I learned that if the US is involved in a war, that’s all that will be on TV for months at a time.
Only because the US was enforcing a no fly zone after some time after we booted Saddam out of Kuwait. Before that, I think it’s fair to say there was a religious/ethnic war going on.
Um, not exactly? Maybe the Shi’ite insurgents thought they were fighting a religious war, but Saddam’s regime wasn’t sectarian like the Saudis were and are.
Saddam was fighting al Queda’s insurgency at the relevant time.
The Republican party is morally, fiscally, and socially irresponsible, and is not fit to govern at any level.
That’s what I learned.
Naive idealism, gross ignorance of a situation, and blatant denial of reality lead to bad results.
It is for at least one person.
I learned that there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns. I still have no idea what to do with that knowledge.
Umm, holy fuck,
Whose policies do you blame for the problems that
the U.S. is currently facing in Iraq: the policies of
Bush Obama Neither/ Unsure
Both
11/27 - 12/1/15
42% 39% 17% 1%
5/29-31/15
43% 44% 11% 1%
There was a time when people blamed Obama more for the problems in Iraq? I mean, what kind of question is that?
I know. Completely ridiculous. Everyone knows it was Hillary who created ISIS.
**What lesson did you learn from the Iraq war?
**
Let’s rephrase the question to be a little more accurate: What lesson did you NOT learn from the Iraq war?
The same damn one we failed to learn in Vietnam: don’t commit military forces unless you are willing to use them correctly. The military’s job is to kill people and blow shit up until the other side surrenders.
I’d go further than that. A military doesn’t run on its front line troops alone. It needs a base of support. So don’t start what on its face appears to require a *decades-long *occupation without preparing the electorate for that. Remaking Iraq would not be quick, but Bush’s administration tried to sucker us into empire with the false claim that it would be a short-term project. People were fed up with the occupation within three years.
Oh, and once you move away from the initial invasion, it’s not really about forcing a surrender, but maintaining an occupation. Different requirements: more military police, and less Marine assault.
That was another real problem that supporters of the war had - since it was a war, they thought it was for the purpose of conquest and subjugation, not liberation. But that’s how it was sold, as a war to *liberate *the Iraqi people from Saddam.
Who did you think was the “other side” and when were they defeated?
No it’s not. The militaries job is to enforce national policy as determined by properly constituted political leadership. Occupying and pacifying areas had been a “ correct” use of a military since well always. The ultimate failure in Iraq was theirs.
The military of a superpower was unable to enforce the National will on two small countries, that should be the cause for panic. Does not seem to.
The focus on whether or not Saddam had WMD’s is completely misplaced. Firstly, in hindsight it is very clear from the warmongers’ own words that WMD’s were never a key issue in their bloodlust to invade.
But more importantly, most people did assume that Saddam’s Iraq did have “weapons of mass destruction” for the simple reason that this term is very broad.
Mustard gas, a low-tech “weapon” used in World War I, is considered a weapon of mass destruction. Do the war enthusiasts think they would have been vindicated had mustard gas been found? In fact, the sanctions in place against Saddam were so effective that even producing mustard gas was beyond his capability. Given this, the idea that he might have had a serious nuclear weapons program is absurd. An intelligence agency that thinks a country incapable of producing mustard gas is capable of nuclear weapons is no intelligence agency — it is a stupidity agency. Of course we now know that the CIA was never this stupid, that the fears of WMD’s were stoked by liars led by Dick Cheney.
Like most observers, I assumed that Saddam did have mustard gas, and probably more serious weapons. The opposition to the invasion by myself and many others was never about the presence or absence of mustard gas (or “WMDs” more generally); it was about the huge risks associated with an invasion and its aftermath.
Outside of vapourising civilian populations with nuclear bombs, has the USA demonstrated that ability?
It was clear in foresight, too. Some people just wanted their war.
Not really. There were many, many of us, enough to disqualify the word “most”, who thought there might be some encrusted barrels of something overlooked out in the desert somewhere, but nothing that constituted a weapon anymore by any reasonable definition, and nothing that constituted an existential threat to anyone who wasn’t already there.
The claim that "mos"t of us *were *fooled is as interesting as the broadening of the definition of WMD into meaninglessness. Fortunately we rarely hear anymore that Saddam was behind 9/11, but rarely is not never.
Several times in Latin America. During the Westward expansion. In Europe in 1940’s. In Lebanon in the fifties. In Haiti in 1994.
We clearly have a different understanding of the past.
I was in Iraq for a lot of it. I learned that America is as capable of shocking cruelty equal to that of any other nation, but also has this perverse capacity for willful ignorance that makes the actions of the US the fault of its victims.
Oh, come on, now. We had Batista, Somoza and Pinochet – delightful examples of making Latin America more stable. The NA Genocide worked out for the best for everyone. The Iron Curtain was a tremendous success. And Lebanon has been the model of stability for decades. We have the best foreign policy of anyone. Bigly.