Pure nonsense. Iraq worked exactly as planned up to the point O pulled everyone out for poltical reasons in 2010. What is now ISIS had almost their whole leadership cadre exterminated and was down to a few hundred fighters when O pulled the plug on Iraq in 2010.
Why Iraq
One of the really infuriating things in modern politics is the level of disinformation, misinformation, demagoguery and out right lying going on about the mission in Iraq. Democrats have spent the last 3+ years lying about Iraq out of a political calculation. The assumption is that the natural isolationist mindset of the average American voter, linked to the inherent Anti Americanism (what is misnamed the “Anti War movement”) of the more feverish Democrat activists (especially those running the US’s National “News” media) would restore them to national political dominance. The truth is the Democrat Party Leadership has simply lacked the courage to speak truth to whiners. The truth is that even if Al Gore won the 2000 election and 09-11 still happened we would be doing the EXACT same things in Iraq we are doing now.
Based on the political situation in the region left over from the 1991 Gulf War plus the domestic political consensus built up in BOTH parties since 1991 as well as fundamental military strategic laws, there was NO viable strategic choice for the US but to take out Iraq after finishing the initial operations in Afghanistan.
To start with Saddam’s Iraq was our most immediate threat. We could NOT commit significant military forces to another battle with Saddam hovering undefeated on our flank nor could we leave significant forces watching Saddam. The political containment of Iraq was breaking down. That what Oil for Food was all about. Oil for Food was an attempt by Iraq to break out of it’s diplomatic isolation and slip the shackles the UN Sanctions put on it’s military. There there was the US Strategic position to consider.
The War on Islamic Fascism is different sort of war. in facing this Asymmetrical threat, we have a hidden foe, spread out across a geographically diverse area, with covert sources of supply. Since we cannot go everywhere they hide out, in fact often cannot even locate them until the engage us, we need to draw them out of hiding into a kill zone.
Iraq is that kill zone. That is the true brilliance of the Iraq strategy. We draw the terrorists out of their world wide hiding places onto a battlefield they have to fight on for political reasons (The “Holy” soil of the Arabian peninsula) where they have to pit their weakest ability (Conventional Military combat power) against our greatest strength (ability to call down unbelievable amounts of firepower) where they will primarily have to fight other forces (the Iraqi Security forces) in a battlefield that is mostly neutral in terms of guerrilla warfare. (Iraqi-mostly open terrain as opposed to guerrilla friendly areas like the mountains of Afghanistan or the jungles of SE Asia).
Did any of the critics of liberating Iraq ever look at a map? Iraq, for which we had the political, legal and moral justifications to attack, is the strategic high ground of the Middle East. A Geographic barrier that severs ground communication between Iran and Syria apart as well as providing another front of attack in either state or into Saudi Arabia if needed.
There were other reasons to do Iraq but here is the strategic military reason we are in Iraq. We have taken, an maintain the initiative from the Terrorists. They are playing OUR game on ground of OUR choosing.
Problem is Counter Insurgency is SLOW and painful. Often a case of 3 steps forward, two steps back. One has to wonder if the American people have either the emotional maturity, nor the intellect” to understand. It’s so much easier to spew made for TV slogans like “No Blood for Oil” or “We support the Troops, bring them home” or dumbest of all “We are creating terrorists” then to actually THINK.
Westerners in general, and the US citizens in particular seem to have trouble grasping the fundamental fact of this foe. These Islamic Fascists have NO desire to co-exist with them. The extremists see all this PC posturing by the Hysteric Left as a sign that we are weak. Since they want us dead, weakness encourages them. There is simply no way to coexist with people who completely believe their “god” will reward them for killing us.
So we can covert to Islam, die or kill them. Iraq is about killing enough of them to make the rest of the Jihadists realize we are serious. They same way killing enough Germans, Italians and Japanese eliminated the ideologies of Nazism, Fascism and Bushido.
Americans need to understand how Bin Laden and his ilk view us. In the Arab world the USA is considered a big wimp. We have run away so many times. Lebanon, the Kurds, the Iraqis in 1991, the Iranians, Somalia, Clinton all thru the 1990s etc etc etc. The Jihadists think we will run again. In fact they are counting on it. That way they can run around screaming “We beat the American just like the Russians, come join us in Jihad” and recruit the next round of “holy warriors”. Iraq is also a show place where we show the Muslim world that there are a lines they cannot cross. On 9-11-01 they crossed that line and we can, and will, destroy them for it -
If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
Winston Churchill
That is absolutely, verifiably false. See my prior post on this point.
Right. That's why the silly "war on terror" was aimed directly at the primary sponsors of radical Islamic terrorism -- in places like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Oh, wait a minute ...
Wow...OK...that is very cogent and would be a strategy of sorts, however it would also be an easily countered strategy if that was it (which it wasn’t). The terrorists would simply have to stop being drawn into the killing zone to defeat that strategy. Go to Somalia, or Iran, or Yemen, or Germany, or France...anywhere except where we were set up to kill them. That’s a pretty bad strategy if that’s what it was.
But it wasn’t. The American people were most demonstrably sold that it was weapons of mass destruction and bringing Western democracy to Islam. And quickly they stopped buying. The Bush and Clinton globalists screwed the pooch...so much so that when Obama and Clinton went back to make some money from the Saudis, they had to play under cover, use subterfuge and misdirection to get in the game in Egypt, Libya and Syria...and Iraq.
Exactly- The misinformation was almsot criminal-
a few points for why he needed to be taken out- He was a modern day hitler- plain and simple- except he was murdering his own people en mass-
You bring up good military reasons- there werre also moral reasons to add to the mix-
saddam would light peopel on fire, hang them from meat hooks and skin them alive- he put peopel through giant shredders alive- feet5 first- threw people off buildings, burned peopel with acid in the face- lit their breads on fire so they suffocated, He used chemicals on his own people- He had MASS GRAVES dug to bury the dead he had killed- ETC ETC ETC
Saddam repeatedly broke international laws and fired upon our military repeatedly-
His sons woudl go to grade schools and order the teachers to bring out several young girls so that they could rape them- They put an olympic athelete in a box and left him there to die because he didn’t medal- ETC ETC ETC
Mistake General? No- there was no mistake-
1. 4500 dead Americans and 32000 wounded were not part of the plan.
2. Our withdrawal schedule was negotiated by Bush in 2008. The deadline was the end of 2011 which is when we left.
Iraq is that kill zone. That is the true brilliance of the Iraq strategy. We draw the terrorists out of their world wide hiding places onto a battlefield they have to fight on for political reasons
The problem with this idea is that there is a not a finite number of potential terrorists because more are being created all the time, having a battle causes them to be created even faster, and they are not all going to conveniently travel to one place. Clearly our smartest generals do not believe that this idea is the best way to solve the overall problem.
Iraq is about killing enough of them to make the rest of the Jihadists realize we are serious. They same way killing enough Germans, Italians and Japanese eliminated the ideologies of Nazism, Fascism and Bushido.
The evidence that the number of people you kill changes minds is extremely weak. It was not the sheer number of deaths on each side that determined the outcome of WWII. Russia lost 20 million and did not give up. We killed 100,000 in Tokyo in one night and that did not make Japan give up. If we killed millions of Muslims in Iraq that would only make the problem of Islamic extremism intractable for all time.