My bad. Re-reading that post I can see that he was linking the two. I misunderstood the “side effect” part.
Just another example along the same lines of the principle that having conservatives who despise government itself probably won’t be very good at actually running it.
People who scoff at nation-building will probably suck at it if hey end up trying to do it. Why would you have put much thought into something you think is dumb? Iraq was basically an exercise in tossing aside or ignoring every major lesson about nation building and democratization we’d learned over the years and basically making it up from scratch. This sort of “I don’t need to know anything: I’m in charge!” attitude has affected other things as well: for instance the whole court system that the SC just said boo too. As many JAG’s pointed out, the guy who came up with the policy (Addington?) seemed completely ignorant of many of the actual laws and protocols governing military justice. But he wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to point this out, and indeed mostly developed the entire process in secret, surprising even people like Colin Powell when he came out with it.
Please explain what Iraq had to do with Islamic fundamentalism.
Funny wording, I take this to mean that I.F. was not about to seize power in Iraq, but now they can due to the US taking out S.H. Which really says nothing very poorly. I.F. opperated in Iraq underground under S.H. and S.H. either couldn’t do anythign about it or didn’t want to. Don’t you remember Al-Zarqawi, what has it been 2 weeks since we killed him? Guess where is was - in Iraq; guess what he was a I.F. terrorists leader.
Good question, and a fair one. Well we can look it in terms of total lives, would more people be dead if we didn’t invade, killed under Sadam H., or via the war. We could look at the hit to I. F. terrorism we made by killing Al-Zarqawi.
From
From
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-06-15-raid-blueprint_x.htm
I guess you missed the news about the iraqi elections, actually there were 2 IIRC, perhaps purple fingers will refresh your memory.
This is a pretty old talking point and can no longer stand, the Al-Zarqawi documents have foudn that I.F. Terrorism was/is in Iraq and I.F. Terrorism is loosing.
We did this already, S.H. used that to get chemical waepons and use them. So it didn’t work, why do you want to repeat this?
Darn right I was linking the 2!
In short by allowing it to operate underground, instead of stomping it out.
There’s a few things you seem to be unaware of, kanicbird. Good reading material:
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Zarqawi wasn’t “Al Qaeda” until after the US invasion. He changed the name of his outfit then as a recruiting gesture.
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Before the invasion, his camp was in the northern no-fly zone - an area controlled militarily not by Saddam but by us. Us.
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Bush, or perhaps it was just Cheney or Rumsfeld, cancelled plans to get Zarqawi in an airstrike during the runup to war, right at the time his presence was being extolled by them as proof of Saddam’s sponsorship of terrorism.
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The insurgency has now blossomed to such an extent that he didn’t matter much anymore anyway.
Didn’t work? Iraq fought the largest and most powerful Islamic fundamentalist state in a brutal eight year war. As far as hurting the cause of Islamic revolution, it work splendidly.
Of course my suggestion was facicious, there was then and would certainly be now a large bad side in bankrolling another Saddam led Persian War (further WMD development included). But my point was that far from being in cahoots with Islamic fundementalist, Saddam hated them, both in his own country and in his neighbors. Indeed, while a bastard and certainly deserving of being toppled, I’d argue that Saddam was the leading opponent of the Islamic Revolution during his time. Attacking him to strike a blow against Islamic Fundementalism is like attacking Stalin in '42 to stop Nazism.
Thanks for the linky ElvisL1ves, but forgive me if I take The Weekly Standard with a great big fat grain of salt, but even so from your linky:
Sounds like Clinton’s plan to get Bin Ladan, Which failed miserably and to this day is a symbol of US incompetence and unwillingness to commit troops.
That had nothing to do with committing troops.
All references to Clinton aside, you can’t seriously be still equating the invasion of Iraq with fighting Islamic terrorism. Even if we include Zarqawi (which is highly debatable), do we invade a country, sacrifice 2,600 of our soliders and 30,000 civilians to get one guy? I certainly hope that isn’t our policy.
See: Bush Doctrine
Short answer: Yes we do
Is Bush’s failure to get Bin Laden also a symbol of incompetence? Or a declaration of resolve?
I don’t think much of the Bush doctrine, but that is a pretty slanderous summary of it, kanicbird. From wikipedia:
It’s not about sacrificing 32,600 innocents to get one guy. Zarqawi could have only dreamed of killing so many people. It would have been the height of moral stupidity for us to do the same just to stop him.
Failure? When did we stop looking for Bin Laden? AFAIK he is still being hunted down hike the dog he is, hiding in a cave somewhere, totally ineffective as a terrorists leader in the mean time.
That was my short answer, and getting the ‘big guy’ Al Zarqawi not only means we get him, but we have retrieved information on terrorists contacts, tactics and that document that clearly shows that the I.F. terrorists know they are losing and their only hope is to manipulate the media to present a image that we are losing (basically), which is it apparent that some of you accept.
Bush was actually right about that. An army is no good for nation-building. At best, it can only keep things quiet and orderly while the nation-building goes on. (Or else, it can’t.) But that doesn’t mean you can neglect the project if you want a stable nation to result. Maybe Bush should’ve beefed up the budget of the Peace Corp. At any rate they would’ve done a better job of it than Halliburton, etc.
That was after the invasion. Before the invasion, al-Zarqawi was operating in Iraqi Kurdistan – outside Hussein’s control, and as opposed to his regime as to Israel or the U.S. Knocking out Hussein only enabled al-Zarqawi – enabled him to operate throughout Iraq.
Election != democracy. Iraq does not yet have a democratically elected government – it is elected but it is not a government, because it can’t govern. What Iraq has right now is what political scientists call a “failed state.” (We went over all this quite recently in this thread.)
I assume you meant to write “loosing” in that sentence because you cannot possibly have meant “losing.”
Errmm . . . because it was good enough for Reagan? 
:rolleyes: The only reason al-Zarqawi was able to operate in Kurdistan was because we made it impossible, after GW1, for Hussein to govern Kurdistan.
Stop looking for him, or stop looking for him like we really want to find him?
CMC fnord!
Christ and Allah, haven’t we learned the folly of that kind of thinking yet?!
It appears you haven’t . . .
Wow, that’s a worse ratio than when al Qaeda attacked us! For 3,000 innocent civilians’ lives, 19 terrorists ended up dead.
We can only hope the next al Qaeda doctrine steps up the ‘cut of my nose spite’ even higher than this Bush doctrine has.