and the Lebanese people may have felt more confident about open defiance. (Maybe debatable, but interesting to consider.)
Of course, this point could be argued to be an increase in low-level American-style hands-off “imperialism”, so maybe it’s not a good candidate for a pure “good” list.
Great points but you forget the main reason we went in - control of the second largest reservoir of oil on the planet. And even if Iraq ends up being a truly independent nation in the end (i.e. if we don’t end up with direct control of the oil), the oil won’t be in the hands of someone who hates us.
One good result. Let’s hope the government to emerge eventually won’t be just as bad.
Also true. But the way this has come about did not help the reputation of democracy. As a German I consider it to have been a very good thing for German democracy that the reason for the Allies fighting and eventually invading Germany in WWI II was not bringing us democracy (but , rather, collective self-defence).
I don’t think the alignment of Iraq, friendly to the US or otherwise, matters for that. One, it’s not in an oil producing country’s interest to risk weaning the US off oil by unduly raising prices. Two, even if Iraq (inimical to the US and with its oil industry built up again) followed a policy of not selling one drop of oil to the US, Iraq would sell its oil to other countries, at market prices, and the US would buy the oil that the other countries don’t need, also at market prices. Aren’t oil supplies fungible, apart from the cost of retooling refineries for different sorts of crude oil?
If this reasoning had any traction in militant circles I’d expect to read media reports of militant Islamists denouncing ObL: “If only ObL hadn’t …, the infidels wouldn’t have …”. Instead he still seems to be thought of as a hero. Also, this conflates the Afghanistan intervention (which took a refuge away from terrorists) with the Iraq invasion (which gave them a recruiting cause, a training ground and, if they are lucky, a hope to establish in part of Iraq what they lost in Afghanistan). Wouldn’t they welcome more of the latter? There are no countries left to justifiedly attack on the US’s/the West’s part, so an unjustified attack would have to do.
Maybe. Which traps did the Vietnam lessons help the US avoiding, in between Vietnam and Iraq?
Maybe - depends on who gets to tell the accepted narrative in the next few years. Are you sure the “Syria ate my homework” story has no chance of eventually gaining acceptance?
But you forgot the single most important thing! The shrill radical lefty propaganda about alleged “WMD” has been proven groundless. Many posters have pointed out the wildly hysterical wailing from such as Clinton, Clinton, and Kerry to the effect that Saddams possession of bad mojo threatened our national security. The Leader, in the calmly deliberative style which has become his trademark, set about to resolve those issues with simple, direct action, and has proven such claims to be groundless.
Let us take a moment to reflect on the wisdom and prescience of The Leader.
Perhaps you could consider who first put him into power and sold him the weapons.
The people of Iraq can vote.
Democracy is a good thing. Is the US going to remove other violent dictators, or was this just about oil?
If Iraq stays friendly, the US will likely have easy access to Iraq’s huge oil reserves.
*Ah yes, it was about oil. Funnily this reason seems to be a good thing for the US, not especially for Iraq. **How many Iraqi civilians died so the US could get its oil?[/**I]
Future terrorists will know we mean business if they attack us again. Osama didn’t like the US air base in Saudi Arabia or American support of Isreal. Now they have American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. What will we do next time?
*Sorry, don’t understand. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Do you mean "every oil producing country in the World knows the US means business and will invade them *on any pretext ** if there is a threat to disrupt oil supplies to America"?
A new generation of Americans (and a myopic older generation) gets to learn some of the wonderful lessons of Vietnam all over again. That is, dont get into a war that you dont have too be in, dont assume its going to be a cake-walk, dont get involved in a guerilla war where time is on the side of the opponent, and dont get intangled into a conflict where you have no exit plan.
How long before the US gets into another such conflict? Bush obviously didn’t learn the lesson of Vietnam - why should any future President?
Its going to be **really hard ** for Bush to start a new unprovoked war. Aside from his hard core 35% Bush-loving Republican crowd, no one will believe his justification for war, and no one will think its going to be a fun watch-it-on-TV Gulf War-type slam dunk.
The electorate has a short memory. Just announce that it’s part of the War on Terror (or even drugs?!) and in the troops and bombs will go.
If Iraq is not free to sell their oil to the highest bidder, even if that is China or North Korea, then we have failed to bring democracy to Iraq. And if Iraq can sell to whomever they want, how does this improve America’s oil situation?
Is the US’s support of democracy contingent on invading every dictatorship in the world? Do you support the invasion of dictatorships, but will accept none if the US can’t invade all of them? Seems either contradictory or odd.
Decisions regarding the Middle East always involve oil. It’s wrapped up in everything that goes on there. And you can’t say Iraq was just about oil; if nothing else, unless you’re in complete denial, you must agree it was at least about oil and an aggressive dictator, Saddam. And is every bad regime the US helped support in the past now off-limits to the US? Does it have to stick to its now regrettable Cold War decisions? Odd again.
You seem unable to distinguish between ‘one’ and ‘every’. The US has attempted to ‘establish democracy’ in just one country. This was not announced as the aim of the invasion, which was the non-existent WMD’s (remeber them?).
The US has shown no interest in freeing Tibet, Zimbabwe, Burma etc. In case you aren’t aware, here’s a report on Burma:
‘Burma is ruled by one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world; a dictatorship charged by the United Nations with a “crime against humanity” for its systematic abuses of human rights, and condemned internationally for refusing to transfer power to the legally elected Government of the country – the party led by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.’
So here we have a democratic Government, led by a Nobel winner, overthrown by a brutal military dictatorship. There is nternational condemnation, human rights abuse and it would be a slam dunk to get UN authority to resotre democracy.
Strangely I can’t recall Bush preparing to invade.
Of course Burma’s military dictatorship sells it’s oil to the West.
And you still think Bush cares about democracy?
You seem in denial yourself about Iraq. What ‘aggression’ had Saddam committed in the last 5 years? Who installed him as a dictator and sold him the WMD’s used to massacre first Iranian troops, then his own population?
You also seem confused about the Cold War. When Donald Rumsfeld was pictured shaking hands with Saddam on his US arms sales tour, what had that got to do with the Soviet Union? Where is Rumsfeld now, anyway? :rolleyes:
When you read about massacres (Ethiopia / Eritrea; Rwanda), do you think ‘soon US troops will arrive’, or do you look to see if the country is an oil producer?
I assume you mean the US by this? Do you have a cite that the US initially put Saddam in power…IIRC he siezed power mostly on his own (well, with the aid of his party I suppose). As to the weapons, the US was one of several powers (including the Soviets/Russia and France IIRC) who sold Saddam weapons. Also, one must looks that the context of WHY we sold Saddam weapons.
It was certainly about oil…though not necessarily all about IRAQI oil.
Its not just a good thing for the US to secure the oil in the ME. As to whether or not it was good for the Iraqi people, probably not…but then it wasn’t exactly beer and roses for them under Saddam either, especially with the sanctions.
I think you actually do understand that things are a bit more complex than this.
Oh, I think we learned lessons from Vietnam, one’s we didn’t repeat in Iraq. We’ve now learned a whole NEW set of hard lessons in Iraq. I’d say it will be a long time before we have another foreign adventure though, one where we certainly won’t make the same mistakes as we have in Iraq…and one where inevitably we will make a whole new set of fuckups.
Actually I disagree with you here as well. I think the electorate has a selectively short/long memory depending on the subject. In this case, I believe the public was still thinking more about the first gulf war and how that went (and expecting this time to be just as easy and rapid…it was until we got to the occupying part) and not about long term type conflicts like Vietnam. However, now that we’ve stuck our crank into the hornets nest its going to be THIS conflict that will shape public opinion when the next politician attempts to stir up shit. Think about how reluctant and edgy Americans were to endorse foreign adventures after Vietnam…took us quite a while and a stunning victory in the first Gulf War to get over that. I think it will take a long time before we get Iraq out of our system at this point, reguardless of how it ultimately turns out.
I was against the Iraq war and still am. BUT Saddam was a monster who needed to go. If everything turns out great and those who support the war turn out to be right, well I’ve had to eat crow before.
The U.S. had a long-term strategic need to establish a presence in an oil-rich middle-eastern nation and Saudi Arabia is too problematic. As China’s demand for oil grows, the Americans can now exert considerable influence over international supply which will prove useful if China starts to put pressure on Taiwan, or doesn’t put enough pressure on North Korea.
More oil for Americans? Where’d y’get a dopey like that?
Remains to be seen whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I’d like to see some figures on Saddamn’s per annum killing of his citizens versus the current per annum death toll, plus some serious stats on quality of life, etc. I suspect it’s a mild net gain so far, but I also suspect there’ a serious risk the pending Shiite theocracy/civil war is likely to be at least as bad as Saddam.
For a new Shiite theocracy/dictatorship. Hooray for democracy.
Saddam was already selling us as much oil as he could get away with, and would have been thrilled to open up the spigots at market prices. Now, we buy even less Iraqi oil than before because all the infrastructure is blown to shit on a routine basis.
That only makes the terrorists (“violent extremists”?) happy, since one of their goals is inciting a great apocalyptic war between Islam and the West.
Holy crap, it hurts when you shoot a nail gun into your eyeball. But at least I’ve learned that lesson!
If you mean that in terms of manpower and logistics, you’re right. The armed forces are pretty overstretched, making a comparable-size task pretty damn unlikely. If you mean that in terms of political ability, I’d remind you that both chambers of Congress and the federal judiciary are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the GOP. Bush can do whatever he wants.
A few more… some tongue on cheek… “good parts” about the war in Iraq:
Americans are regretting having gas guzzling SUVs
High Gas prices are giving alternative energy sources a new viability…
I think the world needed some jolting from the US as a benign superpower thing. The Cold War is over… and so are the ideologies of the past.
There are a few more “heroes” for americans… also know as wounded or dead soldiers. It seems that every generation needs a conflict of their own. So I disagree with the OP that much will be learnt.
Prostitution near mainland USA military bases whose troops were deployed abroad is down :eek: (mean I know)
Just for the record (as the OP)- I dont really believe 100% in any of the 6 “good things” I posted. I still think the war is a huge mistake, both to our treasury and our international reputation. These were mearly the only reasons I could come up with that could be good.
