Posted on 06/09/2015 7:17:30 AM PDT by Leaning Right
or break them apart, religiously and ethnically, once you do that democracy is actually possible ... be it in some cases a theo-domocracy.
What Rummy did or did not do is irrelevant. The President went on a fools errand and wasted lives and treasure. I remember him campaigning on an I will not engage in nation building platform. He lied, soldiers died - for nothing good.
Islam and Democracy never go together ,EVER
Nation Building/Imposing Democracy onto 6th century tribalists is doomed to failure.
Not that you can’t burn a lot of billions of taxpayer dollars trying to do so.
Nevertheless, Rumsfeld’s statements here are off-putting. Bush made many mistakes, as others on this thread have said. But Rumsfeld was in the room the whole time. His opinions carried great weight. And as another poster noted, Rumsfeld fired a top general who tried to give a warning. Rumsfeld must share the blame, not shift the blame.
No, Rumsfeld is correct. The whole “let’s build democracy” thing was Condi Rice’s idea, and Bush ran with it, causing Musharraf’s ouster in Pakistan and the election of Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank.
Wolfowitz and Feith too. It was yet another State Department boondoggle.
Freedom is a condition, not an end state.
Giving Arabs living in the former Iraq "freedom" requires an answer to the question, "freedom to do what?"
We can see now what they do with freedom (which, IMO, was entirely predictable).
The choices for Arabia, as a whole, are a) Restore the Sultan/Caliph (my personal choice), b) American occupation government for the indefinite future, c) genocide.
Johnny Turk knows how to sort out Arabs. I'd give him the job, along with a note that says, "A Trident sub with 24 missiles is on patrol somewhere in the world ocean. All of those missiles are targeted on the Topkapi palace, the Caliph's other residences, and various other targets in Anatolia which we will keep to ourselves for now. Please take care that your Arab subjects do not commit any acts of violence within US territory or against US citizens abroad. Have a nice day".
Excuse me. Where is my apology? I’ve been saying the same thing since forever. Democracy and Islam do not mix. Ask them. Their imams say the same damn thing and the majority of the people agree.
When are we going to start listening to what they say?
When they say that Islam and democracy are incompatible, they mean it.
When they say Islam and Western values (such as free speech, equal rights for women etc) are incompatible, they mean it.
When they say they want Israel to be wiped off the map, they mean it.
Yet we go in and spend untold trillions to try to mold and shape a culture into what we think it should be when ir ia obviously a fool’s errand.
But why did Rumsfeld go along with all this? Why did anyone go along with all this?
I'm not making any promises, but yours just might be post of the day.
Liberals can't accept the facts you mentioned because liberals are child-like in their thinking. And neocons (including Rumsfeld) can't accept those facts because neocons are well-intentioned, unrealistic dreamers.
A plan. Thanks, Jim Noble.
Sure. He shares some blame. The problem is, his job is to execute a plan. The plan is given to him and the military leadership and then they execute. They have a huge voice in recommending a plan but State also had a voice and the President was the decider. The military executed their mission to take Iraq nearly flawlessly. The one major issue was when Turkey renigged on access for our northern front. Not sure where blame lies, honestly.
It was also the military wing that ultimately innovated to develop the Surge strategy.
I forget all the details anymore but the big picture concept of spreading democracy developed after the war started and into Bushs second term. It was an effort to reframe the war efforts into a bigger strategy. Iraq’s mission was to change regimes and give Iraqis freedom from Saddam’s tyranny. That scope is fine and within historical norms. Later, it became part of a bigger mission to create democracies throughout the world.
The thing is, Rumsfeld is right.
Yeah we cannot build a democracy in Iraq (we did but Barack tore it down):
Shinto Japan
South Korea
West Germany
East Germany
Italy
I’m glad we have foreign policy realist today who can get things right. /s
In that part of the world, “Democracy” is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.
Their cultures are much different than Arab Culture.
Agreed. But he is much like a football coach who helped develop an impossibly difficult trick play, then who criticizes the head coach when the play fails.
Not to open a hornets nest, but Bush should never have gone after Saddam. He should have kept a laser focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. He should have pummeled Afghanistan and decimated the frontier region of Pakistan, and imposed an embargo on Pakistan. Iraq was a mistake...we should never have gone there.
Jordan, and Morocco, are the model in the ME. Probably Africa too. Everyone wants to be free. To have a republic, however, you need to be educated too.
I know our current form of government is no longer sustainable either. We’ve learned we can vote ourselves any largesse. As such, we are toast.
When it will fall apart is question.
Iraq was on it’s way but the democrats got into power and now we have chaos in the mid-east.
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