No, invading Iraq was not a bad decision. In fact, removing Saddam was one of Bush’s better decisions. The mistake was to stay there afterwards. We should have left within weeks of bagging Saddam.
…so that he could have been replaced by any number of equally despotic Ba’ath apparatchiks. What a silly idea.
Cite?
Since we’d destroyed the Ba’ath party, and I believe that Iraq would have disintegrated along racial lines a la Yugoslavia - it still may - I cannot agree with your insulting comment.
I took your post at face value: you said “We should have left within weeks of bagging Saddam”. Nothing about destruction of the Ba’ath party or removing Uday or Qusay or Ali or any of the others. Hence my “insulting” comment.
As for your prediction that removal of power structures would have caused balkanisation - I’m rather horrified that you feel this would be a desirable outcome, for which you prescribe no intervention.
What he said.
Except maybe, Jimmy Carter’s decision to let the Iranian militants off easy when they violated international law by seizing the American Embassy in 1979. It’s possible that the last 27 years would have been significantly different if he had treated an act of war as an act of war.
Slightly different perspective: getting involved in WWI.
This was two separate fuck-ups: getting militarily involved on Britain and France’s side turned what could have been a stalemate, one that so wore out the participants that they would have finally given up on intra-European wars, into a one-sided victory, which led to fuck-up number two, going to Versailles after the Germans de facto agreed to the Fourteen Points as a condition to get them to the negotiating table, and then abandoning the Fourteen Points at a time when Wilson pretty much could dictate terms (see here for Keynes’ devastating indictment of Wilson) , and allowing the vengeful Versailles Treaty to get pushed through.
All of the above set us all on the road to WWII.
And of course, WWI set the template for all of the subsequent fuckups, including Iraq, right down to the “promoting democracy” bull.
So, what are the other contestants, and how do they fare?
Vietnam: way ahead in terms of both U.S. and local casualties. But the fall of Vietnam didn’t have any direct downstream consequences for us - we just didn’t have anything to do with that corner of the world for quite a few years.
As long as we need oil, every hiccup in the Middle East will continue to be important to us. And Iraq and its neighbors include four of the world’s biggest oil producers. I’ve got to go with Iraq being a bigger blunder than Vietnam.
War of 1812: the lasting repercussions of the sack of swampy Washington were…? That’s a serious question; if there were any, I’d like to know. But I can’t remember a single book I’ve read about the period - history, biography, whatever - that suggested that that event had more than passing consequences.
Now, if the British had grabbed a chunk of defendable territory - the Delmarva Peninsula, say - and held it for some years, using it to be a thorn in our side, then the War of 1812 would have rivaled the Iraq war in BlunderDome.
Failure to contain Hitler, or even earlier, our acquiescence in the French demand that the Germans pay the stiff reparations whose consequences made Germany ripe for a demagogue: these were both Western blunders, and are certainly just as big if not bigger than Iraq. But without a better recollection of how able the U.S. was to change either one, it’s hard to call it an American blunder.
The French had had to pay heavy reparations to Germany after the War of 1870, and they were itching to do unto Germany as Germany had done unto them; it’s doubtful that they could have been talked out of it, and the failure of the U.S. to ratify the Versailles Treaty apparently didn’t affect the reparations.
And with respect to containing Hitler, how were we going to do this? Were we going to position troops in sovereign countries bordering Germany in the 1930s? With what army? This was less a blunder than the reality that prior to WWII, America didn’t have a tradition of maintaining a very large military, and wasn’t going to get involved with Europe’s wars unless and until it was absolutely necessary: when FDR tried in mid-1941 to extend the military draft passed the year before, the renewal squeaked through the House by a single vote. How much support would Roosevelt have found if, in 1936 or thereabouts, he’d advocated raising an army to contain Germany - even if we hadn’t still been in the middle of the Great Depression?
IOW, there was no American decision, as such, not to contain Hitler. It was simply way beyond the realm of contemplation. So I don’t see this as a BlunderDome contestant.
I was still writing you posted, pantom, so I didn’t see your post before posting mine. Thanks for chipping away at my ignorance concerning the WWI settlement. Our failure to head off the French demand for reparations definitely belongs in the discussion, and barring better arguments for Iraq or against Versailles, I’d have to lean towards it as our single biggest foreign policy blunder.
One not mentioned yet, which was bigger than Vietnam, was the statement that South Korea was not in our sphere of influence (or something like that) which led directly to the Korean War. That was a real blunder - pure stupidity. I don’t think it is worse than the WW I one (and I’m not sure US influence would have made much of a difference) but if North Korea uses a nuke, it will look much worse.
Getting into WW I was stupid, but not nearly as stupid as WW I for Europe, and it increased our influence greatly at relatively small cost. So I don’t think that one makes my list.
I don’t think the War of 1812 qualifies. The US did gain some things in that war. Alabama and south Georgia were opened up to settlement (at the expense of the Creek nation). We put a crimp in British intrigues among Indian tribes. We gained a measure of military respect with the defense of Baltimore and the resounding victory at New Orleans. The sack of Washington was just a temporary setback.
Of the blunders mentioned, Vietnam generated the highest American body count (so far). But soldiers left on the field is not the only measure of a forign policy blunder. You could fairly argue that with Vietnam we lost that battle, but then won the Cold War. With Iraq, in addition to military casualties, we have suffered a loss of prestige, a loss of moral authority, and a loss of respect for our intelligence operations; we have destabilized the Middle East; we have dropped the ball in Afghanistan; we have strengthened theocratic rule in Iran; and we may have created an entire new generation of angry terrorists determined to bring violent death to America’s shores. The full price of this blunder has not yet been tallied.
Speaking of blunders and Iraq, you may recall that Bush the Elder is the bungler whose envoy inadvertently signaled Saddam that the US wouldn’t respond militarily to an invasion of Kuwait. That blunder has had a cascading effect which has led us to our present conundrum.
As has been pointed out, the decision to invade Iraq was one decision. All of the other things listed here are composed of a series of decisions. Take WWI for example. The real problem there was the series of bad decisions that were made after the war was over. Possibly the real problem was that, during the war, no attempt was made to thrash out among the allies what was the end game to be.
I think that if the question is restricted to what single decision has, or will, result in the worst effects on the US future, Iraq is at least in the top two and I can’t think of what the other one would be.
I guess I’m missing something here. Why is it important one way or the other that it was or was not a single decision? Is the implication that somehow, if the decision is collective, its ok, whether its worse or not? I seriously don’t get it.
-XT
No it doesn’t make Vietnam any better because it was a series of bum decisions. But I took the question to mean what single decision standing all by itself was the worst. You can interpret it another way if that suits your thinking.
I might add that GW, having made that horrible decision followed it up, as has been his wont, by lackadaisical follow through and careless execution.
Why are you horrified? Iraq is an artificial state, created by the British. It was already splitting up before we intervened, with the Kurds in the north and the marsh Arabs in the south. If we’d left shortly after bagging Saddam, it would have been a powerful message to other countries to not interfere.
But if N Korea hadn’t invaded the south in 1950 theres nothing to say they would not be just as paranoid and autocratic (and have just as much need for WMD) fifty years later as they are now.
Some terrible things have happened as the result of other strategic decisions, but there is no one decision that comes close to the Iraq invasion. True if the US had followed a completely path before, during and after WW2 its possible things could have turned out better, and both WW2 and the cold war avoided, but you cannot point out a single US decision that could have changed things. Other things (1812, Vietnam, etc) don’t come close in terms of long term effects IMO
But in terms of the war on terror (or Global Struggle Against Extremism or whatever its called this week) it would be huge defeat. The kind of Yugoslavia-style blood bath that would undoubtable resulted (and could still result) would have been exactly what Al Qiada were after. The Sunni regions would undoubtably ended up in the hand of Sunni Islamist extremists (extremists almost always end up in charge during these kind of situations). We would have replaced a secular totalitarian regime which was no friend of Al Qiada with a Taliban-style regime in the heart of the middle east.
The irony of the statement is so strong you could make an indestructible car out of it.
Stranger
With what little appeal to authority I can bring by having a BS in history I’ll offer that judging any current event in a total historical context is a mugs game. There’s simply now way to honestly evaluate a current event in proper historical perspective. Ask again about Iraq in fifty years and we’ll see where it ranks.
I may be in minority here but it was generally my opinion that the War of 1812 cost the US most of Canada. I think Britain’s Canadian territories were ripe for voluntary annexation during the first half of the 19th century and that, eventually, they would have petitioned to join the United States as territories and eventually acheived statehood. Instead of using peaceful persuasion Hamiltion and his expansionists tried to use the Napoleonic Wars to just take them and got our heads handed to us. And the further unification of what I might call ‘Canadian Consciousness’ with Laura Secord and others as anti-US rallying points made it impossible for those sympathetic to joining the Union to get any traction.
So downstream the difference has been a halving of the size of the United States and all that comes with it. I realize that this is likely viewed by our Canadian posters as a good thing, and I wouldn’t presume to disagree with them on the issue. But in terms of US foreign policy costs having Canada in the fold for the last 200 years would be better for the US than not.
I would also offer that the War of 1812 is what launched a viable political career for Andrew Jackson and I’ve always been less than impressed with his Presidency. Make of that what you will.
That’s the best thing about history! The long you have to work with the greater the effects of ANYTHING!
Plus, this way, there’s no need to put the lives of American soldiers on the line for an ungrateful people, and very few of them will die. Zip in, bag Saddam, bug out. If, after that, a lot of bloodthirsty savages want to slaughter one other, and one another’s families, and burn down their own country, well, the civilized world is a lot better off having that many fewer bloodthirsty savages around, innit? Besides, all that killin’ looks really cool on the tee vee, in between Fear Factor and the Lingerie Bowl. Win win, baby!
You know which of our mutual acquaintances also has a history degree. 
I don’t think that much time is always necessary. As pantom’s link to excerpts from Keynes’ Economic Consequences of the Peace reminds us, sometimes the outlines, if not the details, are clear right away.
Can’t say one way or the other about whether or not Canada would have been our 51st through xxth states, absent the War of 1812, but if so, I’m going to regard that as a good thing. I don’t think it reduces American world influence by much to not be everything north of the Rio Grande.
And it’s good for us to have a counterweight of sorts in North America, a different model to how a geographically and culturally similar nation might act. The America-Is-Perfect Club has an easy enough time of it as it is, even with Canada as chronic example of how we really could do things better.