Posted on 02/08/2016 8:41:53 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
Every player of the popular video game Civilization knows to hit the save button before engaging in the risky, stupid invasion of foreign country. In the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it became apparent after the first few months that the war was not working out as its framers had envisioned. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction was only the icing, so to speak, on the disaster of failed reconciliation, state collapse, and executive incompetence.
What if we had “saved game†before we invaded Iraq? What would America’s strategic options look like today?
The Middle East
In 2003, we spoke of the policy of “dual containment†as a problem that needed a solution. How could the United States manage a pair of hostile countries right next to one another? Today, the wiser among us recognize that “dual containment†was, in large part, a solution to its own problem. The animosity of the Hussein regime and the Islamic Republic of Iran meant that neither could achieve overarching influence in the Gulf.
In the wake of the Iraq War, “dual containment†has become “basket case management,†as Iraq has ceased to exist as a relevant strategic actor, and Iranian influence has grown in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. While the U.S. no longer has to worry about Hussein, it has been forced to devote its military and political attention not only to the maintenance of the shaky Baghdad government, but also to the resistance of Iranian power in the region.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
The worst geopolitical failure since Yalta. And like Yalta, entirely avoidable.
The Middle East would be much like it was the day before we invaded.
“The failure to find weapons of mass destruction”
Any idiot that could pen that line given the FACT that the US found both mustard and saran gas shells in Iraq should never be read. You should never read past that line if you know the facts.
i dont know how Saudi Arabia got off the hook with 80 percent of the hijackers coming from there.
What if FDR were never elected President.
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I take it you agree? :)
The war was sold on the theory that Saddam had sponsored terrorism and that he was well on the way to developing nuclear weapons. The wmd boogieman was never about mustard gas or sarin.
America should never engage in a war it doesn’t intend to win. Korea, Vietnam, Middle East are cases in point. Go in it to win or stay the hell out.
Meanwhile a nation whose diplomats had direct ties to the 9-11 hijackers, Saudi Arabia, gets off scot free and their leaders get a tongue bath from our stammering idiot in chief GW Bush.
The worst geopolitical failure since Yalta. And like Yalta, entirely avoidable.
Exactly right.
That is certainly the ‘rat talking point on the WMD found in Iraq.
And suppose that following that we withdrew from all the stupid treaties we had whereby Islamic nations were promised US protection (which is, after all what obligated us to rescue Kuwait) in exchange for them not building up a military.
Just maybe the Muslims would have kept their fighting to themselves, and they wouldn't have effort to spare for countries across the sea.
And gee, I don't think I would be sad at all if Europe and China were struggling for oil to keep their economies running while we sailed along under faced petroleum.
This was the course I thought we should have been taking in 1991. None of the steaming piles of excrement coming out of Washington think tanks in the intervening decades have either shown that wouldn't have been better nor shown that it is possible to reform Muslims without lethal prevention of Sharia law which would leave great swathes of them dead and which our nation doesn't have the stomach for.
Don't you think that if we found a CW program matching that described beforehand, that the Bush admin would have been shouting all about that?
Instead there is agreement today across the Bush admin that the intel was bad.
Sadam defiantly wanted the world to believe he had an active WMD program underway. I equate him to the crazed lunatic who brandishes a realistic looking toy gun in a confrontation with the police. Getting shot is the natural result, and a necessary one, even when after the fact it is realized that the perp never had a real gun.
Possibly no Obama.
Working with Libyan scientists, Hussein would have a nuclear weapon. And by now, rather that 1.3 million innocents dead because of him, maybe it would be up to about 3 million. There would be more use of chemical weapons and those weapons would have found their way inside Western Europe. Knowing we would not do anything, he would make a move to control all the Middle East oil and strangle us economically.
Terrorists would have managed to use his technology to sneak a suitcase nuke over the porous Mexican border. During Super Bowl XLVIII, a suitcase nuke would have managed to destroy the stadium before the Seahawks had a chance to destroy the Broncos.
Just another scenario.
If Saddam appeared to be weak, Shi’ites in Iraq would had overthrown him with assistance from Iran.
John Kerry would have been president. Then Hillary in 2012.
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