1 the president is a scoamf

2 I don't know. Fighting terrorism seems pretty conservative to me.

3 Barack Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a malignant traitor.

4 And Obama's spending makes Bush's "trillion dollar war" look almost miserly.

5 Egypt, Syria and Libya will certainly turn out better.

6 I really don't know how to feel about the Iraq War.

7 ...of course, they'll end up costing us a hell of a lot more.

8 Excellent article

9 One more asshole who imagines Iraq was a peaceful, kite-flying nation that just happened to get in the way of Dick Cheney's oil ambitions.

10 This is like shaking the Friskies box for erg.

11

>>This is like shaking the Friskies box for erg.

 

Chuck Wagon.

12 I think it was worth a try to rebuild Iraq. The problem of course was that our State Department was not up to the job. At all. And it's not even as though the fatal errors were only visible in hindsight. They were glaringly obvious at the time and many pointed them out. Simply continuing to pay the common soldiers of the defeated Iraqi army would have saved countless lives, and would have cost us nothing but the vast stacks of US dollars that Saddam had. But anyway, I'm fully back to Rubble don't make Trouble.

13 It also resulted with us ending up with SCOAMF Obama

14
If there is a threat, defending or pre-striking is not conservative or liberal, its human.  Now the costs were high because of  the nation building aspect which I would argue is not conservative at all.

15 Same convo going on at the Blogmocracy.

And, no, the Iraq War was not conservative. I was a "neocon" from the late 1980s through the 1990s. I supported getting rid of Saddam because he was an asshole and it was the righteous thing to do. But - "because he's an asshole" and "FOR GREAT JUSTICE" aren't just-war casi belli. That's more Trotsky than Burke.

16 We should just gone in there, deposed Saddam, trashed the joint, and left (accompanied by a serious warning we'd be right the fuck back if we even got a whiff of Iraqi stank on a terrorist attack).

17 /soc

18 First: I think it's easy, 10 (heck, even 5) years later to look back and say "Oh, that was a bad idea." Second: It's similarly easy to pick out a tactic and pretend that it was the objective. Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Saddam had used them on his own people. He was an active belligerent and a friend (and probable sponsor) of terrorism. We had plenty of good reason to attack Iraq. On the other hand, the tactic of "nation building," was unwise, and many conservatives who still supported (and still support) the war were wary of it, while still acknowledging that the objective of removing the threat Iraq under Saddam represented was legitimate for our national security.

19 Get in. Kick Ass. Get out. That's how it was supposed to work, and that's what I supported at the time. Bremmer/Bush flubbed it up with their stupid "nation building."

20 Nation building, I would argue, is not conservative. It's not our job. All in all, I think the Iraq War as an invasion was a mistake, but not necessarily anti-conservative.

21 This is like shaking the Friskies box for erg. Posted by: Waterhouse at March 21, 2013 02:39 PM (/yS3m)

Speaking of erg...

"Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea"  - Samuel Johnson

22 the president is a scoamf

In the context of this thread, that scoamf was Bush II

23 I love how these weak-kneed columnists and pundits use revisionist history to decry the Iraq War.  Soon they will start applying it to the Afghan War as well.

We went to Iraq because every intelligence agency in the West was sure Saddam Hussein had chemical, biological,  and possibly nuclear weapons,  which he had already shown he was willing to use.

That is why we went to war.  All of the rest of it (bringing democracy, saving the Iraqis from torture, etc.) was done to get more votes in support out of the UN,  which we did at the request of Tony Blair. 

The lesson we have learned from the Iraq War (and Obama and the French in Libya and Mali) is that we do not need to go to the UN. Just bomb the crap out of them and ignore Powell's theory that if you break it you have to fix it.

Bush listened too much to Powell and not enough to Rumsfeld and Cheney,  if you ask me.

I hate these whining types who now want to dump on Bush.  At the time,  we were damn glad to have him in charge.

24 Sounds like unknown unknouns

25 Ten years gone, holdin on, ten years gone!

26

Can we please stop conflating The War, which took a couple months, with the seven year long clusterfuck that was the notion we or anyone could save those animals from themselves?

GWB bought into Powell's "You break it, you bought it" bullshit and it fucked his presidency, our politics, and our nation as a whole. Let's not forget the thousands or killed and maimed military personnel that paid for that fantasy either.

27 Another intellectual thinking that the democrats wouldnt have spent the war money on votes.....

28 In hindsight, it would have served us better to have gone to war with Iran. It was what it was, a vile, murderous tyrant was deposed and, until the advent of SCOAMF, Iraq had a shot at at least becoming a relatively stable country that would not threaten its neighbors. Now, not so much. But no more nation building. You attack us, we destroy you and leave you to pick up the pieces yourselves.

29 As always though, the main mistake was not hitting Iran. If you want to go far enough back in real-politik, we should have cultivated Saddam as our SOB. Seriously, what are the Kuwaitis to us?

30 I don't think anyone said he had actual working nukes. We thought he had a nuclear program, which is a different thing. Turned out to be wrong. We should have left once we realized.

31 Let's not forget that Iraq and Afghanistan gave us beachheads on both sides of Iran. It was tactically smart, but politically dumb.

32

And just for the record, the U.S. won the "Iraq War" in 29 days with under 130,000 troops and less than 200 casualties, against the 4th largest standing army in the world.

 

In dollars, we spent less than we would have for a decent size joint training exercise. 

 

Now, if you want to discuss the nation building efforts after the war ended, I have problems with how that was handled too.  However, the war itself was one brilliantly run operation.

33 Of course it was a war for oil...leaving Saddam in charge was equivalent to giving a psychopathic tyrant virtually unlimited power and money.

34 We went to Iraq because every intelligence agency in the West was sure Saddam Hussein had chemical, biological, and possibly nuclear weapons, which he had already shown he was willing to use. Also- we found chemical weapons labs in droves, the same (I think) with biologicals. We were pretty sure he didn't have nukes yet but was seeking to obtain them. You're right, the revisionism is maddening.

35 People who use the word "Convo" shld be sent to Iraq...

36 I believe the failure in Iraq  has Also* to do with being undermined  by a political party that used That war  to be in power now.

37 When was W ever a conservative?

38 Wait - George W Bush was a conservative?

39 I think it was worth a try to rebuild Iraq. The problem of course was that our State Department was not up to the job. At all. And it's not even as though the fatal errors were only visible in hindsight. They were glaringly obvious at the time and many pointed them out. Simply continuing to pay the common soldiers of the defeated Iraqi army would have saved countless lives, and would have cost us nothing but the vast stacks of US dollars that Saddam had. But anyway, I'm fully back to Rubble don't make Trouble. Posted by: toby928© Red Partisan at March 21, 2013 02:40 PM (QupBk) This is a point I have been shouting from the rooftops from the first time I heard the idea of firing all the Iraqi soldiers. " What Idiocy!" I screamed at the time. And to compound it, they proclaimed that no one who had ever been a member of the "Baath" party (Everyone that knew anything about how to run the government or where the bombs were) would ever be permitted to work in the new government. It was at that point I realized that we had thrown away everything we had gained, and furthermore possibly lost the war.

40 Was it Tender Vittles that had the commercial with the bag saying "Fresh" when it was opened and the cat came running?  I loved that when I was a kid.

41

Here's how I see it:

 

Blowing up our enemies and those who would harm our country and her people?    conservative.

 

Hanging around after the fact to try and "win hearts and minds"  and       build a new government?   Not   conservative.

 

If you're going to stick around   to  "nation build," then do it.   Fucking build the nation.   That means   WE   tell THEM how to run their elections,    what to put in their constitution, how to enforce laws and what   laws will be enforced.     And we make sure they do it right, or we    teach them again,   even louder this time    and with more consequences.      You keep doing that until they get it;   then you go home. 

 

Either go    all the way or    leave and let them rebuild themselves.     

 

Nudges and encouragement in the hopes that          this fledgling "nation" we've liberated will    create a      "new democracy"    and    blossom     in    shit like a      rose   in manure     are just that:  hopes.     It's like trying to raise a child     by   being their friend.   You're not their friend;  you're their parent.  You can act like a friend, but there comes a time you have to put your foot down and say, "Shut your trap, quit your whining, and     stop       stoning your women."

42
Bush's problem was fighting a "kinder, gentler" war instead of a "Jenghis Kahn" war

43 the context of scoamf is always in reference to that guy that came after gw bush

44 Jinx, JJ.

45 Listing the cost of war is easy. Listing the cost of not having the war is difficult. WWII was expensive because no one wanted to deal with Hitler, say, 5 years earlier, when it might have been cheaper to get rid of him. What would have been the cost - in lives and $$ - if Saddam was still around? We'll never know.

46 24 Sounds like unknown unknouns Posted by: Avi at March 21, 2013 02:43 PM (Gx3Fe) Awesome reference. I'm not going to criticize people when I have the benefit of hindsight, but I can criticize people for not learning from our mistakes.

47 It "would" have been conservatve if we had rolled into Bagdhad, hung Saddam, regrouped, and rolled into Iran why freeing up Israel to roll into Syria.


And then left the whole stinking pile of 5th century savages to stew in their own filth.


Instead Bush did what he campigned on not to do; Nation Building. Something that NEVER works.  And that is where we lost most of our troops.


And then he compounded the problem by not pulling the troops out of both of those shit holes before asshole choom king took office.

48 42 Bush's problem was fighting a "kinder, gentler" war instead of a "Jenghis Kahn" war Posted by: Johnston Q. Kerrywinkle at March 21, 2013 02:45 PM (Opo0Q) "Killing Me Softly..."

49 By the way, Ben Carson was asked about the the Iraq and Afghan wars recently in an interview and he said if he'd been president he'd had done neither.  I can understand not wanting to do nation building, but not putting boots on the ground to go after the Taliban and AQ seems out of the mainstream.

50 This sentence, however, is bullshit:

"The bloody war and lengthy occupation served as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda while diverting resources from the war against the terrorists who hit America on 9/11 and want to keep killing Americans."

If anything, the bloody war and lengthy occupation shifted the battlefield among those who wanted to keep killing Americans to one that was more manageable for us. Every Sunni jihadi from Morocco to Indonesia came running to Iraq because we were there, and we killed almost all of them.

There's probably less than 200 Sunni jihadists against America in the world today - or, there were until our war on Libya reinvigorated the cause.

51 But no more nation building. You attack us, we destroy you and leave you to pick up the pieces yourselves. Posted by: J.J. Sefton at March 21, 2013 02:44 PM (tqLft)

How about no more nation building where the nation has absolutely no realistic chance of representative government?  At all.  Ever.

Which is pretty much everything outside of the Anglosphere.

So when we invade Canada, we can help clean up afterwards.

52 Compassionate warfare was the great experiment of the last generation. It doesn't work.

53 We'll never know. Posted by: Joejm65 at March 21, 2013 02:46 PM (UZuc4) We have somewhat a decent idea. He didn't have a functioning nuclear program, or other WMDs, other than stuff sitting around. He was pretending to have one for show, then got caught with his pants down.

54 Never again.  Not one more American soldier sacrificed for those dogs.  5000 dead ---32,000 maimed and wounded for the price of one tyrant--- and the chaos that followed his fall.  . 

55 44 Jinx, JJ. Posted by: toby928© Red Partisan at March 21, 2013 02:45 PM (QupBk) (punches you in the arm) Quick, name 5 brands of toothpaste...

56 We should just gone in there, deposed Saddam, trashed the joint, and left (accompanied by a serious warning we'd be right the fuck back if we even got a whiff of Iraqi stank on a terrorist attack). Posted by: logprof at March 21, 2013 02:41 PM (WqKmU) Again, someone who gets the plan.

57

And no one ever calls out Pelosi and the other Dims for their stunning reversal on the  War.

 

No. One. They were before it before they were against it.

58 Yeah. I get the WMD thing, as far as we knew they had WMD. So here's the thing. When they pull the same thing with Syria, will all of Congress buy it and why?

59 By the way, Ben Carson was asked about the the Iraq and Afghan wars recently in an interview and he said if he'd been president he'd had done neither. Yeah... I keep hearing things about Dr. Carson that make me very leery of supporting any political ambitions he may have. Again, though, he's making that statement with 12+ years of hindsight.

60 So when we invade Canada, we can help clean up afterwards.

Posted by: Sean Bannion at March 21, 2013 02:47 PM (sbV1u)

 

NO    BACK BACON,    NO PEACE!

61

Carney's full of shit, for several reasons.

 

First, it's much too early to tell whether Iraq is going to work out. It takes at least a generation, and more often several, to determine the impact of a war or other major sea change. (Consider, e.g., Social Security; only now do we realize what a clusterfuck that was. For the first 20 or 30 years, it was considered to be a ringing success.)

 

Second, we don't have any information on the counterfactual case. Suppose Bush hadn't invaded Iraq, and New York was now radioactive glass, with an Iraqi dirty nuke smuggled into the country by al Qaeda. Or after an anthrax attack on the Super Bowl - one vial, one passageway would do - you had to go through airport-like security to enter any public venue.

 

My conclusion: Carney is a lightweight, and something of an asshole, for not thinking of either of these considerations.

62 The bushies could fuck up a gang bang in a whore house...

63 At least we have to admit the thing was a mistake. Hard to do since power projection = prevention, but we all know it was a mistake. We were duped, partly by our own stupidity, and partly by 'neo-con' world-system fantasy.

64 We should just gone in there, deposed Saddam, trashed the joint, and left (accompanied by a serious warning we'd be right the fuck back if we even got a whiff of Iraqi stank on a terrorist attack).

Posted by: logprof at March 21, 2013 02:41 PM (WqKmU)

I like this, Let them determine if they want  to keep defending Jihad, and without getting a paycheck (from us) to keep feeding their country.

65 All in all, I think the Iraq War as an invasion was a mistake, but not necessarily anti-conservative. Posted by: HoboJerky at March 21, 2013 02:42 PM (hlwt5) I don't think the Invasion was a mistake. Libiya even gave up it's nuclear weapons program as a result. I remember at the time all sorts of two bit dictators decided it was not a good idea to fuck with us. The mistake was fucking up the aftermath of the invasion by trying to play social policy games with the country once we had whipped it. Sort of the same problem we have here, in fact.

66 He didn't have a functioning nuclear program, or other WMDs, other than stuff sitting around. Wrong. He still had all the equipment he needed to create chemical weapons (at least, and I think biological weapons as well). The only thing we thought he had that he didn't was a program well on its way to creating a nuclear bomb. Over and over we found labs (mobile and stationary) that could have been ramped up to make WMD in very short order. We never found major stockpiles, but our several months of telegraphing the punch might have had something to do with that.

67 I'm actually somewhat optimistic on Iraq's future. Still wasn't worth our blood and treasure. Wait 30 years and we'll see how it's doing.

68

But no more nation building. You attack us, we destroy you and leave you to pick up the pieces yourselves. Posted by: J.J. Sefton at March 21, 2013 02:44 PM (tqLft)

 

Kinda the Versailles approach, then? How'd that work out for France?

69 Obama aside---George W. Bush was a stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failed president.  There.  I said it. 

70 59 Posted by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) Channelling Breitbart at March 21, 2013 02:48 PM (xN73L) As I had posted about Dr. Carson after the prayer breakfast, I would support him PROVISIONALLY until we knew what his foreign policy positions are. I'd still like to hear him expound on his positions. So far, he is playing things very close to the vest.

71 So when we invade Canada, we can help clean up afterwards.
Posted by: Sean Bannion at March 21, 2013 02:47 PM (sbV1u)

o sure, you just want  the pancakes and maple syrup.

72 Bill Maher, of all people, actually raised a good question the other night:

How the hell did we look in 1785?

Nations take more than a decade to grow and develop.

73 Posted by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) Channelling Breitbart at March 21, 2013 02:51 PM (xN73L) But he wasn't creating any, unless you have evidence to the contrary. From what I recall of my Iraq War Boosting years, all we found was old stuff. Not that we could have known a priori until we had boots on the ground of course.

74 As I had posted about Dr. Carson after the prayer breakfast, I would support him PROVISIONALLY until we knew what his foreign policy positions are.

I'd still like to hear him expound on his positions. So far, he is playing things very close to the vest.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at March 21, 2013 02:51 PM (tqLft)

I like Him but He'd have to also rethink His gun control ideas.

75 Kinda the Versailles approach, then? How'd that work out for France? Posted by: Jay Guevara at March 21, 2013 02:51 PM (IDSI7)

Well, they're still a syphilitic degenerative race of pastry chefs, so...on balance....not too well.

76 Posted by: Miss Marple at March 21, 2013 02:43 PM (GoIUi) Bush did good in bringing the war. Giving up all the gains after we had won? Not so much.

77

Bush's problem after the military took Saddam down was listening to the NY Times and CNN, both screaming that we were going to install a U.S. puppet to run Iraq.

 

So, instead of a strongman that the country needed to bring order, we ended up with chaos. 

 

Also, for one crummy billion we could have sent enough large generators to light and air condition the country 24 hours a day.  That would have been the visible evidence that someone was there to help. 

78

#37, #38,

Right on. Others have already properly posted that the War was well executed. The aftermath, not so much.

Oh, and I'd add: Powell =/= "conservative", either.

79

He still had all the equipment he needed to create chemical weapons (at least, and I think biological weapons as well). 

 

Chemical weapons are trivially easy, especially if you're willing to do downmarket (phosgene, mustard gas).

 

As a chemist, I could make substantial quantities of either one in an afternoon, in my garage, particularly if I weren't too worried about my own exposure.

80 The mistake was fucking up the aftermath of the invasion by trying to play social policy games with the country once we had whipped it. This. We achieved the actual objective (deposing Saddam and ruining his WMD programs) in less than a month. The screw-up (and, honestly, it only became clear how much of a screw-up later) was with the "nation building" bit.

81 o sure, you just want the pancakes and maple syrup.

Or Shania Twain ...

82
I like this, Let them determine if they want to keep defending Jihad, and without getting a paycheck (from us) to keep feeding their country.

Posted by: willow at March 21, 2013 02:50 PM (nqBYe)

--Read about the British expedition to Abyssinia, a punitive/rescue operation.  The went so far as to build a new railroad to expedite it, but they did not occupy a new territory, just knock over the proverbial tables and make sure they did not need to return soon.

83

And still more punishment for Bush's sins: 

From AP:  The Pentagon is considering plans for a $150 million overhaul of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — including building a new dining hall, hospital and barracks for the guards — as part of an ambitious project recommended by the top general in charge of its operations, officials tell NBC News.

All because the detainess are "unhappy" with current conditions. 

84 Posted by: Jaws at March 21, 2013 02:43 PM (4I3Uo) Exactly right. The war was reasonable. The 7 year clusterfuck was not.

85 War also strips away limits on federal power. Constitutional restraints get tested in times of war. When that war lasts a decade and has no clear finish line, this untethers the state all the more. What was the planned end date that was agreed upon & announced on Dec. 8th, 1941? I missed it.

86 Bush's problem was giving away the store (to dems  and not fight back) to try to win the war

87 We were behind the Iraq war because the only way to stop young Arab men from becoming radicalized was to give them a political outlet other than Islamism. And so we planted the seed of democracy in the region. Which is now... bearing fruit. For better or worse. All the other reasons were important, but this was the main one, and it was kind of unspoken but I think we all knew it. To just completely ignore the larger socio-strategic reasons of the time is pretty shitty of this Carney fella.

88 Also, as much as I like to blame Bush's people for a lot of things, if Iraq ends up being fucked in the long run, this will be the year it happened.

Syria's chaos coming across the border and not a single US troop in Iraq to maintain the peace = TFG's fault.

89 Personally, I'm done with adventurism. I'm not soul-searching about why the terrorists hate us, but I don't think running around smashing up countries is a particularly effective method of stopping terrorists. This comes with a huge asterisk when it comes to WMDs of course. A nuke going off in a major metropolitan area anywhere in the world is an existential threat to the US and must be stopped.

90 In retrospect, I suspect that we - Bush, UN, Europe -  were duped into going after Hussein.  He was about to break out of the Food for Oil sanction imposed on him, and begin trading oil for everything but the dollar. Couldn't say who cooked up this plan.

IMO, it's never been about WMDs, oil or Islamo-terrorism. It's all about preserving the role of the dollar as the supreme reserve currency, so we can borrow to our heart's content, inflation-free.

91 fox keeps saying a saudi inmate might have ordered the assassination of that prison official

92 The screw-up (and, honestly, it only became clear how much of a screw-up later) was with the "nation building" bit.  Posted by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) Channelling Breitbart at March 21, 2013 02:53 PM (xN73L)

Hindsight is 20/20.

But....we should have started pulling out on December 13, 2003 - the day Saddam was captured.

93 49 By the way, Ben Carson was asked about the the Iraq and Afghan wars recently in an interview and he said if he'd been president he'd had done neither. I can understand not wanting to do nation building, but not putting boots on the ground to go after the Taliban and AQ seems out of the mainstream.

Posted by: Serious Cat at March 21, 2013 02:46 PM (UypUQ)

That was his whole answer....do nothing?  Wonder what his response to 9/11 would have been then?

94 Posted by: J.J. Sefton at March 21, 2013 02:44 PM (tqLft) We Should have beaten Iran's ass back in 1979... And every year since.

95

How the hell did we look in 1785?

 

How did the South look in 1875?

96 68 But no more nation building. You attack us, we destroy you and leave you to pick up the pieces yourselves. Posted by: J.J. Sefton at March 21, 2013 02:44 PM (tqLft) Kinda the Versailles approach, then? How'd that work out for France? Posted by: Jay Guevara at March 21, 2013 02:51 PM (IDSI7) That's a bit of an oversimplification. After the Allies defeated the Kaiser, they should not have extracted such punitive damages in retribution. I believe their war debt was finally paid off about 10 years ago! Plus there were a lot of other circumstances that empowered the Nazis and Hitler and let to the Second World War. In fact, had the Allies moved against Hitler when he marched into the Rhineland in '37, the generals would have arrested and then executed him.

97 For the record I was against going into Iraq before we ever went in.  Got into a big argument with my brother at his son's wedding reception.


My reason for being against it?   I knew the commies would vote FOR it because of the way Bush rammed the schedule in just before the election.  But I also knew that as soon as we got boots on the ground they would all be against it.


I had been through that shit once before in Vietnam and swore never again.


That is exactly what happened.

98 Fighting people who mean us or our friends harm and protecting our interests - yes.  Fight, conquer, get out.  If they want help afterwards they play by our rules or they can rebuild on their own.  Going to war and then staying there endlessly without the power to take it to the bad guys, but instead making our military peace envoys to the people who hate us?  No freaking thank you.

Also, politicians should not run wars.  It never works.

Also, just because you have been a POW - it does not make you the unchallengeable authority on all aspects of warfare.

Also, Military generals should not be back home swilling cocktails while our guys are risking their lives overseas.

99 Mistake: putting forth the notion that Islam is a religion of peace. It's the one which begat all of the other folly.

100 We. Didnt. Control. The. Borders. Allowing the Iraqui insurgency, i.e., Iranians, Syrians, etc., was our biggest blunder. If we sealed the borders, Iraq would've been in good shape by 2005.

101 Funny that the Dems were willing to call it a mistake long before any 'mistakenness' was really clear. They just pressed the button in a panic and were sorry about it. Makes me think of some scared kid with a gun.

I tend to think everyone was just on board with it (war has a history in the US of increasing state power, read Crisis and Leviathan) the Dems just long enough to get it going, but only that long - they had to make it believable that they were duped into it. I don't think they cared so much about whether WMD was present as much as whether or not it would be believable that they had thought WMD was present.

What I mean is, they needed a pretext to go to war that seemed pressing enough but would be proved false; ratchet up state power and show the opposition to be bungling and belligerent.

I think there's a principled opposition to it on account of isolationism; 1. None of our business, 2. ME meddling just makes things worse.

But I'm hoping things will work out well, still, since we spent all that dough anyway.

102 Here's a good summary of the Abyssinia expedition.  Cool piece of history:

http://anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?p=97701

103

Rallying behind Bush's ambitious "freedom agenda" meant abandoning a core insight of conservatism:

 

We abandoned pretty much everything to defend W.

104 All because the detainess are "unhappy" with current conditions. Posted by: Fourth Virginia at March 21, 2013 02:54 PM (wbmaj)

If you look at all the proposed MILCON....much...but not all, of it is actually for our troops.  Like a new mess hall, and so on.

105 94 Posted by: DiogenesLamp at March 21, 2013 02:55 PM (bb5+k) Yup. And we had a golden opportunity during the uprising in 2010. But SCOAMF felt it more important to save the mullahs and destroy and ally (Mubarak). SCOAMF really is a fucking miserable turd.

106 What was the planned end date that was agreed upon & announced on Dec. 8th, 1941? I missed it. Posted by: rickb223 at March 21, 2013 02:54 PM (GFM2b) Are you comparing the WoT with WW2? Neocons themselves admit there will be no declaration of surrender on an aircraft carrier. It's just a matter of fact.

107 But he wasn't creating any, unless you have evidence to the contrary. From what I recall of my Iraq War Boosting years, all we found was old stuff. No, he wasn't then. A) We don't know if that was because he saw the fight coming, and wanted to be able to cry foul. B) The point wasn't ever that he had warehouses full of the stuff, but that he had a history of using them, the ability to make them, and was (at least) a friend to terrorists. That is: we wanted to make sure he didn't decide to cook up some sarin (or whatever), give to Osama bin Laden (or whoever) and cheer as an WMD attack hit the US.

108 Amen number 26.

109 No.

110 Also- we found chemical weapons labs in droves, the same (I think) with biologicals. We were pretty sure he didn't have nukes yet but was seeking to obtain them. You're right, the revisionism is maddening. Posted by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) Channelling Breitbart at March 21, 2013 02:44 PM (xN73L) We removed many tons of Uranium Yellowcake from Iraq. He was eventually going to build a nuke one way or the other. Uranium nukes are the easiest to build.

111 Afghanistan was for last time.  Iraq was to make damned sure there wasn't a next time.  So far, so good.

112 Jesus.

If you couldn't see that liberating a violently oppressed MAJORITY from a tyrannic MINORITY  would result in a DISASTER, you are an idiot.

Throw in the fact that they are all Muslims, and now you're a full blown moron.

We will never get anywhere politically if we can't admit that Iraq was a mistake.

113

"My conclusion: Carney is a lightweight, and something of an asshole, for not thinking of either of these considerations."

 

No.  Carney is a lightweight and an asshole by his very nature.  His inability to get it in this narrow instance is just  one of many side effects of his assholeeyness.  IOW, the dude was born an asshole, he lives as an asshole, and he'll die an asshole - probably while getting his asshole serviced by some other asshole.

 

 

114 I think a lot of you forget that Bush had to deal with an ally (the UK) which had a Labor government which was mostly opposed to the war,  a democrat Congress and media which were actively undermining Bush,  and a squirrely bunch of Arabs and Persians surrounding Iraq.

Since we also now know Powell and Armitage are  lying weasels,  and we don't know how many State Department people are on the Saudi payroll (my guess quite a lot) it is a wonder we even got a successful invasion accomplished.

I also think that the loud and constant anti-war crap from the left encouraged resistance in Iraq.  

I remember a lot more of what went on in those days than Mr. Carney.  His is a weak column written by a fair-weather friend.  Screw him, I say,  in my most ladylike voice.

115 i suppose we had to try and see if we could de-radicalize the ME ala Japan, Germany. The problem was Bush wasn't willing to kill off the radicalizing belief system of Islam as we killed off Naziism or Shinto-based Emperor worship. Honestly, a couple of nukes to Afghanistan. Plus, a round of assassinations for anyone involved would've been much more effective and been much less expensive in terms of American lives. And it would've had the nice effect of punishing those fucks in Saudi royalty and Emirate royalty who financed 911 and are still walking around above ground.

116 Posted by: AllenG (Dedicated Tenther) Channelling Breitbart at March 21, 2013 02:56 PM (xN73L)' Right. Just turned out we were wrong. It's ok to admit we were wrong. Doesn't make the decision for war any less valid.

117

Meanwhile, back in Cyprus, it's getting fun. The CypRiots have started, ATMs are funning low, and they are going to shutter one of the biggest banks, which has only hours of liquidity (ie cash money) left. Merchants are refusing credit/debt cards. 

     EUcrats are now talking openly about Cyprus leaving the Euro, something they would've killed themselves before letting cross their lips just weeks ago.

     I don't know if this is the beginning of the storm that will destroy the EU and then reach our shores, but it's as good as any possible triggering event.

       And BTW, Putin and the Russian mafia will own Cyprus before this is over.

      Will the SuperHawks go to war to hold the EU together?

118 What would have been the cost - in lives and $$ - if Saddam was still around? We'll never know. Posted by: Joejm65 at March 21, 2013 02:46 PM (UZuc4) I can already tell you the cost, in lives, of having Carter for President. A million dead in the Iran/Iraq war who would probably be alive if Carter had not undermined the Shah.

119 'Nation building' is for the people of that nation to do. We've been spending far too much time, treasure, and energy 'building' other nations while neglecting our own.

120 War on Terror? How do you fight and defeat Terror, which is a tactic/weapon? We're fighting a barbaric pseudo-religion of over a billion people that seeks to either subjugate or destroy us, whichever they can achieve. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

121 My reason for being against it? I knew the commies would vote FOR it because of the way Bush rammed the schedule in just before the election. But I also knew that as soon as we got boots on the ground they would all be against it.


I had been through that shit once before in Vietnam and swore never again.


That is exactly what happened.

Posted by: Vic at March 21, 2013 02:55 PM (53z96)

See I thought that would be dead in the water Because of the Iraq Liberation Document written by Dems  during Clinton just a couple of years prior.

yes, i have learned.

never trust never trust, never trust a dem again.

122

We were behind the Iraq war because the only way to stop young Arab men from becoming radicalized was to give them a political outlet other than Islamism. And so we planted the seed of democracy in the region.

 

This.

 

Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. But if it works - and by working I mean providing a propserous and at least somewhat democratic counterexample to all the shitty petro- and terrorist-dictatorships in the region, so that their citizens think, hey, why don't we have that? then Bush will be one of the greatest Presidents, far greater than Lincoln.

 

Why do I say that? Because Lincoln changed the course of US history, and presided over the emancipation of the slaves. He had zero impact on the rest of the world.

 

But, if this works - a big "if," granted - Bush will have changed the course of world history, for the better, and by changing the trajectory of Middle Eastern history will have emancipated a billion Arabs from their political pathologies. Lincoln will be a piker by comparison.

123 "...Bush listened too much to Powell and not enough to Rumsfeld and Cheney, if you ask me.

I hate these whining types who now want to dump on Bush. At the time, we were damn glad to have him in charge."

Posted by: Miss Marple at March 21, 2013 02:43 PM (GoIUi)

 

Rumsfield's 'light footprint' strategy nearly lost it for us, but yes, we were lucky to have Bush in office at the time. And nation building? Depends. Both Japan and Germany were advanced industrial societies. Given the global communist threat we were facing at the time, it would have been a major strategic blunder not to put them back on the board as quickly as we could. However, it is not within our power to transform a near-Bronze Age culture into anything approaching a modern society. Do we teach them to beat their women less?

 

Slightly off-topic, but what's with McCain's insistence that we 'do something' about Syria, anyway? On one side there's Assad, on the other local variants of Al Queda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Do we just go in and shoot them all? It's the only way to be sure.

124 It's tragic that one of the reasons we felt the need to nation build was because of the cautionary tale of Afghanistan in the 1990s, which we and everyone left, allowing the Taliban to give al Qaeda safe haven.

By the time we smashed up Iraq, or maybe by 2005-2006, we would've had the drone program running to such capacity that we could've monitored progress in the country without having to do any nation building.

We were actually doing that with Afghanistan until TFG decided that he needed to whip his dick out by adding more troops to that hellhole.

125 Instead Bush did what he campigned on not to do; Nation Building. Something that NEVER works. And that is where we lost most of our troops. Posted by: Vic at March 21, 2013 02:46 PM (53z96) And Vic, as usually, right on target.

126
This just in:  my 5 year old picked MSU and Butler.  I picked Valpo and Bucknell.  So yeah, I am going into the Global Warming Biz.

127

"I knew the commies would vote FOR it because of the way Bush rammed the schedule in just before the election. But I also knew that as soon as we got boots on the ground they would all be against it."

 

This needs to be carved into the desk of (if we should ever be so lucky again) the next Republican President. 

128 And BTW, Putin and the Russian mafia will own Cyprus before this is over.
Will the SuperHawks go to war to hold the EU together?

Posted by: publius(NotBreitbartPublius) at March 21, 2013 02:59 PM (Pqgwi)

true, and who are the superhawks now?

129

Returning to the case made at the U.N., Saddam did make overtures to Niger to purchase yellowcake.  The Prime fucking Minister of Niger confirmed this to the the British and to that piece of shit Joe Wilson (as he admitted in the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report).

 

Also, the aluminum tubes he purchased could only be for a nuclear enrichment program.  The bullshit that this had been "debunked" was such a weak argument that only idiots could beleive it. 

 

 

130

 

Has anyone else seen that Dick Cheney special that's playing on Showtime?

 

They say that Cheney told members of Congress that Sadam had suitcase nukes...and that was what got them to vote for the Iraq invasion.

 

I was gobsmacked that Cheney participated in the making of that hit piece.

How could he think that they wouldn't turn it into a piece of liberal propaganda?

 

131 Funny that the Dems were willing to call it a mistake long before any 'mistakenness' was really clear. They just pressed the button in a panic and were sorry about it. Makes me think of some scared kid with a gun.

I tend to think everyone was just on board with it (war has a history in the US of increasing state power, read Crisis and Leviathan) the Dems just long enough to get it going, but only that long - they had to make it believable that they were duped into it. I don't think they cared so much about whether WMD was present as much as whether or not it would be believable that they had thought WMD was present.

Posted by: RiverC at March 21, 2013 02:55 PM (El+h4)

--Remember Harry Shithead saying "This was is lost"?  He's said many despicable things, but that may be the worst.

132 And no one ever calls out Pelosi and the other Dims for their stunning reversal on the War. No. One. They were before it before they were against it. Posted by: BackwardsBoy, who did not vote for this shit at March 21, 2013 02:48 PM (+z4pE) Another example of a MEDIA problem.

133 It's so hard to generalize about the War On Terror. 1) it's still to soon 2) President Bush was undercut from almost the get go by the "Loyal Opposition" it was not over in 1 month 3)Sure we fucked up. We fucked up every War we ever fought, but there are no do overs and hindsight is 20-20 4) Sure looking back we should have gone into Iraq with much more force, should not have disbanded the Iraqi Military and Police and it would have been nice if Turkey had no fucked us by not letting the 4th Heavy Armor Division to come in from the North and cut off the escape route and supply route to Syria 5) Sure we probably should have gone into Afghanistan with a much lighter foot print. 6) It's hard to fight Wars when we are using one rule book and the enemy another. That must change 7) It's hard to fight a War when you refuse to actually name the Enemy It's a War and we should fight like our lives depend on it- Make them dear us 9) More but that's all for now

134

"Unconservative?" Probably, but who cares. That's a stupid term really. If "conservatism" means small ideas and continental navel-gazing in the absence of sharp, easily-won routs - the hell with it.

135 "Rallying behind Bush's ambitious 'freedom agenda' meant abandoning a core insight of conservatism: that big ideas and big plans are dangerous because human knowledge and ability to predict consequences are limited much more than our planners tend to imagine."

Another thing conservatives used to argue was a virtue was consistency. Consistency of policy and consistency of philosophy.

Bush argued all through the primaries and the general election campaign in 2000 that "nation-building", as the Clinton administration had attempted it in places like Kosovo, was bunk and that he wasn't going to spend American lives or treasure on any such efforts.

Once in office? Bush pulled a complete 180 and it was rah, rah, freedom agenda, nation-building bullshit right down the line.

This sort of thing is of course a Bush family tradition. The first Bush campaigned saying "Read my lips: no new taxes," then turned around and socked America with a fat tax hike once in office.

The only legacy the Bush family have to offer America is their squandering of the real legacy left to them by Ronald Reagan.

Bushes delenda est.

136 So, the NATO alliance is not conservative? Because that obliges us to go to war whenever somebody attacks a NATO ally. Or maybe we'll go to war, and finish with a conditional surrender, and spare ourselves the cost of rebuilding the enemy or infringing the freedom from wiretaps. Or maybe we'll go to war and lose, saving money and civil liberties.

137 Politically, the Bush admin did nothing right while prosecuting the Iraq invasion and occupation. Just one blunder after another. The Democrats seized the opportunity, as they should have. "Politics, unlike Nature, loves a vacuum." -- Shih Tzu

138 Thousands of Americans dead in Iraq and Afghanistan to "liberate" those failed states from tyrants/extremists.  But at the same time we allow/entice an invasion of illegal aliens from the south into the United States without any defense of our border---an invasion across a 1000 mile border that has radically and irreversibly reshaped this Country--and not for the better.   

139 We abandoned pretty much everything to defend W. Because he wouldn't do it himself, on orders from Rove. Imagine if he'd actually unleashed the War Cock on the press.

140 Pillaging.  You're doing it wrong.

141

I also think that the loud and constant anti-war crap from the left encouraged resistance in Iraq.

I remember a lot more of what went on in those days than Mr. Carney. His is a weak column written by a fair-weather friend. Screw him, I say, in my most ladylike voice.

Posted by: Miss Marple at March 21, 2013 02:58 PM (GoIUi)

 

Great point, and well said.

 

I'd add that the loud and insistent leftist anti-war crap also prevented Bush from doing what needed to be done, viz., executing terrorists wholesale unless they were potentially sources of intelligence. Geneva Convention, baby! They're not even close to being covered by it.

142 War is the antithesis of fiscal conservatism. The war drove up federal spending, piling a trillion dollars onto the debt, The financing of war has always been an outlier, to many, when it comes to budgeting and cost.

143 I supported the war in the mistaken belief that the several given reasons were merely camouflaging the greater strategic goal of nearly encircling Iran, what with
task forces in the Gulf, and our boots on the ground in Afghanistan.

I didn't know what I didn't know, to adapt Don Rumsfeld's observation.  Bush was
serious about all the Muslim uplift fantasy.

Cordially...

144 Thousands of Americans dead in Iraq and Afghanistan to "liberate" those failed states from tyrants/extremists. But at the same time we allow/entice an invasion of illegal aliens from the south into the United States without any defense of our border---an invasion across a 1000 mile border that has radically and irreversibly reshaped this Country--and not for the better.

Posted by: Fourth Virginia at March 21, 2013 03:03 PM (wbmaj)

You get the state department you deserve.

145

Politically, the Bush admin did nothing right while prosecuting the Iraq invasion and occupation.

Just one blunder after another. The Democrats seized the opportunity, as they should have.

 

The Lincoln Administration did far, far worse. The Army of the Potomac went through what, seven CGs? The Union effort was a complete clusterfuck until Grant took over.

146 126 " my 5 year old picked MSU and Butler. I picked Valpo and Bucknell."

It seems like every year, four teams outkick their coverage in the tourney: VCU, Florida, MSU, and Butler.

I pick each of them unless absolutely necessary

147 Yeah. Overall, not happy with the W. Bending over backwards to defend that guy was just... ugh. Partly I think that was the tactic; demonize him and we'd be forced to defend him, even if he was somewhat indefensible.

Look, I don't hate the guy and never did. I think he had the quality of standing up well in a crisis and certainly was in no way puerile like SCoaMT is. But his actions were... not worth defending. And I always got ticked off that the Bush admin wouldn't defend its actions in Iraq.

In fact, Bush was friendlier to Modern Liberal ideas than any Republican since Nixon perhaps, if not in word, in deed. It seems like one beartrap after another.

148

>>How did the South look in 1875?

 

Ripe for the picking.

149 Why would we take down Saddam to encircle Iran? They are already bitter enemies.

150 Are you comparing the WoT with WW2? No. Just the assumption of "getting into a war with no clear end date." Most don't have.

151 That was his whole answer....do nothing? Wonder what his response to 9/11 would have been then?

Posted by: Tami at March 21, 2013 02:54 PM (X6akg) 

He had vague answers about covert action, to go after Saddam as well.  Also, energy independence.

152 I knew the Iraq war was a complete fake when they failed to find WMD and particularly when al-Tuwaitha was found to be intact with all U.N. seals still intact on nuclear materials stored there. Then Bush quickly flipped to "Never mind, it's time to nationbuild this mother!". And "We're gonna give 'em democracy and give it to 'em good and hard so they LIKE it". After that, the Card Deck of Iraq's Most Wanted with Saddam as the ACE OF SPADES (ahem) seemed like as bad a joke as people wrapping their entire houses in plastic sheeting and duct tape (for those of you who still recall the Great Sheeting And Duct Tape Famine Of 2003).

153 Most don't have. Posted by: rickb223 at March 21, 2013 03:06 PM (GFM2b) But it's clear that the WoT is different than something even like Vietnam. It's intentionally missing the point.

154 Buchanan was right.

155

"We should just gone in there, deposed Saddam, trashed the joint, and left"

And just handed the country over to Iran. Great plan.

156

I'd add that the loud and insistent leftist anti-war crap also prevented Bush from doing what needed to be done, viz., executing terrorists wholesale unless they were potentially sources of intelligence. Geneva Convention, baby! They're not even close to being covered by it.

 

This   x10000.    We were prevented from displaying    our   full power and ability      in a part of the world that only responds to displays of power.

157 Ace in 2023: was the Paul Ryan plan conservative in the first place?

158 what was it 85 percent of the country were for us going to war after 9-11.

am i misremembering that?

remember the drumbeat by the Dems right off the bat? How could you LET this happen?

so Iraq by declaration of the Dems in the Iraq Liberation Document put  Iraq  also in the sights, as Terrorist country waiting to jump at the chance.

Ousting Saddam was a Dem idea 3 years Before 9-11.

why was this Bush's fault?

159

I figured we were in trouble when we did not see the worst of the baathists hanging from light poles. 

 

Say what you want, but if the people of a nation do not want better, they will not get a better nation.  They will get fanatics running their nation.

 

Saddam, Morsi, Aba dinner jacket, Mugabe, Idi Amin and the Godwin guy for examples. 

 

 

160 Very good article.  Clearly somebody is getting a clue.

161

Hanging around after the fact to try and "win hearts and minds" and build a new government? Not conservative.

 

The whole point of doing so was to provide an alternative path for the Middle East - give their frustrated young men an ideal to work towards that didn't involve jihad - and to destabilize the dictatorships that were using hatred of the West as a pressure valve to save their own regimes. In other words it was an attempt to SOLVE the strategic problem permanently instead of just kicking the can down the road. Spend blood and treasure now, instead of making our children do so again and again, all the while creating a more and more restrictions at home in an effort to keep terrorists from striking again (remember that back in the early years after 9/11 we all thought a nuclear terror strike was all but inevitable?) It united humanitarianism with self-interest, and did the dirty work now instead of later. It was very conservative, and it almost worked - remember the Green Revolution in Lebanon?

 

The problem is that it didn't work, and no one has yet thought up an alternative strategy beyond "bomb them when they get uppity." That didn't work for the Romans (because the Germans just figured out how to fight more effectively and periodic punitive expeditions against them just provided more incentive for them to learn), why would it work for us?

162 5) Sure we probably should have gone into Afghanistan with a much lighter foot print.

Posted by: Nevergiveup

Lighter???

30k troops on avg in Afghan is not a heavy footprint in any sense of the phrase.

Fuck that noise. After the initial SpecForce successes we should have dropped in 150k and closed to border to Pak.

The problem with Afghan is that we were/are effectively fighting a faction of the Paki leadership. We didn't want an open war with Paki for obvious reasons but they are the entire reason why we are there.

163

If they let me pick my Final Four bracket three weeks from now, I'm sure it'll  be perfect.

 

Sheesh.  More Monday morning QBing. 

164

>>And just handed the country over to Iran. Great plan. <<

 

We could have killed everyone but the Kurds. 

I mean, if we're just spitballin', here...

165 There was nothing conservative about Iraq after about month two.

166 why was this Bush's fault?

Posted by: willow at March 21, 2013 03:08 PM (nqBYe)

 

Because don't you know the only reason Bush went into Iraq was because he wanted    to get revenge on Saddam for trying to assassinate his daddy?   I know it's true because the Smart People tell me so!    And we all know no one ever talked about Iraq before 2003.

167 That didn't work for the Romans (because the Germans just figured out how to fight more effectively and periodic punitive expeditions against them just provided more incentive for them tolearn), why would it work for us?

Posted by: Grey Fox at March 21, 2013 03:08 PM (/ZHx6)

Worked fine with the Carthaginians, they just didn't do the same thing to the German tribes.

168 Cordially... Posted by: Rick Gentleman Rick! Haven't seen you in a while. And I wholeheartedly agree.

169 Ace should do a review of the Iraq war.

170 ...that big ideas and big plans are dangerous because human knowledge and ability to predict consequences are limited much more than our planners tend to imagine. dunno What is meant by big ideas and big plans? Tear down that wall. Secure our borders. It's fine to have big ideas, and big plans -- but follow them through with fiscal responsibility, checks and balances, the law, and conservative restraints.

171

What has changed with warfare in the last half century is the pussification of what should be a man business.

 

For some reason, instead of one nation going to war against another, people started to think that "our" army should fight "their" army and not bother the general population.

 

This is bullshit and leads to never-ending wars.

 

Wars need to be all-out Dresden fire bombing events that rain death and terror down on the masses.  This type of war tends to leave an impression on the losing side and reminds folks why war is something to avoid.

 

Also, by including the general population in a big way, the people are more inclined to pick "reasonable" leaders and to rise up against dictators whose actions are about to get them killed.

 

Once we return to actual was and holding the people of a nation responsible for the actions of the nation and their leaders, wars will be rare, quick and decisive.

172

We should have declared all-out war in "radical islam".  The nation should have mobilized and provided the military everything it needed to level every jihadi stronghold, even Pakistan.  Even the Philipines, Indonesia, Iran, Syria.  We should have shown no mercy after 9/11.

 

But, we made it into another police action.

173 It was conservative before it was stupid before it was liberal. Kicking Saddam's ass was conservative, thinking a wave of freedom in the ME would result was stupid, staying around to nation-build was liberal (but still stupid). Full-spectrum FUBAR.

174 /rubber chicken drops from the ceiling!

175 But it's clear that the WoT is different than something even like Vietnam. It's intentionally missing the point. How? Who knew what the end date of Iraq was going to be BEFORE we went in?

176

We should have declared all-out war in "radical islam".

 

"RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE!!"

-Leftist harridans and pussyboys

177 Oh, one more thought:

The Bushes and their various family consiglieres are visibly trying to get Jeb cued up for a Presidential run.

And Jeb says that if elected President, he'll govern "like LBJ". As though that were something that conservatives should aspire to do.

But when I heard him say that, I threw a book across the room and shouted, "Govern like Lyndon Johnson? Your goddamned little brother ALREADY DID THAT!"

Because when you think about it, what Bush 43 was all about was Great Society federalized centralized welfare state crap on the home front (NCLB, Medicare Part D), and on the war front, it was all about ludicrous restrictions on our troops in contact being able to actually defend themselves or attack prohibited sanctuary areas used by the enemy, just as happened under LBJ in Vietnam.

Johnsonian ineptitude dressed up as "conservatism", described to voters as "conservatism", and then actual conservative Republicans wonder how their collective brand got so toxic and damaged with the general public.

178 MWR,  I dunno,  I am flumoxed by the hating on Bush for this.

other reasons ok,  this i just don't get.

I remember the crying and pulling of hair and the never let it happen gain  after 9-11
by most everyone.

so as i said.   i'm confused by this.

179 The only reason the Iraq war is still ongoing is because politicians ran it.  Let the military do what it does best and these things don't tend to happen.

180

"I knew the Iraq war was a complete fake when they failed to find WMD"

Sure, lets pretend there weren't Iraqi scientists in Libya working on the bomb.

Ya know, the same people here proposing their theories of what we should have done instead would be back here complaining "how stupid it was to take down Iraq without sticking around to rebuild the country"

181 Lighter??? 30k troops on avg in Afghan is not a heavy footprint in any sense of the phrase. Fuck that noise. After the initial SpecForce successes we should have dropped in 150k and closed to border to Pak. The problem with Afghan is that we were/are effectively fighting a faction of the Paki leadership. We didn't want an open war with Paki for obvious reasons but they are the entire reason why we are there. Posted by: weft cut-loop at March 21, 2013 03:08 PM (UCv7P) Yes lighter- much lighter. Afghanistan is not a country where there will ever ( at least no in the next 1000 years) a central government of any kind- Go in with special forces and Air Power like we did at first, kill as many of the bad guys as we can and get out with the promise that we will come back if they let Terrorist set up there again. If they want to enslave their own women act like animals, let them, but if it extends beyond their borders we will come back and kill some more. But set up large bases like we did? Never- what a waste

182 I knew the Iraq war was a complete fake when they failed to find WMD and particularly when al-Tuwaitha was found to be intact with all U.N. seals still intact on nuclear materials stored there.

Then Bush quickly flipped to "Never mind, it's time to nationbuild this mother!". And "We're gonna give 'em democracy and give it to 'em good and hard so they LIKE it".

After that, the Card Deck of Iraq's Most Wanted with Saddam as the ACE OF SPADES (ahem) seemed like as bad a joke as people wrapping their entire houses in plastic sheeting and duct tape (for those of you who still recall the Great Sheeting And Duct Tape Famine Of 2003).

Posted by: TooCon at March 21, 2013 03:06 PM (f+yEj)


yeah.
look.  I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a war fought for a "good" reason in a few (multiple) centuries.  I'm so tired of this "illegal war" bullshit that the next idiot that utters those words in my presence gets throat punched.  Illegally.

Saddam was a fucker.  His kids were fuckers.  He surrounded himself with fuckers.  AQ are fuckers.  So killing all of them is a good enough reason for me.  All the lawyer bullshit aside, it was a clean shoot.

183 Bush should have never called it a 'war on terror'.  He should have called it a war on Islam.  Be specific and put a face to it.  He should have cited Iran hostages, WTC, 9/11 and everything in between.  Ever since then, we've been apologizing for 'offending' Muslims and given Islam a free pass into our homes.

184 One thing I think the article was right about, and this thread is not really talking about, are the costs of the war at home, and the decisions Bush made vis a vis the war at home.

If you're going to war, act like it. Don't cut taxes twice AND create new federal entitlement programs AND new cabinet level bureaucracies seemingly dedicated to raping the Bill of Rights while spending on the war.

Iraq is not necessarily a mistake. Iraq + Department of Homeland Security + Medicare Part D + huge tax cuts = mistake.

Ironically, it seems that the worst idea (immigration reform) was conceived as a way to help pay off the costs

185 @172: Or just have the Marines take over Mecca. Islam is unique among world religions in having a single physical point of failure like that.

186 We were behind the Iraq war because the only way to stop young Arab men from becoming radicalized was to give them a political outlet other than Islamism. And so we planted the seed of democracy in the region. Which is now... bearing fruit. For better or worse. All the other reasons were important, but this was the main one, and it was kind of unspoken but I think we all knew it. To just completely ignore the larger socio-strategic reasons of the time is pretty shitty of this Carney fella. Posted by: JohnW at March 21, 2013 02:54 PM (RNXo+) I was aware of this purpose, and I thought it commendable and possibly doable, but we flubbed up the opportunity to do it easily when we tried to take sides in the religious/ethnic mess that is Iraq. Our number one job should have been to stabilize the place and get out. We could have made it understood by the new administrators of the country that we expected to see their oil wealth being used as something other than a dictator's piggy bank, or we would come back and whip their asses, and I think the prosperity and democracy would have occurred without so much guidance or intervention from us. Just bust the monopolies, and let the market run the system thereafter.

187 Posted by: Eaton Cox at March 21, 2013 02:38 PM (q177U)


Ok.

That nick made me laugh.

188 wow you guys are already back to the Roman times? well, that didn't take long

189 Buchanan was right.

Posted by: Crude at March 21, 2013 03:07 PM (N3XVc)

 

Right about what? Are you referring to Pat Buchanan's belief that Hitler was a great man, a victim of bad (no doubt Jewish) press?

 

Pat Buchanan is a national disgrace. Whatever the hell else he might be, Buchanan is no conservative. If he is, then the word's lost all meaning.

190 Carney, the author, is definitely a Libertarian.

191

Worked fine with the Carthaginians, they just didn't do the same thing to the German tribes.

 

They couldn't do the same thing to the German tribes, because all the Germans had were forests and farms. We can't, realistically speaking, annihilate the Middle East, so we are in pretty much the same boat as the Romans were to the Germans.

192 Others have commented but it seems basically that "nation building" never works. But nation rebuilding does work, as mentioned in the examples of Germany and Japan. But both were functioning nations, functioning so well they were able to make up one half of the entire second world war. We changed the type of government into one which the people there didn't have any experience with, but still a nation and a national identity for a group that already had long experience with each. This is way we can nation (re)build in Iraq, but not make any headway in Afghanistan. I do like the idea of simply blazing a Sherman-like trail of destruction across the region, but even in that case, after the destruction ended, we engaged in a long period of reconstruction.

193 12 I think it was worth a try to rebuild Iraq. The problem of course was that our State Department was not up to the job. At all. And it's not even as though the fatal errors were only visible in hindsight. They were glaringly obvious at the time and many pointed them out.
Posted by: toby928© Red Partisan

Then it wasn't worth it.

194

#145  And Grant made it a war of attrition.  His decision to launch the final at Cold Harbor is just one example of his mindset:  victory regardless of the cost in lives.  He knew the Army of Northern Virginia could no longer replace its fallen.  He could replace his and cared not how much suffering was inflicted, evven on his own men.  From my perspective, I am glad he died an excruciatingly painful death (throat cancer). 

195 Worked fine with the Carthaginians, they just didn't do the same thing to the German tribes. I assume that has something to do with the difference between rooting out an insurgency that lives in a forest and has no cities to speak of vs. one in a desert, with a single, large city.

196 All the people saying nation building is a bad idea, discuss the Marshall plan.  Pro or con?

197 Again, if we just wanted to kill Saddam, it would be stupid. It could hand power to Iran. It was just stupid all around.

198

None  of  them  are  worth  the  life  of  one  American  soldier. This  nation  building  shit  has  to  stop.  If  someone  threatens  us  we  go  in  and  pound  them  into  rubble  and  then  bounce  the  rubble  on  the  way  out  with  the  warning  that  we  will  return  if  they  look  sideways  at  us.

I'm  sick  and  tired  of  statist  assholes  spending  our  blood  for  this  fucking  nation  building  bullshit  while  they  keep  themselves  out  of  harms  way.

199 I thought Iraq was no longer a thing.

200 Saddam was a fucker. His kids were fuckers. He surrounded himself with fuckers. AQ are fuckers. So killing all of them is a good enough reason for me. All the lawyer bullshit aside, it was a clean shoot. Posted by: tangonine at March 21, 2013 03:12 PM (x3YFz) And people forget the world was on the verge of dropping most of the sanctions against Iraq and they were about to start up their biological and chemical programs full time again. Ya can't destroy Knowledge.

201 Who was the dipshit that said, You break it, you buy it?

I rest my case.

202 177 "But when I heard him say that, I threw a book across the room and shouted, "Govern like Lyndon Johnson? Your goddamned little brother ALREADY DID THAT!""

Appropriately enough, Obama is governing like Nixon, with all the secrecy, personalized politics, and paranoia of that administration.

203

Or just have the Marines take over Mecca. Islam is unique among world religions in having a single physical point of failure like that.

 

Unlike the Jews, since around AD 70 or so...

204 JEF heckled about saint pancake

205 These are proxy wars, very, very bad.

If you remember, Vietnam was a proxy war: US vs China, but China is using Viet Congs as a puppet. You always lose that fight unless you blast the puppet to smithereens quickly and move on to the real target.

Afghanistan was us getting into a conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan which was having repercussions worldwide. I think maybe we hoped that if Osama caused them so much pain they'd stop wanting to help / house these radicals. However, if Osama is really one of theirs, then the picture is a bit different.

Likewise with Iraq - it wasn't just Iraq that was the issue, Iran had also become an issue and we ended up fighting Iran in Iraq as an 'Iraqi Insurgency'. Instead of giving Arab men a new way to express their ambition we gave them a new venue for the old way of expressing their ambition - attacking their people's enemies.

It's kind of like the mistake we make with politics - we see the other side as fundamentally bad and want it eliminated. But if both sides are somewhat bad (an assumption our system works on) you want both sides to exist, but to play nice. How could stomping one of the sides do anything but create a rushing vacuum?

206 I thought Iraq was no longer a thing. Posted by: SGT. York at March 21, 2013 03:15 PM (H1IKD) Well it's no longer our thing, since obama threw out any chance of us having any influence what so ever by failing to negotiate a Status of Forces agreement.

207 @196: To the extent that the Marshall Plan let Europe ignore their own defense and incubate today's progressive stupidity, it was a terrible idea and history's biggest failure.

208 171 What has changed with warfare in the last half century is the pussification of what should be a man business. For some reason, instead of one nation going to war against another, people started to think that "our" army should fight "their" army and not bother the general population. This is bullshit and leads to never-ending wars. [clipped] Posted by: jwest

My sentiments too.

209 Yup. And we had a golden opportunity during the uprising in 2010. But SCOAMF felt it more important to save the mullahs and destroy and ally (Mubarak). SCOAMF really is a fucking miserable turd. Posted by: J.J. Sefton at March 21, 2013 02:56 PM (tqLft) And I believe the blood of millions will eventually be on his head. I fear Iran means to do something fanatical.

210 Saddam was a fucker. His kids were fuckers. He surrounded himself with fuckers. AQ are fuckers. So killing all of them is a good enough reason for me. All the lawyer bullshit aside, it was a clean shoot.

Posted by: tangonine at March 21, 2013 03:12 PM (x3YFz)

 

This.

 

I tend to be of the opinion that,  if your     dictator is killed and his children, too,     then you're either going to smarten up and put someone in power who ISN'T a dictator, or you're going to put another dictator in his place and prove you don't    know how else to live.     Our   men and women     caught Hussein, killed his kiddos, and let the Iraqis hang the bastard.   As far as i'm concerned, if    America had dusted it's hands after the fact, said, "You're welcome.  Now about that oil..."  and gone home,   it would    have been  perfect.   

 

Instead it devolved into dithering and optics,   both of which suck when it comes to war.

 

Hindsight is 20/20.   I support that we went into Iraq, I think it was the right move.   But hanging around after the fact was just  foolhardy.     Hopefully it willr esult in a net positive for that country, but I don't think I'll be alive to see it.

211

The problem is that it didn't work

Posted by: Grey Fox at March 21, 2013 03:08 PM (/ZHx6)

 

As asserted above, it's just too soon to tell whether or not it worked.

 

And as for an early indication, bear in mind that Iraqi debt has a rating credit agency rating than that of California.

 

True story.

212 I knew the Iraq war was a complete fake when they failed to find WMD and particularly when al-Tuwaitha was found to be intact with all U.N. seals still intact on nuclear materials stored there. So, you mean, when the Media lied to you. Gotcha. See, we found WMD. As I said, we found plenty of labs (mobile and otherwise) set up to start mass producing chemical weapons in short order. Also, the very fact he had yellowcake meant he was seeking a nuke. The joke was on him that his scientists weren't actually trying for one. But don't let the truth fool you, not for a second. The what the Media says is the real truth, and the facts on the ground are just the trivial truth.

213 As another example of how long it takes to determine how something like this works, consider South Korea. It was in all but name a dictatorship for decades after the Korean War, but now, not so much, and doing well economically.

214 Again, if we just wanted to kill Saddam, it would be stupid. It could hand power to Iran. How about if we'd killed Saddam *and* decapitated the Iranian regime? The libs would've screamed, but they did anyway.

215 To a certain extent, the main problem is that we let countries (Saudi, Paki, etc) get away with the fiction that the terrorists they run and support aren't really part of the official government and govt policy. If we went after the training camps mercilessly and assassinated the jackasses in those govts supporting terrorists, Islamic terror would end very quickly. By the way, the reason we went into Iraq is that Saddam Hussein was behind the 1st World Trade Center attack in the 90s. It was reasonable to go there, but poorly handled in that we tried to nation-build.

216 so as i said. i'm confused by this.

Posted by: willow at March 21, 2013 03:12 PM (nqBYe)

It's so those among us who 'knew *exactly* what/why/how' it would turn out can tell use they knew all along.  It's really a shame that they're here all day banging on their keyboards instead of saving the US from all it's frightful mistakes....that they could see before they happened.

217

I'm just glad the National Academy of Recording Artists   made Ude and Kuse return their  Grammy. 

 That lipsyncing duo got what they deserved.

218 War is expensive. So what? The conservative thing is to be prepared for necessary or just wars.

219 Bush's idea was to fix the problems created by the British & French after the Ottoman Empire fell.  He thought that because Iraq had had a professional class at some point, had been traders, and through Islam, worshipped the same god (chuckle), it would work out.  Kind of a stupid assumption.

We spent a LOT of money we didn't have, we got thousands of American young adults killed and maimed for life, and the fucking place is a cesspool inhabited by turds most of whom still hate us just because.

No more freaking nation-building. 

220 Worked fine with the Carthaginians, they just didn't do the same thing to the German tribes.

No, the Romans actually did smash quite a few tribal confederations and they did (with other tribes' help) wipe out quite a few whole tribes. But then more German tribes moved in, and worse than Germans moved in behind them.

When Carthage was done, there weren't any further Punic peoples in Africa (defined then as, "North Africa") worth the bother.

A better analogy would be with the Berbers, whom the Romans also couldn't wipe out.

221 Iraq was an example of the West enacting a version of the Domino Theory in the Middle East. It would have worked except Liberals. And Powell Hangover.

222

As another example of how long it takes to determine how something like this works, consider South Korea. It was in all but name a dictatorship for decades after the Korean War, but now, not so much, and doing well economically.

 

That is an encouraging thought.

223 And let's also consider the counterfactual: suppose Bush hadn't done shit after 9/11, and we were attacked with WMDs. The same people who've been crapping on Bush would have been howling to high heaven that he "failed to protect us, when everybody knew what a threat Iraq was" (See, e.g., contemporaneous YouTube videos), and the CIA and all Western intelligence services said the same thing.

224 "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea" - Samuel Johnson
But I've cum ashore!

225

This criticism is only possible because no one can unequivocally state what the the state of the world would be now if we had not gone into Iraq  or if we had just gone in and blown the shit out of it and left.

 

I do know that Libya gave up its nuclear weapon program because of it.  I do know that we no longer needed no fly zones or troops in Saudi Arabia.  I do know that the 500 tons of VX gas that was documented by the liberal Han Blix but now never accounted for will not be used by Iraq against anyone.  I do know that Israel has nothing to worry about from Iraq at this time and for the last 11 years.  I do know that thousands and thousands of terrorists have been eliminated.  Finally I do know that all of those in the military that lost their lives or were injured did not do so in vain.

 

 

226 I think it was a just war , but they fucked up the planning for the rebuild/peace process if there even were any planning.

And then they muddled the propaganda war.

It's still a strategic victory, we'll see if Obama wastes that too.

227

My own feeling about Iraq was that the Bush administration knew that Saddam was behind 9/11 but did not have concrete, smoking-gun proof.  I always thought that Al Qaeda was just a mob of hitmen for hire.  Saddam hired them to do 9/11.  Osama bin Laden never had a reason to attack the US.  But Saddam Hussein did.  He also had a personal reason to attack George W. Bush:  Bush's father threw him out of Kuwait and humiliated him.  George W. knew that such attacks would not stop as long as he was President and Saddam was in power.  All the stuff about planting the seeds of democracy and WMD were bullshit.  Saddam was determined to keep hitting the US and had to be taken out.  Period. 

 

Bill Clinton's people knew a bigger and badder attack was coming after the embassies were hit in 1998 and they knew why.  What does everyone think Sandy Berger was after in those archives and why was he willing to risk a prison term to get it? Why did the Clintons engineer getting Jamie Gorelick on the 9/11 Commission?  That whole thing was an engineered whitewash of the Clintons. 

 

Bill Clinton should have invaded Iraq, but he got away without doing it and left it to Bush to clean up his mess.  It may not have been a "conservative" thing to do, but it was damn well necessary and it worked.  Al Qaeda has no state or big money behind it anymore and nobody wants to fuck with the US now. 

228 It's interesting that he doesn't bother address the actual reasons that made the invasion seem necessary but instead invents a straw man argument against democracy building, which was only advanced after the fact.

229

Because he wouldn't do it himself, on orders from Rove. Imagine if he'd actually unleashed the War Cock on the press.

 

Posted by: Ian S. at March 21, 2013 03:03 PM (B/VB5)

 

Imagine what we could have done domestically for the country when  the GOP controlled the federal government in those years.

 

I recall someone, Stephen Hayes maybe,  arguing that there  was evidence of  a  trove  of WMDs to be found and  the  White House knew it, but for some reason wasn't touting it.  After a while I had to concede that the reason Bush wasn't defending himself vigorously  was that he really didn't have much convincing to offer.

230 As another example of how long it takes to determine how something like this works, consider South Korea. South Korea, like Europe, turned into a Marxist shithole that hates the US while we provide their defense. I'm not ready to call it an unqualified success.

231 Returning to the case made at the U.N., Saddam did make overtures to Niger to purchase yellowcake. The Prime fucking Minister of Niger confirmed this to the the British and to that piece of shit Joe Wilson (as he admitted in the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report). Also, the aluminum tubes he purchased could only be for a nuclear enrichment program. The bullshit that this had been "debunked" was such a weak argument that only idiots could beleive it. Posted by: jwest at March 21, 2013 03:02 PM (u2a4R) Joe Wilson undermined the war, but would have been a nothing factor had it not been for the Democrat Media.

232 And to compound it, they proclaimed that no one who had ever been a member of the "Baath" party (Everyone that knew anything about how to run the government or where the bombs were) would ever be permitted to work in the new government.

Posted by: DiogenesLamp at March 21, 2013 02:45 PM (bb5+k)

 

Hell.... I hired Nazi's because they could make the trains run on time...

233 I do know that Libya gave up its nuclear weapon program because of it. I do know that we no longer needed no fly zones or troops in Saudi Arabia. I do know that the 500 tons of VX gas that was documented by the liberal Han Blix but now never accounted for will not be used by Iraq against anyone. I do know that Israel has nothing to worry about from Iraq at this time and for the last 11 years. I do know that thousands and thousands of terrorists have been eliminated. Finally I do know that all of those in the military that lost their lives or were injured did not do so in vain. Posted by: polynikes at March 21, 2013 03:21 PM (m2CN7) Very well put except maybe for the last line. obama is doing his best to make it all in vain with the help of all the liberals in the Congress and Senate

234 It's so those among us who 'knew *exactly* what/why/how' it would turn out can tell use they knew all along.
It's really a shame that they're here all day banging on their
keyboards instead of saving the US from all it's frightful
mistakes....that they could see before they happened.

Posted by: Tami at March 21, 2013 03:19 PM (X6akg

Unfortunately I think this is True.

235 @215

Essentially, yeah. Many of these governments, probably knowing that they cannot in a normal fashion compete with the power of the USA and its direct proxies, have resorted to other means.

We had to pretend like it wasn't so; I guess so we don't start a WWIII, but partly because our intelligence was not clear (which is partly Clinton's fault.)

The only thing worse than no knowledge is incomplete and noisy knowledge. What makes it hard for most guys to tell if a girl likes them is not that she doesn't show interest, it's that sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn't.

I don't feel duped on the whole thing, but I really feel like the Democrats were just using the whole thing to advance their agenda; extremely callous and inhuman for the supposedly 'for the little guy' and 'help the poor' party.


By the way, they're going to tell us that Syria has all kinds of devices of this or that provenance; some nuclear; some biological, some chemical; some ballistic. They might be right (given how intelligence probably has improved since 9/11) but ... does it matter?

236

 

What about...Libya?

 

If taking out Saddam Hussein was a 'mistake'...according to the Left...then, what about Quhdaffi?

 

Barky was applauded for "his actions in Libya".

Well, until Benghazi happened.

 

 

 

 

237

It all could have been easy.

 

Let's go back to the time when war was for fun and profit.  The commanding general for the U.S. who won the war in Iraq would have been granted the land.  He would split it up among his officers who would rule over their portion of the country.

 

Each would pay a tribute to the crown and he, in turn, would pay a tribute back to the U.S.

 

Simple, easy, effective.  Now, instead of an expense, Iraq is a profit center.  Instead of having PTSD soldiers back home, they would be on their estates managing their Iraqi workers.  With the income from Iraq flowing back to the U.S., taxes could be lowered here.

 

This is how it should be done.

238 Bushes delenda est. Posted by: torquewrench at March 21, 2013 03:03 PM (gqT4g) Amen. They did more indirect damage than I thought possible. I will vote for a Democrat before I ever support another Bush for anything.

239

He thought that because Iraq had had a professional class at some point, had been traders, and through Islam, worshipped the same god (chuckle), it would work out. Kind of a stupid assumption.

 

Gotta respectfully disagree (and also say the religious point is a bit of a straw man). The reasoning was that Iraq was Arab (unlike, e.g., Iran), had a substantial population (unlike, e.g., Gulf States), had a professional class, had a considerable number of educated people, had oil (and therefore a backbone for future prosperity, unlike, e.g., Egypt), and had a long and pretty glorious history, and was one of the most secular of Muslim countries. These considerations, coupled with the threat posed by Saddam, made Iraq a natural choice.

240 Boff!!!

241 the JEF gave good speech condemning Hezbollah. Words are cheap however. Hillary leaked emails look to be leaked by her IMO. Very tailored to justifying her narrative about the video and Benghazi. He says he would not let Iran USE a nuke. He says he is against containment. I dont believe it. He lies. The press will slobber all over him for this. He is very good at speeches. And lying.

242

South Korea, like Europe, turned into a Marxist shithole that hates the US while we provide their defense. I'm not ready to call it an unqualified success.

 

Oh for heaven's sake. It is not Marxist, and not a shithole. Yes, it has some gratitude issues, but it is neither collapsing in chaos nor threatening everyone else and it is generally a reliable trade partener and ally.

243 "A conservative writer, T.P. Carney" I didn't know "conservative" here meant douche. Oh well.

244 As conservative as Medicare Part D. Keep out the Bushes!

A conservative writer, T.P. Carney, questions whether it was "conservative" in ambition in the first place.

245 We were pretty sure he didn't have nukes yet but was seeking to obtain them.

Quite a bit (well over 1000lb) of 20% enriched uranium were removed from Iraq and sent to Oak Ridge.  That's the 1st enrichment stage prior to going for bomb grade.

Saddam had enough to make at least 10 fission devices if he'd taken it to the next level.  You need about 20lb of weapon grade uranium to get splody.

When some oblivion challenges the existence of this uranium, I always direct them to the UN press releases with IAEA objections to our removing it without their consent.

That usually shuts down the conversation QUICK.

246 The idea that the war was about "nation building" is pure garbage. We had to fight a war because a nihilistic insurgency existed. If the insurgency didn't exist, no one would be whining about "nation building" which basically meant not permitting total anarchy.

247 And just handed the country over to Iran. Great plan. Posted by: Fen at March 21, 2013 03:07 PM (a422o) Carter did that in the late 1970s.

248 If anything, Iraq was a disaster for us because Pelosi and her crew held Bush hostage - in order to get funding for the war, he had to acquiesce to a bunch of their bullshit. Remember that Obama wasn't the original "stimulus" - Bush/Pelosi moved away from tax cuts and towards one-time tax "credits" in 2007-2008 as well.

249 Gotta respectfully disagree (and also say the religious point is a bit of a straw man). The reasoning was that Iraq was Arab (unlike, e.g., Iran), had a substantial population (unlike, e.g., Gulf States), had a professional class, had a considerable number of educated people, had oil (and therefore a backbone for future prosperity, unlike, e.g., Egypt), and had a long and pretty glorious history, and was one of the most secular of Muslim countries. These considerations, coupled with the threat posed by Saddam, made Iraq a natural choice. Posted by: Jay Guevara at March 21, 2013

Gotta respectfully disagree myself.

Again.......a long and violently oppressed MAJORITY will want, and get, revenge against the MINORITY oppressors.

Why does no one here get this?

250 Iraq violated a number of the provisions in the 1991 ceasefire agreement. They also provided a safe haven for terrorists (another violation of the ceasefire agreement) and actively promoted hostility towards our country.

251

I remember right after 9/11 (and remember, people,  we were attacked and close to 3000  Americans were killed, more than at Pearl Harbor) when the country seemed so united.

 

I told a  co-worker  that the so-called unity would evaporate  as soon as Bush started sending in troops.  Two weeks later that same person was in my face yelling about Bush starting wars.

252 "I remember the crying and pulling of hair and the never let it happen gain after 9-11
by most everyone."

Not from me.

What I was saying after 9/11 was, "Damn. Yet another government fuckup."

Which it essentially was. At multiple levels. Just a government fuckup.

And what have we done since? Stacked up many more and worse government fuckups.

The TSA, for one. Intimidating authoritarian theatre by Fedzilla that is absolutely useless for practical purposes of security.

253 In true award winning blog tradition, I'm gonna post before I read the comments.  I've seen several of these stories this week, and I'm sick to death of hearing the term "war-weary country". The so-called sane half of this country stood by and allowed the left to demonize W, and the military and their valiant effort for years, while giving us daily body counts and "atrocities". No wonder 60-some percent believe it was a wasted effort!!!! Where are these banshees now?

254 Posted by: torquewrench at March 21, 2013 03:12 PM (gqT4g) Another Bush is worse than a Democrat. The Bushes ride under our banner, and it makes us look like fools.

255 Oh for heaven's sake. It is not Marxist, and not a shithole.
----
This. South Koreans use a lot less manure than they did in the '50s.  North Korea still uses a lot. Recent years have also seen an increase in the sale of human excrement in the North.

256 It was kind of a well laid trap, in a sense, wasn't it?

Anyway, who were we afraid Iraq would nuke? Iran?

And how are we going to pretend like nukes aren't going to continue to proliferate? So now it's our job to stomp on everyone who starts a breeder up? I don't like the idea of countries that are not at least somewhat part of the West's common assumptions about statecraft getting the degree of power that they might be able to change the rules in their favor. But how long can we keep it up?

257 If anything, Iraq was a disaster for us because Pelosi and her crew held Bush hostage - in order to get funding for the war, he had to acquiesce to a bunch of their bullshit. Remember that Obama wasn't the original "stimulus" - Bush/Pelosi moved away from tax cuts and towards one-time tax "credits" in 2007-2008 as well.

Posted by: The Q at March 21, 2013 03:30 PM (yVmMc)

this is as i remember it as well.

258 No more freaking nation-building. As much as I agree with the reasons we went in, yeah, no more. Lesson learned. These people are, and may very well never be, worth it. They are not Japan, Germany, or South Korea. I would like to give a special shout out to the (D) traitorous bastards that did everything they could to ruin it. Fuck you. I hope your deaths are long, painful and hideous. ...and soon. Very soon.

259 You know, if obama hadn't taken "over" The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan things would have most certainly ended up different....

260 torque while i agree on the tsa and govt being prone to fkng stuff up, otherwise  to my knowledge of everything i was reading at the time. you were one of the few  that determined it wasn't worth fighting over.

261 Yes lighter- much lighter. Afghanistan is not a country where there will ever ( at least no in the next 1000 years) a central government of any kind- Go in with special forces and Air Power like we did at first, kill as many of the bad guys as we can and get out with the promise that we will come back if they let Terrorist set up there again. If they want to enslave their own women act like animals, let them, but if it extends beyond their borders we will come back and kill some more. But set up large bases like we did? Never- what a waste Posted by: Nevergiveup at March 21, 2013 03:12 PM (9Bj8R) Yup. It has the advantage of getting the point across without the risk of "face losing" optics of being attritted out of the country. (vis a vis the Russians)

262 War is always expensive.  What you have to consider is the cost of NOT going to war though.

What would an ongoing endless deployment sitting on him like we did for the decade prior have cost?  At some point, that tips the $1T mark too.

Of course he was filling mass graves at a 20,000/yr clip to keep the locals in line too.

263 Amen. They did more indirect damage than I thought possible. I will vote for a Democrat before I ever support another Bush for anything.

Posted by: DiogenesLamp at March 21, 2013 03:25 PM (bb5+k)

 

you and torquewrench should chip in and by one of those black helicopters.

264 @259

I would tend to think that what you're saying is not a foregone conclusion.

It was like trying to remove the nitrogen from TNT.

I'm just waiting for the announcement that Syria has WMD.

265 Of course the problem can also be that you overcorrect. Glenn Greenwald's sockpuppet is on your Senate floor: "You can keep mowing them down, but as soon as the lawnmower stops, the grass grows again. Some people have gone one step further and said for every one you kill or for every one that you accidentally kill that you didn't intend to kill, ten more spring up."

266 soona i'm actually dumbfounded by it still, and from our own ,


taking a walk,   to calm tfdown.
 fk it.

267

What is it you people have against empire building?

 

The only downside is when you're on the losing end.

268 #145 And Grant made it a war of attrition. His decision to launchthe final at Cold Harbor is just one example of his mindset: victory regardless of the cost in lives. He knew the Army of Northern Virginia could no longer replace its fallen. He could replace his and cared not how much suffering was inflicted, evven on his own men. Posted by: Fourth Virginia at March 21, 2013 03:14 PM (wbmaj) Mary Todd Lincoln called him a "butcher." Pretty much correct. What an ugly war.

269 Simply continuing to pay the common soldiers of the defeated Iraqi army would have saved countless lives, and would have cost us nothing but the vast stacks of US dollars that Saddam had. Yup. I remember being at another blog not to be mentioned, and saying that we needed to calculate the number of law enforcement people Saddam had prior to the invasion, then replicate that number. Because Saddam may have been crazy, but he knew what it took to keep his ass from being overthrown. If the USA had less then that number, chaos, more, so be it. Weeks later, the troop surge.

270 Appropriately enough, Obama is governing like Nixon, with all the secrecy, personalized politics, and paranoia of that administration. Posted by: The Q at March 21, 2013 03:15 PM (yVmMc) Adolf Hitler.

271 "Bush should have never called it a 'war on terror'. He should have called it a war on Islam."

Now *that* I would have fallen in line behind. That would have reflected the actual realities of the world.

Except what Bush did was to invite CAIR, that absolutely notorious front organization for Islamic terror, straight into the White House for a warm public reception, where Bush declared that "Islam is a religion of peace".

Bullshit. Utter, total, deluded, massively ignorant bullshit.

Bush then went on to declare that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which were the twin tap roots of creating and funding bin Laden's organization, were going to be his "partners and allies in the War on Terror".

The fuck? I mean, seriously, what the fuck? How utterly cranially vacant does someone have to be to think that PAKISTAN is going to help fight Islamic terrorism?

Then it all turns to shit, as anyone with an ounce of sense would have predicted. Bush's Paki "allies in the War on Terror" turned out to be physically harboring and protecting bin Laden after all.

And the American voting public, having had this dangerous nonsense on stilts sold to them as "conservatism", then declare that they don't want any more conservatives in office. Who could blame them? Seriously, who could blame them?

272 What is it you people have against empire building?
Posted by: jwest at March 21, 2013 03:38 PM (u2a4R)
---
In the last 100 years we have shed Wrangell Is., the Philippines, an Antarctic claim, and a Canal Zone. On the other hand we have gained the Northern Marianas.
Or is it virtual empire that was meant? /

273 "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea" - Samuel Johnson

"What childbirth is to women, war is to men." - Asa Baber, Playboy

Everything looks better when Johnson says it.

Lots of experts here. Wot, no love for partition? We discussed it at the time. No dog in fight, to speak of -- but I remember how Iraq was formed.

274 Some folks here defending Bush - as I recall that administration DID NOT defend itself; it gave the impression that no WMD were found. Now, unless you can point me to the administration's press releases and efforts to show what I was only able to find out in blogs on the dextrosphere, the point stands: That admin had conservatives abandoning principles to defend it. Now, some of those conservatives didn't have those principles (as a certain number of conservatives are recently disgusted liberals) - I for one was too young to be fully formed in principles at that time, but still, we didn't get conservative governance. We got nonsense about a religion of peace, scaremongering on WMD followed up by... ??? and then, half-assed 'winning the peace'.

We're double-doomed.

275 Saddam was never going to use ABC weapons against the US. I doubted the reasons for going to war before we went, and I was a (newly minted) conservative then. It made no sense, it was obvious someone wanted to go in for some reason, no matter what.

276

Following my plan, within two generations everyone in Iraq would be speaking English.  Kids would be complaining to their parents saying that Grandpa was in the backyard bowing to the east and mumbling about allasomething.

 

Empire building solves the problem long-term.  It's cost effective and overall, gives the country being absorbed a better quality of life. 

 

If, like Hong Kong, in a hundred years you feel it morally right to institute self-rule then let it happen.  At least at that time the citizens will have a cultural background that is compatible with civilization.

277 Hell.... I hired Nazi's because they could make the trains run on time... Posted by: Gen. George S. Patton, Military Governor of Germany at March 21, 2013 03:23 PM (lZBBB) Exactly the point. The rule was, keep your nose clean, and if you weren't one of the worst offenders, we'll ignore what you might have done in the past. This is how you get them to put shit back together again. The way Bremmer/Bush chose was to get them to tear shit apart.

278 I totally approve of the Bush foreign policy, but, for the life of me, I can't understand why Republicans approved. Perhaps 9/11 made interventionists out of us all for about five years...

279 274 "as I recall that administration DID NOT defend itself; it gave the impression that no WMD were found."

That was because they were engaged in top secret missions to get those WMDs out of Iraq during the height of the insurgency. Risking catastrophe to prop yourself up in the press is more suited for Bush's successor than the man himself.

There were a few press releases in early to mid 2008, when the WMDs were successfully removed from Iraq and flown to Canada, but by then we had ended the insurgency and the American people had hiked up their dresses for their new boyfriend to give a damn about Iraq.

280 Posted by: jwest at March 21, 2013 03:48 PM (u2a4R)
---
Not directly related to jwests's point, but the comment reminded my of an Atlantic Monthly article by James Fallows before the war with a title something like "Iraq: The 51st State".. There was not so much  liberal-conservative divide at the time as a left-rest divide.

281 @276

Once you buy into the Religion Of Peace nonsense, what 'right' do you have to Christianize (or what religion were you suggesting) Iraq by force?

At times the swordsman in me is nodding with the Spanish Conquistadors saying, 'if they want violence, we'll give them violence, and the peace of Christ at the tip of a spear.'

Aelfred kicked some Dane butt, drove them back into the Danegeld and promised not to slaughter them / drive them into the sea if they converted. Now in his case, the Danes invaded and nearly won; so it was more or less justified to tell them to put up or get out.

Now invading Spain and converting them to Islam by the sword; what kind of 'blowback' did they expect from the Spaniards later?

So dang tired of nominal Catholics whining about the violence of the past as if it was a Christian thing.

282 Unfortunately I think this is True. Posted by: willow at March 21, 2013 03:23 PM (nqBYe) It's not true at all. It's just a nasty little swipe at people who are likely quite competent, and quite knowledgeable, but who have chosen different path for their lives than running a government. It ignores the fact that in order for someone to be in a position to do something about the mistakes in Iraq, they had to have been working in, or working towards being a member of the policy team of government for perhaps a decade or more. It is just a mindless demeaning comment, and it wasn't intended to be well thought out or even slightly fair.

283 "Right about what? Are you referring to Pat Buchanan's belief that Hitler was a great man, a victim of bad (no doubt Jewish) press? Pat Buchanan is a national disgrace. Whatever the hell else he might be,Buchanan isno conservative. If he is, then the word's lost all meaning." Buchanan does not believe that Hitler was a great man, if by great you mean morally laudable or a person who didn't do terrible, unforgivable things. Hitler was, however, someone who rebuilt a defeated Germany into a powerhouse (economic and military) in what amounted to an eyeblink. The fact that someone is a monster does not mean they were also stupid. Buchanan was right. These wars were stupid ideas to begin with, they were never conservative ideas, and just about everything he said would result from them, dead. He's not only a conservative, he's the conservative who was advising us against disaster. People who want to run around the world imposing secular governments on people who do clearly do not want them are liberals in every sense of the word.

284 Caught up to comment 114, and Miss Marple, I salute you.  The left was DIRECTLY responsible for dragging this out, by their constant screaming to the roof-tops that W was a war criminal.  Who can forget our own searchlight stalker on the floor of the Senate stating, "this war is lost, this president is a failure".

285 Is conservativism mainly about curbing ambition and understanding humanity's limits? Is conservativism categorically against dreaming, against all forms of grand schemes? Dunno. Dunno. Iraq war and nation building were wrong because the specific target marker of making Arabs civilized was silly. Pouring money into a drain is silly too - but does it mean we should abandon any Grand Projects forever and ever? Digital Computing. Space program. Star Wars. CERN. Curing cancer. Mars colonization. All are Grand Projects which are extremely costly and radical in the way they can/could change everything around us. Is conservativism against it?

286 Again.......a long and violently oppressed MAJORITY will want, and get, revenge against the MINORITY oppressors. Why does no one here get this? Posted by: Jack Wagon at March 21, 2013 03:30 PM (KUPae) The Minority Sunni had been successfully keeping the Majority Shia under control for a very long time. I regard this as evidence that the Shia are dumber and more fucked up than are the Sunni, and that this is likely going to be a recurring circumstance in that country regardless of what we do. In the meantime, we needed to get shit back to a semblance of stability so we could declare victory and get the hell out!

287 218 War is expensive. So what? The conservative thing is to be prepared for necessary or just wars. Posted by: Y-not at March 21, 2013 03:19 PM (5H6zj) Pretty much yeah....

288 The TSA, for one. Intimidating authoritarian theatre by Fedzilla that is absolutely useless for practical purposes of security. Posted by: torquewrench at March 21, 2013 03:31 PM (gqT4g) Yup. The Genesis of American Brownshirts/ Gestapo.

289

281 @276

 

In empire building, you never force any religion on the population. 

 

However, you are in charge of educating the young.  With the proper methods and the correct amount of ridicule, no kid will want to be associated with their parent's religion.

 

Empires take the long view. 

290 @283

Some people have so bought into the demonization of Hitler that they can't see the human being there anymore. Maybe it's our way of protecting ourselves from the thought that we might have done what he did or worse, in the same situation. Hitler was obviously a titanic personality (how else can you explain that you can get to an article on him in 6 links on Wikipedia from any article?) - and all titanic personalities are non-neutral: they will either be good or evil monsters, not because they are demons or non-humans, but just because they are big.

In that era they needed some 'get that s**t done' kind of guys like Adolf and Mussolini, and they got them. What concerns me is that we've gotten ourselves into that very same position about a hundred years later. I just pray that we don't get into that stupid scapegoating crap.

291 Posted by: 98ZJUSMC Waiting for the Sun at March 21, 2013 03:34 PM (ve95y) I like the cut of your jib.

292 @285

Yes.

It should be acknowledged that the world is not composed only of conservatives.

293 But Pat Buchanan said something once that offended Jews so everything he has ever said should be repudiated. If, as a Catholic, I applied the same rule to everyone who said something nasty about Catholics I'd tell just about everyone in the world to fuck off and ignore everything of value they had to say. As far as bending over and letting China fuck us up the ass and getting nothing in return but misery, he's been dead on.

294 you and torquewrench should chip in and by one of those black helicopters. Posted by: polynikes at March 21, 2013 03:37 PM (m2CN7) We are conspiracy kooks because we think the Bushes really screwed up the Country and the Republican brand? I met George W. Bush back in 1992. I didn't think much of him then either. I saw him as a "preppy countryclubish" type. His governing style pretty much confirmed that impression.

295 We Republicans should try to get the Libertarians to "compromise" on some of their positions, by "compromising" some of ours.

We'd all be better off.

296 The Iran Iraq war nearly bankrupted Iraq. When it telegraphed its intentions to invade Kuwait to grab some more oil, we didn't clearly say no. Saddam's use of chemical weapons was an artifact of the earlier war, and observed after Desert Storm against the Kurds. He didn't use them against us in DS, or load them into the scuds he sent to Tel Aviv. I never found the WMD argument convincing justification for the 2003 war. Even if he had them in quantity, they weren't a threat to the US. I flew combat missions in DS. I'm here in Baghdad right now working with the US and Iraqi militaries as a contractor. Iraqis don't hate us, they actually like us a lot, from what I can tell. But they know we're out, and they still live in the neighborhood with all the same neighbors. Iran throws a long shadow. The current PM is Shia. So there is some important history that predates our involvement here, and factors that overshadow our current presence. As for whether it was conservative in an American political sense to invade in 2003, I don't think so.

297 Posted by: RiverC at March 21, 2013 04:03 PM (El+h4) Wasn't Reagan a conservative? Didn't he enact Star Wars? I wouldn't say Eisenhower was a hardcore conservative, but he wasn't some wide eyed liberal, and did start the missile and space programs.

298

Saddam was never going to use ABC weapons against the US.

Posted by: Baldy at March 21, 2013 03:47 PM (opS9C)

 

No way to know that. Of course, he wasn't going to use them with a return address in Baghdad on them. He wasn't a fool.

 

Most likely, he would have supplied them to a non-state actor (al-Qaeda the obvious choice). Then NYC gets hit with an ABC weapon (chemical is again the obvious choice; easier, and no propagation issues) and Saddam sends his condolences. Now we have no basis to go after him, and will look like assholes if we try.

 

Why do I think that that's what he might have done? Because it's what I would do in his shoes.

299 I met George W. Bush back in 1992. I didn't think much of him then either. I saw him as a "preppy countryclubish" type. I met him around the same time (in the Valley Forge area) and wondered why he brought his mother with him. I mean, there's conservative, then there's letting yourself go to hell.

300

The mis-steps of GWB in the GWOT were apparent almost immediately: no pain felt by the Saudis even though 15 of 19 were theirs (and it later came out partly financed by their ambassador's wife), failed to try John Walker Lindh for treason, and failed to establish in the nation's mind that unlawful combatants have no rights at all. Once we caught KSM we should have delcared openly that we would use whatever means available to obtain intelligence and upon completion he would be summarily executed.

Oh, and having our guys in Gitmo and elsewhere wearing white gloves and carrying the Koran with only one hand...just playing into the Islamists' sense of superiority.

All those displayed weakness that fueled the opposition in Iraq and elsewhere.

301 Is much of this thread right? 'Cause I know that's the *popular* version of what went on there. And a lot of people like to believe that. I wish I could, but I was *there*. I wasn't here in a class room, hoping I was right, thinking about it. I was up to my knees in desert sands, with guns that didn't work! Going in there, looking for al-Sadr, slugging it out with him while pussies like you were back here partying, putting headbands on, doing drugs, and listening to the goddamn Kanye West albums!

302 "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea" - Samuel Johnson
But I've cum ashore!

Posted by: ergie at March 21, 2013 03:21 PM (0rvDP)


huh.

"I go home.  People ask me, 'hey Hoot, why do you do it, man?  You some kinda war junkie?'  I don't say a goddam word.  They won't understand.  They won't understand why we do it.  It's just about the man next to you.  That's all it is.

Hey, we started a whole new week.  It's Monday."
-Hoot

303 Rallying behind Bush's ambitious "freedom agenda" meant abandoning a core insight of conservatism Liberty is ambitious. His mistake, our mistake, was misunderestimating and never engaging the real enemy: the NYT/AP cabal.

304

His mistake, our mistake, was misunderestimating and never engaging the real enemy: the NYT/AP cabal.

 

This.

305 Al Qaeda and friends are hardcore Shia. There was no love lost between them and Hussein. In the run-up to the 2003 invasion, Saddam argued to his people that he was the only thing between them and Iranian influence and sectarian violence. We underestimated that aspect, then saw it start playing out as soon as he was gone and the Iraqi army was disbanded. Our efforts now include strengthening Iraqi institutions to be able to handle that.

306 AllenG: "See, we found WMD. As I said, we found plenty of labs (mobile and otherwise) set up to start mass producing chemical weapons in short order. Also, the very fact he had yellowcake meant he was seeking a nuke. The joke was on him that his scientists weren't actually trying for one. " We got a decent trove of Libya's small WMD program and all their equipment. I saw the vid of them taking it into custody and unloading it at an airbase here in the States. But from Iraq, we got no serious WMD equipment or stockpiles. Maybe it's there but all the stuff Colin Powell pointed to on the maps at his U.N. presentation turned out to be a total nothing. This is something no one ever brings up when he's touted yet again for being a huge Bammy-supporter or an eminence grise of foreign policy. As for having yellow cake, any country can have it. We spread nascent atomic programs all around the world back in the Forties and Fifties from our Atoms For Peace program. I think even Afghanistan had an Atoms program. It is not illegal for any country to have a reactor or a research program.

307

Al Qaeda and friends are hardcore Shia. There was no love lost between them and Hussein.

 

And there was love lost between us and Soviets in WWII? Or between the Nazis and the Soviets before the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact?

 

You don't have to take long showers together to be allies. Just have a (perhaps fleeting) correspondence of interests.

308 Al Qaeda and friends are hardcore Shia. There was no love lost between them and Hussein.

And there was love lost between us and Soviets in WWII? Or between the Nazis and the Soviets before the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact?

You don't have to take long showers together to be allies. Just have a (perhaps fleeting) correspondence of interests.

The big difference is that Shia's and Sunni's lived together in Iraq for a long time, had to continue to live together, and they had killed each other's families.

309 My problem is we picked the wrong enemy.  The enemies we should have gone after were Shia Islamo Fascist Iran  and Wahabbi Islamo Fascist Saudi Arabia.  With nukes. 

310 Bravo, Tim P. Carney The Washington Examiner, March 20, 2013 "President George W. Bush, with authority from a bipartisan majority in Congress, made the mistake of invading Iraq 10 years ago this week. Republicans and conservatives may have learned some lessons from this folly." --Bill Kristol won't admit that lessons learned EXCEPT to point out Obama's Messaging Failure which has "created Rand Paul". OK, so Rand endorses Mitt Romney's campaign, proves willingness to compromise on immigration policy, etc.; but where's Kristol's compromise with Republican libertarian-conservative policy where differences exist v. neoconservatism? pfft. If only Obama were more explicit verbally, and say what Kristol wants said, then no one would evah think about limiting the size/excesses of power/costs of our federal government, and we could sing in Kristol's Choir at the Appreciate Obama Party. What difference does it make?!-- Breitbart Big Journalism Transcript via Real Clear Politics, March 19, 2013: BILL KRISTOL: I very much agree with you. We cannot sustain a serious foreign policy abroad without public debate and without a president who leads. And that's been the biggest problem; hawks like me, who want to support some of the things that Obama has done, he's never defended them. He doesn't explain them. He doesn't put them in context. As a result, there is more support for a Rand Paul-type view. I think its mistaken, but I understand why people go in that direction when President Obama what the consequences of getting out of Afghanistan would be, where he never explains why we need to spend some serious money on defense and national security. So, in that respect, President Obama, in a way, has created Rand Paul, or the opportunity for Rand Paul, and I have nothing personal against Rand Paul, he gave a good speech it sounds like today on immigration, where he's going to be more forward-leaning than a lot of his supporters in terms of immigration and a path to citizenship for Hispanics. So, again, I think this is all pretty helpful for the party and for the conservative movement, but we also have a president these next four years who we're going to have to do our best to prevent real disasters from happening on his watch.

311 Al Queda is most assuredly not Shia, it is Salafi the hardest edge of the Sunni faith, How did Saddam subjugate the country, through the Army and the Mukharabat, we know what he did to the Kurds, he did use chemical weapons,

312 JDP Recall that the 20th Century World Wars I&II were funded via War Bonds, purchased by choice. Not merely via taxation. When the citizenry willingly fund a declared war after suffering a massive attack nearly destroying our Navy, that's their CHOICE. And it was for the duration which came to a timely conclusion for Americans, only involved fighting for three years, "from here to eternity" as the "greatest generation" put it. A point, however, remains that our nation's entrance into both of those wars met every constitutional requirement rather than merely being conducted at a president's whim, or only to placate globalist corporate demands. And though Bush did not make a declaration of war, he got Congressional approval to attack and invade Iraq. Also, Bush wronged our troops by sabotaging them with his administration's PC Rules of Engagement amounting to suicidal maneuvers. Top those rules with his unrealistic expectations, which Obama augmented, that still requires every member of our military to be all things to the humanitarian interests of the "enemy" whom we would convert through PC "winning hearts and minds" or bribe when all else failed. THAT is the folly which Bill Kristol admitted, once. You'd never know it now, listening to him still going on about his right sort of messaging making all the difference, selling never ending wars and the lust for genocide to Americans who are exhausted from being abused by our own government gone authoritarian, by our own political party leadership.

313 Whatever our government sells al-Qaeda as, whether our nation's arch enemy or our latest ally in the Middle East, think better than to take the word of propaganda as a reliable definition. In Revisionism We Trust

314 @313 You are 100% correct that Al Qaeda is Salafi, not Shia, and I am wrong on that point. I stand corrected. Still, my main point is that Saddam was not inclined to cooperate with Al Qaeda and vice versa. He was never going to get in bed with them.

315 Wrong. Saddam signed a non-agression pact with them, basically "cooperating" to not do each other any mischief. And he already had provided AQ with logisitcal and medical support for the 1st WTC bombing.

316 Where were all these fuckers who thought it was unconservative in 2002 or 2003? Hiding?

317

Still, my main point is that Saddam was not inclined to cooperate with Al Qaeda and vice versa. He was never going to get in bed with them.

 

And my main point remains, and trumps that one: a) you don't know what Saddam would or would not do, and b) people can hate each other and still collaborate. Again, consider the USSR with us, and carving up Poland with the Nazis.

 

In many respects, striking an alliance of convenience (aren't they all?) with an enemy is a better idea to carry out a terrorist attack than doing so with a friend, because it would make your protestations of innocence more plausible, and the gullible would buy it, because "they would never get in bed with each other."

318 "Bremmer/Bush flubbed it up with their stupid "nation building."

And Colin Powell with his "You break it, you bought it" horse crap.

319

History  will  show  that  the  Second  Gulf  War  was  worth  it.

Saddam  Hussein  killed  over  a  million  people  between  his  wars  and  savage  internal  repression.  Hussein  also  attempted  to  assasinate  a  former  American  president  and  routinely  fired  on  American  aircraft  enforcing  a  UN  mandated  No  Fly  Zone.  He  was  a  monster  and  is now  thankfully  dead.

Win  for  us.

We'll  never  know  the  extent  that  Saddam  had  weapons  of  mass  destruction  or  the  capability  to  reconstitute  them.  We  know  one  thing  though.  Hussein,  who  used  such weapons  in  the  past,  will  never  get  an  opportunity  to  use  such  weapons  in  the  future.

Win  for  us.

Furthermore  Saddam  Hussein's  equally  psychotic  sons  are  also  dead.  I  mean,  how  is  having  the  spawn  a  madman  in  charge  of  North  Korea  working  out?  

Win  for  us.

Al-Qaeda  lined  up  A list  jihadi  Musab  al-Zarqawi  and  the  flower  of  its  forces  to  battle  Coalition  forces  in  Iraq.  End  result?  Al-Qaeda  suffered  a  humiliating  defeat  and  Zarqawi  was  blown  to  kingdom  come.

Win  for  us.

Iraq  remains  very  much  a  work  in  progress,  but  it  is  free  and  relatively  prosperous  (particularly  the  Kurdish  north).  Iraq  has  repeatedly  held  elections  and  proved  that  a  multi-ethnic  democracy  can  succeed  in  the  Middle  East.  Are  they  cozy  with  Iran  and  supportive  of  Syria?  Definitely.  However  one  should  put  things  in  perspective:  1)  The  United  States  under  President  Clusterfuck  is  disengaging  from  the  Middle  East  2)  Iran  will  soon  have  nuclear  weapons  and  become  a  regional  superpower  3)  The  United  States  and  Turkey  are  actively  supporting  an  Islamist  insurgency  in  Syria.  After  eight  years  of  war  it  is  understandable  that  the  Iraqis  would prefer  the  sclerotic  Syrian  Baath  Party  over  an  aggressive  Salafist  government  on  their  western  flank.

Iraq  didn't  so  much  turn  their  backs  on  us  as  we  turned  our  backs  on  them.

That  is  an  entirely  self-inflicted  loss  for  us.

320 Ernie McCracken: 321 "Saddam Hussein killed over a million people between his wars and savage internal repression." And we killed 1.4 million to force democracy on people who had little use for it. At present, over 60% of the Syrians oppose the rebels and any outside interference. They're afraid that we are all too ready to "help" them the same way that we "helped" Iraq. This kind of crap is why we are the most hated country in the world. Even more unpopular than Israel is. When we invade these countries to ram our "democracy" up their bums whether they want it or not, the world just sees us on on another Crusade, expecting yet again that we shall be "greeted as liberators" and all that other complete nonsense the Beltway prattles on about and which never works in actual practice. I have the feeling some of you can see the same movie a lot of times and never understand the plot.

321

TooCon,

 Iraqi  Kurds  would  disagree.  And  the  Iraqis  made  good  use  of  democratic  framework  we  provided.

 Oh  and  you  can  take  your  phony  Counterpunch  statistics  back  down  that  shithole  you  came  from  too.

 

322

" I think it was worth a try to rebuild Iraq. The problem of course was that our State Department was not up to the job."

 

Ignorant comment.  Rebuilding Iraq into a democracy has nada to do with DOS.  The Islamic culture over there is the issue, not only the Islamic culture but the tribal divisions, and anybody with any experience in the Mid East knows this.  Bush was advised by his intel and other mid east experts that disbanding the Iraqi Guard and going down the course he did was dumb and they predicted exactly what happened and is still happening now.  I can see the legitimacy of going after Sadam and have no issue with that, but the way in which it was done was asinine.  Certainly he wasn't enough of an issue to justify the cost.  And I don't think he posed a threat big enough to be worth a single American life.  Really all that was needed was to drop a big bomb on his head.  Of course the intel we were presented with painted a very different picture, but in hindsight how did we get it so wrong?  It seems the whole WMD story was based on the false testimony of a single individual.  I would hope the justification to go to war is based on better data in the future.

323 298 Posted by: Jay Guevara at March 21, 2013 04:15 PM (IDSI7) -------- Perhaps, but I doubt it.

324 "When we invade these countries to ram our "democracy" up their bums whether they want it or not, the world just sees us on on another Crusade, expecting yet again that we shall be "greeted as liberators" and all that other complete nonsense"....

Cool story bro. Except that the world doesn't hate us for installing Democracy in Germany and Japan. And other than Iraq, what ME countries are you talking about? Or did you just get carried away with your righteous posturing?

325 Oh, and "Aikman never should have thrown that pass into the flat. I ran that play 100 times in high school...wait, that was a movie I watched instead...anyway, any fool knows it was a bad call blah blah blah monday morning chickenshit quarterback blah"

326 Fen: "Except that the world doesn't hate us for installing Democracy in Germany and Japan." You have to go back almost 70 years to claim our last successes? After we just blew $2 trillion on Iraq and slunk out with our tails between our legs and we are about to exit Afghanistan where we hope our troops won't withdraw under fire like the shameful retreat from Vietnam with the copters leaving the embassy roof. To forestall that, we're going to pay the upcoming neo-Taliban Afghan government billions per year. You see, even after the gift of fire and democracy, we have to pay our new allies so they'll keep their gunfire at our troops at a reasonably low level, like their cops or soldiers killing only 2-5 of our soldiers per month by shooting them in the back in their own bases. What about all of our glorious crusades for Democacy! conducted since 1945? They haven't turned out so well, eh? These backward peoples just aren't interested in improving themselves, no matter what we sacrifice to help these ungrateful wretches. Such are the White Man's Burdens, a burden we bear in stoic patient silence. I hate to tell you but the rest of the world doesn't worship us as their benevolent overlords. Of course, that is because they are selfish, childlike, bent on plans for Evil Doing, etc. and amounts to a power vacuum that we, and only we, can possibly ram full of our noble intent. Because...democracy and stuff.

327 "You have to go back almost 70 years to claim our last successes? " OK, Grenada and Panama. Oh wait, they don't count either, because they're civilized industrial powerhouses. Or, stuff. "Bush was advised by his intel and other mid eastexperts that disbanding the Iraqi Guard and going down the course he did was dumb and they predicted exactly what happened and is still happening now." Bush Admin experts? What did they predict? "If you don't hire the Iraqi Guard, Iraq will form a Governing Council ahead of schedule and then hold elections under its own constitution. A new Army will owe allegiance to the constitution without reference to the machinations of the army under Saddam." Did they predict that? What if the Guard was kept on, cashed its checks, and still plotted to blow stuff up? What then? They sure weren't tied into the tribal sheikhs who sat on the Governing Council, or the Kurds. Why should they share power with them?

328 329 "OK, Grenada and Panama. Oh wait, they don't count either, because they're civilized industrial powerhouses. Or, stuff." So those awesome victories justify all the other failed Crusades For Democracy since the Fifties to bestow the blessings of democracy on these backward dark-skinned persons, which never seems to excite them all that much. Damned ingrates. They seem to participate in these elections just so we can stamp our Democracy Scorecard and move on to harassing someone else. In the meantime, their puppet governments continue sucking away at the teat of the American taxpayer. At present, we just print the money and add it to our debt. "What if the Guard was kept on, cashed its checks, and still plotted to blow stuff up? What then? They sure weren't tied into the tribal sheikhs who sat on the Governing Council, or the Kurds. Why should they share power with them?" The problem was the militia, working with the terrorists who filled the power vacuum we created by deposing Saddam's security apparatus, actually wanted jobs as police/military. They weren't yearning for freedom, they were yearning for substantial control of the domestic security apparatus. When we "surged" our troops, we also "surged" three airliners full of cash to Baghdad every day to bribe these tribes but without forcing the Iraqi police or military to hire them which is what they were demanding. Apparently, when we invaded, someone made some foolish promises to them. We most often get our way around the world by just bribing people outright. It wasn't like the militias in Iraq suddenly fell in love with Democracy.

329 TooCoon: "You have to go back almost 70 years to claim our last successes? "...

Nope, that wasn't the point. You claimed "we invade these countries to ram our "democracy" up their bums whether they want it or not, the world just sees us on on another Crusade"...I'm asking you, other that Gernany and Japan, what countries are you talking about?

But I love how you cherry-pick one remark out of context to build your little strawman. Pretty much outed yourself as sophist in our first exchange. Thanks for saving me the time.

330 Again, name the countries, other than Iraq that we "invade to ram our democracy up their bums whether they want it or not, the world just sees us on on another Crusade". And since you used the word Crusade, I'm assuming you mean Islamic countries. Or were you just hyper-bloviating again?

331 You hate Democracy, don't you?

332 So Coon,  you admit to cant name any Islamic nations other than Iraq that we have "invaded to ram our democracy up their bums" ??  ie. you are full of shit.