The “war” itself was a huge success. The rebuilding mire after not so much.
It should be noted that in World War One the allies took that many casualties in hours. The Vietnam total in not more than two days.
This guy obviously never lived under Saddam.
Hey,,i have a great idea. Next time we invade a country, how about we kill -everybody- with a weapon, period. And we don’t allow them to have a government, a police, a military, or islam until we leave. Run it under absolte martial law until we decide to leave.
NO rebuilding.
The real lesson? Don’t telegraph your move that allowed all those trucks to go to Syria carrying your evidence.
The article got that part correct. In "real" conservative hideouts, we would have destroyed the country and let someone else "rebuild". Oh, and yes, we should have sucked them dry of oil since we were accused of that and many in the world still believe it. I call it war reparations. Personally, I don't give a damn about any Muslim, living or dead anywhere. So putting them firmly back into the 8th century without any means pay their way in the world completely works.
I never agreed with this idea. That we can directly influence macro-events there is a "fallacy of control," and I do not see our "engagement" with Muslim nations bringing any benefit to the USA whatsoever.
The “winning hearts and minds” nation building exercise was a huge failure. Far too expensive in blood and treasure for what was achieved. The decision to disband Sadamn’s military, rather than use them for security should also be re-examined.
I have no doubt what we did in removing Saddam was right, and the typical Leftist denigration of the efforts and sacrifices of our service personnel after the fact stinks to high heaven. We saw that with Vietnam, too.
We, however, should perhaps rethink "nation building". Go in, kick a$$, neutralize our enemies, and then let the people decide what they want (bring our folks home).
We went to war along side Stalin and then spent billions and decades fighting him and his.
Saddam Hussein was repeatedly in violation of the terms of the Gulf War negotiations. He restarted the war.
Gaddafi ended his WMD program voluntarily after Saddam was toppled.
Why did Barack take us to war against Gaddafi and are things safer there since HE declared (at the UN) “mission accomplished”?
Iran under the Shah was a civilized place. When you consider what replaced him, he was George Washington by comparison.
His overthrow was Carter's gift to humanity.
Unfortunately, the only thing WE got out of the Iraq War is Barack Obama.
Of course, there is a whole lot on Monday Morning Quarterbacking going on, but Pervert Clinton should have pancaked Iraq the first time they fired on our Jets in the No Fly Zone back in 1991.
I always make it a point to tell Liberals complaining about Iraq that Hitlery Voted for the War when she was in the Senate, along with Kerry and many other Rats.
Is that true? $800 Billion in 10 years? Why don’t we hammer away at that? the D’s are always saying the debt crisis, adding 6 Trillion to our debt, was to pay for the wars of Bush. Over and over they say this and now we find out that 10 years of war did not add up to the one year stimulus bill which costs $100 billion more.
It was not a strategic mistake, because it was only one element: There should have been a push to take over Iran at the same time.