Posted on 03/21/2018 1:51:44 PM PDT by nuconvert
It’s been 15 years since President George W. Bush made the controversial decision to invade Iraq to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Alas, while Iraq has taken great strides forward, many of the pundits and policymakers not only continue to treat Iraq and Iraqis as a partisan football, but perpetuate false myths about its run-up and aftermath. Here are 12:
1. Sanctions killed 1 million Iraqis (and 500,000 children). False. Where did this claim come from? Saddam Hussein’s government. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Saddam’s government claimed that United Nations sanctions resulted in more than 1 million deaths. Baghdad refused to allow humanitarian organizations to conduct independent studies to verify the claims. Unable to conduct their own surveying, some organizations adopted Iraqi government figures. In 1999, for example, UNICEF released a report that concluded that sanctions had contributed to the deaths of 1 million Iraqis. While activists often cite UNICEF as its author, Saddam’s Ministry of Health co-authored it and provided the statistics. They were nonsense numbers.
More here but, in short, there was almost no difference between Iraq’s population growth rate between 1977 and 1987 (35.8 percent), and between 1987 and 1997 (35.1 percent).
(Excerpt) Read more at aei.org ...
“When then-President Harry S. Truman embroiled the United States in the Korean War, critics accused him of embroiling America in open-ended war and ignoring his generals. They insisted democracy was alien to Korean culture. Time proved Truman right, as any juxtaposition of nuclear North Korea with democratic South Korea shows.
Increasingly, it looks like time will prove Bush right as well.”
I’m sorry, I just don’t see Iraq coming close to resembling Korea, ever. For a variety of fundamental reasons.
Pretty good article. Times change, and perceptions do too.
I was fully behind this, as costly as it was. If we didn’t have 3000 Americans murdered on 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan would have never been invaded, as simple as that. That’s it. And I, as an American, wasn’t willing to have our country sit on their hands or wring them in frustration as Carter, Clinton, or Obama would have done.
There was going to be payment in blood. If we hadn’t done anything, people would be screaming just as loud. Often the same people complaining or screaming.
I stand fully behind our armed forces and what they have had to do in the past 17 years. They did a great job in a difficult situation that was often politically mishandled, and we should all be proud of them and grateful.
And we should take care of them.
Sanctions would have gone on forever.
I was wrong to support “nation building” (since the alternatives were total war or do nothing, and we weren’t going to engage in total war) Nation building cannot be done in the Middle East, or anywhere else without the full surrender and subjugation of the country, something we were unwilling to do. And that requires total war, something we were unwilling to do.
That is just the way it is in the 21st Century, in the era of full Internet, video and scrutiny. We don’t have the stomach for it.
When we have a nuclear device set off on American territory, that may change. But we won’t do it before then. I am satisfied that we took the approach that we did and not the Soviet approach where they carpet bombed towns, because we aren’t the Soviets. I grieve for the young men and their families and friends who paid with lives, limbs, and blood, and the others who paid with the loss of what should have been their young and joyful years, giving up those to serve their country for what they thought was right.
But I hope that we learned that lesson paid in blood, that nation building does not work.
“””””””But I hope that we learned that lesson paid in blood, that nation building does not work.”””””””””””””
Don’t forget that anything good that was happening in Iraq as they started to become their own identity after Saddam Hussein was dismantled by hussein obama.
I agree with maybe half.
> “nation building”
Nation building takes at least a generation of the “builder” educating the nation being built. For some reason we thought people in the middle east could make their country great just by being given “the vote” without the corresponding education to make the vote meaningful. I supported it at the time, and would now IF we took the long term approach that required education of at least a generation.
US politicians after the Louisiana purchase understood that and argued for not giving the vote to the new population in Louisiana until they had been educated. (there were other political reasons and this was often their excuse for less honorable reasons)
Muslims, communists, and today’s left understand that and want to make sure every generation is “educated” the right way (indoctrinated) so they vote the right way. Progressives are “nation building” in the US every day but they take the long approach unlike we did in Iraq and too many people in the US don’t have a clue.
Back then AND until now, we should have taken those oil fields for the good ole USA. What really...really PISSED ME OFF was that after all was said and done. those countries like France (who did NOT HELP THE ALLIES) had first bid by the new Iraq govt when the oil fields were opened.
Sorry, no sale.
But ya gotta admire how the NeoCon nutjobs keep trying.
The poor and disenfranchised, given their first chance to vote, always choose socialism. Free markets need to be in place before democracy.
There wasn’t a single Iraqi on the planes on 911, nor one Afghani.
I consider myself a Patriot, but it was the wrong war in the wrong place fought the wrong way and followed up in the wrong manner.
Saudi Arabia was and is the problem, but apologists for that vile regime on both sides of our political spectrum bought into their lies.
Was the war ‘illegal’? It sure should have been. Did the President lie? If you’re the boss, you’re responsible for the decision, if the information isn’t good, don’t pass the buck because you either appointed or kept on the people who gave the information to you.
We can’t change the past, we should make sure that the nation never goes to war again without a declaration of war, an absolutely clear definition of what would be considered victory, evidence good enough to convict in a court of law, and an imminent threat to our borders.
I think a "Vietnam war in South Asia" is exactly what we got.
A good place to start would be by comparing the industriousness of the average South Korean with the average Iraqi.
Only the Kurds are even close to being in the same league.
Donald Trump is the President of the United States right now because Americans got sick of the globalist @ssholes like the Bushes and the Clintons who have been selling America out to foreign interests for years.
Nothing else needs to be said.
Even as far back as 2002-2003, some of us recognized the invasion of Iraq as a giant fraud perpetrated on the American public.
Your prediction was accurate.
Nothing else needs to be said.
Amen.
The US military killed 100,000 civilians. That myth.
You are spot on and the one thing I did not like about the Iraq war was the lack of declaration of war and it has concerned me that it is becoming to easy to jump in a war.
I don’t care much - for a long time now for AEI, for reasons having nothing to to with this report. On the whole the points in the report are all valid - with once exception.
The 2nd invasion of Iraq may not have added to Iranian influence in Iraq much more than Iran covertly had their before the war. But not finishing the job at the end of the 1st Gulf War gave Iran 12 more years of digging its covert links and influence among the Shia of Iraq, which INCREASED Iran’s influence and abilities fomenting mayhem in post-Saddam Iraq while the U.S. worked to get things settled down. GHWBush made the mistake of not finishing Saddam the 1st time, when droves of Iraq soldiers, mostly Shia were openly seeking for Bush to back them in completing the job of removing Saddam. For 12 long years the Mullahs in Tehran had no trouble telling the Shia in Iraq - see, the U.S. did not really care about you. And post invasion Iraq in 2003-6,7? Exactly the situation mayhem situation Saddam had a decade to plan on doing if he lost control; as he could be sure, from the 1st Gulf War that he would.
13. There were no WMDs. False. What exactly did he use on the Iranians in the ‘80s and the Kurds in the ‘90s? Maybe he bluffed the size of his arsenal, but being willing to hang rather than comply with sanctions made him an absolute lunatic.
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