wow this site has a swear filter!!! I never knew that :D :D :D :D
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wow this site has a swear filter!!! I never knew that :D :D :D :D
You are directly saying that might is right. :(
.
Diplomacy failed!!!!! :( :( :( :(
Interesting running across this post that I made 13 years ago about how we might look back on the invasion of Iraq.Quote:
Originally Posted by simonm
The campaign itself to Topple Sadam went pretty quickly it has to be said. But what I imagine few people foresaw was how long western troops had to remain stationed in Iraq fighting insurgents. There was a sharp rise of sectarian violence and disunity among the various racial and religious groups in the country. And when the troops finally left, the new 'democratic' regime nearly collapsed amid the rise of ISIS which threatened to turn the country into some crazy extreme caliphate that, if it had been successful, would surely have posed a greater threat to the world than Sadam's Iraq ever would have?
Sadam was reputed to have killed many of his own people but how many have died in Iraq, either as a direct casualty in the 'liberation' or as a casualty of violence that has arisen as a consequence of that? I don't know the answer but it seems to me hard to argue that Iraq has really become a better place than it was before, or that lives have been saved.
And as for the WMD's; that idea has largely been discredited now. No real evidence of such has ever been discovered.
But is the world a safer place as a result of the deposition of Sadam? It seems to me that terrorism around the world is still rife, as rife as it has ever been and probably worse than it was before the invasion of Iraq. I think it would be extremely difficult to argue that it has made the world a better, safer place.
We are where we are but, I think when I look back that I must judge it to have been a mistake. I do not think that we can say that we have not done more harm than good deposing of Sadam.
I thought it was a mistake at the time, never mind in hindsight. It was a stupid war that we never should have been involved in.
Afghanistan at least there was a reason, Iraq we had no reason so we fabricated one !
I was thoroughly anti at the time but I think most of the problems that we're seeing since aren't a result of the Iraq war. In fact you can argue the Iraq war achieved one of it's most important long term goals: it inspired the Arab spring. That had the potential to be a massively beneficial thing for the region. Sadly, due to a combination of over-caution learned through the failings of the initial conflict and a unwillingness to upset our (and Russia's) vested interests in the ruling parties in the region, we failed to support of that spring in any meaningful way. Isis are not the result of our invasion of Iraq, they're the result of our failing to engage with the ensuing fall out.
Hmm i am not sure i completely agree, the power vacuum in Iraq allowed ISIS to spread in a way i never could have if Saddam was in charge. We removed Saddam but we had no plan what to do next and it is the fallout of what happened next that while it did't create ISIS, allowed it to spread through-out Iraq and Syria in a way it would have been impossible before.Quote:
Isis are not the result of our invasion of Iraq, they're the result of our failing to engage with the ensuing fall out.
I am no fan of Saddam Hussein but then i am no fan of Robert Mugabe or Omar al-Bashir or Bashar al-Assad.
Who we decide to remove using regime change seems completely arbitrary, unless you factor in were the Oil is.
It spread in both Iraq and Syria and it's that second bit that says to me that it wasn't really the removal of Saddam that created them. Your reference to "no plan" after Saddam is pretty close to what I mean. It wasn't the Iraq conflict that created them, it was our failure to manage the ensuing events. It's a pretty fine distinction and I'm not sure we'd really disagree if we really got into it.Quote:
the power vacuum in Iraq allowed ISIS to spread in a way i never could have if Saddam was in charge
I think I was about the only person I know who was saying we should put boots on the ground in Syria soon after the incursion started. We didn't because 1) we were scared of the Russians (though not unreasonably so) and 2) the complications following Iraq and Afghanistan had quashed any appetite for foreign military involvements. And the fact that we didn't meant there was room for the likes of Isis to present themselves as the champions of the people of Syria.
Similarly, in Iraq, had we been more willing to pressurise the sitting government to institute truly secular instead of fiercely anti-Sunni policies (and, again, that might have meant military involvement) we wouldn't have given ISIS the opportunity to portray themselves as "protectors".
We got everything exactly the wrong way round. We got involved when it served our interests without caring for the interests of the local populace. Then we failed to get involved when it would have served the interests of the local populace but wouldn't have served our own. That's pretty much a recipe for creating anti-western movements.
^ThatQuote:
Who we decide to remove using regime change seems completely arbitrary, unless you factor in were the Oil is.
I think it was more a fatigue of foreign conflicts for us, rather than any concern over the Russians. From my perspective, we seemed to be kind of hoping that Russia would pressure Assad to abdicate, which would have been good enough for us in that country. We'd probably have declared victory just as we did in Iraq, and been surprised at the result just as we were in Iraq.
If you consider the war over when Saddam was toppled, then, yeah, the war wasn't the thing. The Sunni awakening is something I would include in the war, and would have prevented ISIS, except that we walked away from that and let the Iran-supported Shia government further divide Iraq. The disenfranchisement of the Sunnis, who were the dominant power under Saddam, and our subsequent neglect of the situation created the grounds for ISIS to flourish.
Never been sorrier to have been right. The WMDs never existed, and whatever earlier administration was functioning, the war ensured Iraq was dragged down a deep quagmire it will take years to come out of. ISIS was born with the ready anti-US hate agenda, US was caught in a public face-saving exercise over the army's withdrawal and the whole exercise now looks like a hurried orgasm. Neither party could be happy.
Ironically, we have another US president who seems to be as trigger happy as Dubya, and another region in North Korea that's turning its broadside to the US inviting all the fire it can. I just hope the Iraq war lessons are learnt and better crisis management techniques are used, instead of just storming into a region and throwing everything to the wind...
Cheney and Rumsfeld had plans to topple Iraq well before Bush was elected. They needed an excuse, and Powell couldn't stop them.
Pretty much.