Posted on 04/09/2017 4:59:29 PM PDT by marktwain
ere on the 10-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I wonder how long it will be before we can discuss the war free from the contamination of myths. It may be sooner than many myth-purveyors expect. Just listen to this lecture by Mel Leffler, one of the leading historians of American diplomacy. He has been a harsh critic of Bush-era diplomacy and his speech does accept some of the conventional critique (specifically about the "hubris" of the Bush administration), but his analysis is far more balanced than the conventional wisdom on the topic. All in all, Leffler’s analysis is a promising example of myth-busting.
For my part, the myths that get thrown at me most often have to do with why the war happened in the first place. Here are five of the most pervasive myths:
1. The Bush administration went to war against Iraq because it thought (or claimed to think) Iraq had been behind the 9/11 attacks. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the Bush Administration did explore the possibility that Hussein might have collaborated with al Qaeda on the attacks. Vice President Dick Cheney (along with some officials in the secretary of defense’s office) in particular believed this hypothesis had some merit, and in the early months gave considerable weight to some tantalizing evidence that seemed to support it. However, by the fall of 2002 when the administration was in fact selling the policy of confronting Hussein, the question of a specific link to 9/11 was abandoned and Cheney instead emphasized the larger possibility of collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda. We now know that those fears were reasonable and supported by the evidence captured in Iraq after the invasion.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
The biggest myth is that we are fighting for some greater good in all these Muslim lands.
In fact, we are fighting as proxies for one side or the other (it varies) in their Islamic religious civil war of +/- 1000 years.
If you have to debunk “war conspiracy theories” ten years after the fact, then you can be sure that the military campaign in question was a complete ‘effing disaster.
I would add that the reason we struggled in Iraq for so many years was constant SUBVERSION BY THE LEFT. The Left not only weakened our resolve at home, but they emboldened the enemy.
And of course Obama's election was the coup that destroyed our hard-won victory.
Fake news, Washington Post pimping material.
For about a hundred years, the Muslims were not much of a factor in war.
Then a combination of the Cold War and the geography of oil, and, perhaps Henry Kissinger, combinded to transfer vast wealth to Muslims, who otherwise could not compete with the West.
That wealth was used to promote radical Islam (Wahabbism from Saudi Arabia) and the Ayatollahs in Iran. It has been used against us repeatedly. We did not fight in the Middle East because of being for or against some Muslims over others. We fought because our civilization depends on the fuels from the Middle East, and we have been attacked by Muslims fueled by oil money.
Maybe we should find our own fuel.
I think that was actually a secondary factor. The primary factor was the complete political and cultural dysfunction of the place -- which made it impossible to govern in any way that we as Americans would recognize as normal or legitimate.
Go back and read the transcripts of the interviews Dick Cheney was doing in the early 1990s when he was explaining why the U.S. didn't topple Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime in the first Gulf War. His assessment back then was spot-on ... which is what makes his role in the Bush administration particularly disgraceful. Frankly, the guy should be given the same place in the ash heap of history as an @sshole like Robert McNamara -- because he knew damn well what the U.S. was getting into in 2003 but obviously didn't give a sh!t.
There are war conspiracy theories about Pearl Harbor right here on this forum, and that was over 75 years ago. I guess WWII was a real disaster.
Iraq was wrong not for the leftist BS but for the same hubris that is the design of the bombing of Syria. It pains me to say that any soldier who is KIA or maimed in the Mideast is in vain. I went to Desert Storm as active Army and then PANG for “Iraqi Freedom” (I knew nobody who gave a rats ass for Iraqi freedom.We just wanted to not get killed on our convoy security operations). The feeling of the soldier is a considerable contrast between the two operations.
WW2 ended more than 70 years ago -- so any "conspiracy theories" associated with it today relate to a view of WW2 in a historical context. In 2013 Iraq was still a dysfunctional mess that was directly attributable to the incompetence and/or irresponsibility of the U.S. leaders who orchestrated the 2003 military campaign. An article aimed at debunking conspiracy theories about an ongoing event comes across as a very defensive piece of commentary to me.
You won’t get an argument from me on that. I’m no late-comer to the game, either. I’ve been saying the Iraq invasion was a disaster since the very beginning.
A decade later and the Iraq debate is still contaminated with myths...
And lies, and Bullshiit.
You ignore Obama’s role in turning it into a dysfunctional mess by 2013. He was the culmination of an organized Democrat party campaign to undermining Bush and the military since 2002.
He bugged out on a stabilizing situation and allowed ISIS to flourish. You know that quite well.
This probably doesn't count but... the 600,000+ people Saddam had killed
If you didn't know that quite well, you do now.
0bama failed to secure a Status of Forces agreement, as everyone knows.
I've counted myself, and I come up with ZERO.
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