Wars are usually very popular, and actually quite fun - before the shooting starts.
As long as the military industrial complex gets fed, no need to learn ‘lessons’.... /s
The nation has a hard time with lessons while the corrupt news media is a propaganda tool of the paid off politicians and the deep state. The poppy fields grew by 10 times and the army guarded the heron. Arms dealers on both sides got richer while a decided country sent young kids to the slaughter.
Ron Paul’s specific objections to the wars as documented in the speeches he made on the House floor in 2003 were remarkably prescient and on point. Ron Paul is an American Cassandra. There were many conservatives, many right here on FR, who opposed the American interventions in the Mideast caldron.
Sorry but there is a concerted effort to absolve GW Bush and his allies from responsibility for this fiasco. Yet in retrospect Bush was aware that it was primarily Saudis that planned and executed 9/11. What is more, American intellegence later learned that Saudi intelligence was aware of the plot, knew it was financed from wealthy Saudis.They never stopped it or informed the Americans. Bush, who’s family became incredibly wealthy in oil dealings with those same Saudis, instead of holding the corrupt, vile Saudis accountable, decided instead to invade Iraq. Iraq was the prime enemy and threat to the Saudis. The pretext was “weapons of mass destruction” that were not found to exist. The result was over 6,000 brave young Americans dead, tens of thousands more physically and psychologically maimed, $3 trillion squandered, a severe American financial crisis and recession that paved the way for the catostrophic Obama administration.
History is a harsh judge and no amount of revisionism will change it.
“The Iraq War was our collective error as Americans, one we have never fully reckoned with.”
This is the same thought process as when allies were allowing Hitler to conquer country after country in Europe. Jason Garshfield has no idea what happened in Iraq except what a liberal media attacking Bush created in public opinion based upon entries for their agenda. He’s not a lot different than they are spreading his opinion without knowing what he is saying is not rhetoric as language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content. I’m not questioning his sincerity, just his actions to spread something he doesn’t know. That’s just a failure of the mis-information he chooses to use.
wy69
Having dementia prevents you from cognitive thought.
“Michael Moore and Bernie Sanders denounced the war from the start. Anyone who claims to have been misled in 2003 is under pressure to explain why they were less discerning than those two.”
Oh, please. Those two were against it because they thought it help “shrub” get reelected. Period. Know how I can tell it was 100% political? Because they have not supported peace since then. The “peace movement” and the political figures who identified with it were always fake.
The reason for going into Iraq is debatable.
The reason for the regime change war in Syria was never offered.
In Benghazi Libya the attack on the annex is mentioned over and over.
But our government using that annex to ship munitions to the rebels in Syria is never mentioned.
Why the blackout?
Why were the democrats allowed to deny Tulsi Gabbard the second debate after
She exposed the regime change wars?
“We Haven’t Learned the Lessons of Iraq”
The author has not either.
The author attempts, arrogantly, to determine beforehand what those lessons ought tp have been, then tell the history in a way that satisfies that intent.
I think there are many lessons to be taken from the Iraq war. Most of them have to with what we did do and what we did not do militarily. That the essential aim of removing Saddam when he would not permit a transparent determination of his WMD abilities, was not in and of itself an ignoble error. But, too many surrounding aspects within that aim (Iran, for one) were ignored, neglected, overlooked and seldom dealt with in a true “we are at war” manner.
Often the public loss of approval of a war comes from the conduct of the war more than anything else. By pretending the actual civil war in Iraq -
(yes, post Saddam WAS a civil war with the U.S. both in the middle (attacked from both sides) and trying to quell the opposing sides) -
was a mere internal affair, the outside parties (Iran on one side and the Middle East Sunni Arabs on the other side) were allowed to continually feed the conflict with little interference from the U.S. (we fought with one hand tied behind our back).
We paid for it in additional American lives lost and fighting that could have been brought to an end sooner.
THAT and nothing else in politics (right war, wrong war, ect) made the war unpopular.
Many, many lives could have been saved if we had not allowed Iraq to keep its helicopters after the first Gulf War.