>>Mod Warning<< Thoughts on the War in Iraq

I was a minor player in George W. Bush's toppling of Saddam Hussein. A very minor player. I had no speaking role, nor did I even show up as an 'extra'. I did my job, such as it was, even though I thought it was a bad idea.

I didn't agree with deposing Saddam, not because he wasn't a bad guy, but because I believe America should not be in the business of the forced removal of soveriegn governments.

I think I understand Bush's reason for doing what he did. I think he is of much higher moral character than he is given credit for having. Some people believe that he was persuaded by the Neocons. The conspiracy theorists believe that "Big Oil" interests controlled him. I think his motivations were much simpler. I think that he believed he was doing the right thing for the Iraqi people.

During the administration of his father, George H. W. Bush, Saddam invaded Kuwait. There are theories about that, but I'll just keep to the basic fact. After he was beaten back, the USA led the Iraqi people to believe that if they rose up against Saddam and his dictatorship, we would come in to help them. I don't know why we told them that, nor do I know why we didn't follow through on our promise. All I know is that the opposition to Saddam were massacred during the US sponsored uprising. I'm talking huge numbers of people.

I believe that George W. Bush didn't forget those people. I think he believed he was correcting what he thought of as a grave, humanitarian mistake his father had made.
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There were a number of tactical errors made. Chief among these was the failure to focus on the Republican Guard. The Republican Guard were Saddam's enforcers. They stood behind the conscripts and forced them to continue to maintain their battle lines. For some unknowable reason, we directed our fire against those merchants and goat herders instead of Saddam's brownshirts. We killed a bunch of people who hated Saddam, instead of his henchmen.

The other mistake made was disbanding the Iraqi military. There should have been a better process designed to retain those loyal to the country, rather than Saddam. Instead, many were pushed into becoming an opposition force. Bad move.

Despite these mistakes, Iraq was on the mend. At the end of Bush's time in office, there was progress being made toward a free Iraq. Who can forget the images of proud Iraqi voters?
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Why in the hell did Obama throw it all away?

>>Mod Warning in this thread- Stay on topic<<

 

Because he is a ****in' idiot that the lib/prog/dems saw fit to elect...twice!

 

Obama had limited impact on the war in Iraq. The Iraqi government had already agreed (demanded) the US leave Iraq before Obama came into office. No US president was going to stay in Iraq when the Iraqi government demand they leave. Which reflects one of the key "mistakes" of the Bush policy. He believed that the war in Iraq would lead to a pro US government there. In fact attitudes towards the US in Iraq were likely lower after the war than before in part because of civilian casualties. Control in the country fragmented with the central government ending up being controlled largely by Iran (not a US policy goal).

The free market economic system that Bush believed would arise in Iraq never occurred. Nor did his belief that the war in Iraq would generate a wave of democratic governments in the region. It was never realistic it would. The culture, economy, and institutions in the region do not support a pluralist, free market system. Bush made the common mistake of believing that at heart everyone is an American held back by a few evil people. Get rid of those people and they become like the US. That ignores what drives these types of systems, it fundamentally ignores political, cultural, and economic forces.

The Bush policy in short made fundamentally wrong assumptions about what would happen in Iraq as result of the war (and the surrounding countries) largely because it knew little of them and had a simplistic understanding of change. It was also totally wrong about WMD, although the question is how reasonable it was in being wrong.

 

All blames go to Bush. Senior Bush knew better than to get involved in regime change, but junior was too stupid to understand. Junior himself set the withdrawal date. Obama tried to negotiate leaving some residual troops but Maliki the duly elected leader of Iraq refused. Were we going to ignore the request of a sovereign nation to remove our troops from their land?

 

Obama was pro-Iran.

Do you believe that a more Neocon John McCain or a more centrist Mitt Romney would have allowed the situation to deteriorate as much as it did,

 

I agree with you that Bush's intent was not malicious. Regardless of the influences that prevailed upon him, I think he believed the Iraqi people and that region would be better off without Saddam. And Saddam was in part responsible for his own ultimate fate.

- He never did live up to the agreements he signed at the end of the first Gulf War.
- Although he had nothing to do with it, he celebrated the 9/11 attacks and mocked the U.S. on the day after. His was the only government in the world to do so.

"It is the prestige, arrogance and institutions of America that burn .... the American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes against humanity."

He even implied that he had something to do with it, if not in fact, then in spirit ...

"Thousands if not a million or billion hands were behind these attacks."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1540216.stm

- After his capture, he told the FBI that, in the years between the first Gulf War and the present time, he had been deliberately trying to make it appear that he still had WMD.

To answer your question, Obama pulled out of Iraq to satisfy a campaign promise to his base. And almost immediately after the last troops were out, the Malikki government started its persecution of the Sunnis, and the fragile peace in Iraq was doomed. We'll see if this latest war has taught them anything - or not.

Seth

 

Saddam, socialist, was an opponent of Al Qaeda as Bush should have known. I doubt that he was the only Arab leader who boasted about the 9//11 attack. It is true that Saddam tried to make it appear he had WMD when he had destroyed them. No third world leader wants to appear to bow down to a western state. Iraq is fiercely anti-colonial something else Bush entirely missed. Having a large Western army stay for years in Iraq was an invitation for disaster as the British could have told him. The inability to discipline US soldiers for attacks on civilians made this worse.

Obama was not pro-Iranian. He believed talking with them made more sense than sanctions which achieved nothing.

 

why did George W. Bush promise to pull out all troops from Iraq by 2011?

 

The answer to "why" is that it was due to "war weariness".

So BHO took this issue up as a campaign cause to defeat Hillary in the primaries with and McCane in the general election.

Excellent political strategy.

Pity that GHW and GW Bush each interfered in Iraq. They should have never touched it.

Dumb azzholes both of them.

 

Because the idiot dem politicians had a majority in the Congress.

 

This seems obviously untrue.

How then do you explain the shipment of pallets of U.S. dollars to Iran, in support of their terrorist agenda?

 

Congress did not stop Bush from continuing the war. Democrats controlled Congress largely because the American public wanted out of the war.

 

I don't because I know of no such behavior. When you can document this occurred let me know. Iran's policy on terrorism, which is not aimed at the US, has not changed since the sanctions were lifted. Their primary enemy these days is Saudi Arabia.

What did the sanctions actually achieve when they were in place?

 

?!??

Look it up.

 

Really?

Do you really think Obama should have conquered Iraq AGAIN?

Or, what?

 

President controls foreign policy and military affairs, not Congress.

 

And presidents need to get things done.

That's why it's called politics.

 

That's political mumbo jumbo.

Bush designed and signed the SOFA that specified our departure in detail - right down to who got which hummers and when our stuff would be shipped out.

Maliki was not interested in the US carrying out military operations in his country. And, even if he HAD wanted that, he would have had to get his government to agree - and they were strongly opposed as well.

Are you proposing that we should have overthrown the newly established government that had just been conferred sovereignty by Bush?

 

The American people wanted our boys out of Iraq.

it was a bullshit war and we wanted it over.

if Obama left 10,000 troops there they would have been under Iraqi legal jurisdiction, and you guys would have screamed "Sharia Law!!!!!!!" if Obama had done that.

 

All of this

The American people wanted out of Iraq and still do. Iraq had to learn how to defend itself and the consequences of their actions.

I have zero regrets in leaving.

 

I think that Obama allowed Iraq to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran. I think Obama allowed Iraq to fall into the depths of despair created by Islamists.

What do you think?

 

The oil think is nonsense. There wasn't enough oil to rebuild Iraq. If it had to do with oil, it would have been limited to the corporate interests of contracts for rebuilding their oil infrastructure and/or ensuring (in a miniscule way) a free market in oil. Neither of these were worth a war.

I think it's far more likely to have come from the Project for a New American Century - a group that included numerous highly placed individuals including the VP Cheney, Newt Gingrich and other recognizable names. They had formed and tried to sell BClinton on their plan for taking advantage of the end of the cold war when there really was only one superpower - the USA. The portion of the plan involving the ME noted that we needed a huge military presence there, and the Saudis were increasingly opposed to our presence. They saw Iraq as a better choice. BClinton refused.

Their plan was to conquer Iraq and use it for permanent large scale US military bases for controlling the region. This plan can still be found on-line. And, one can read the list of those who signed.

Remember that Bush started building 3 huge permanent military bases in Iraq.

 

Why in the hell did we go there at all? Saddam did not make the top ten list of bad guys on the planet

 

Again, this is just plain backwards.

Maliki is Shiite. His government is strongly tied to Iran through religion and through their hate for Sunnis.

We CHOSE Maliki because he was the Iraqi side of our "deBaathification" program - willing and able to eliminate the Sunnis who are religiously incompatible with Iran.

When Bush pushed Maliki in the election that ended in a virtual 4-way tie, he selected and helped establish a pro-Iranian government.

 

Yeah. I know of this theory. I can't refute it. I just choose to believe in mine.