"The single biggest foreign policy blunder in US History."

[bemildred]

Iraq I mean.

Is it too soon to say that? Am I being premature here?
VietNam is the only other comparable candidate, and the
consequences here seem likely to be much more severe.

[mmonk]

1. and Iraq is

part of the beginning of their foreign policy.

[Just Me]

5. Yep. That scares me,...a LOT!!!! eom

[Redstone]

2. Much worse than Viet Nam.

Viet Nam didn't cause the widespread hatred of the US in other parts for the world like Iraq has.

Hence, it's a much worse foreign-policy blunder, even if the casualties never get as high.

You are correct.

Redstone

[OldLeftieLawyer]

3. I completely agree with Redstone

Also, Vietnam didn't bankrupt the US.

[rzemanfl]

7. Did you have to live through the 70's and 80's as a working

adult? It came close.

[n2mark]

21. I lived through the 7 0's and 80's

The 21st. century is way out of whack. The fundies are in control now and nothing stops them. We have too many whacko's now in the administration. During the time of the Nixon administation there were Republicans who stood up for the constitution. Today, not any of them do, they are all now just puppets for the relligious extreme right including some of the Dems.

[rzemanfl]

25. I call it the uh-ohs. We will see the inflation of the 70's and the

interest rates of the 80's real goddamn soon. I have given up hope of retiring. Having to go back to work because hamburger is $10.00 a pound is too awful to contemplate. Figure I will work until I drop.

[Jacobin]

4. I'll go with much worse

The consequences of this will be decades of hatred by muslims and other countries which will come back to haunt us in ways he haven't even begun to see yet.

Hell, they can't even steal the oil effectively.

[K-W]

11. Agreed, and it shows the difference between now and then

At least the world seems to better understand the true nature of US foriegn policy even if domestically it seems like a dark age of popular awareness.

[bamademo]

29. Off Topic

Why did you choose your name? I work on Redstone Arsenal, an Army base, in Huntsville, Al.

[The Magistrate]

6. It Would Seem Well In The Running, My Friend

The totality of the engagement, going back to the days of the Iran-Iraq War, ought to be taken into the judgement.

The basic initial problem is not so much the backing of unsavory characters because what they do is in our policy's interest, but the refusal or inability either to exert decisive influence on them, or remove or incapacitate them once their usefulness is at an end.

It seems to me that in coming decades historians, at least historians of an impish cast of mind, are going to identify the true onset of the difficulty as the decision not to destroy Hussein's regime back in '91, when blood was up, and accept the partition of the country into three natural cinstituents. Most of what has happened since is in the nature of coping with the consequences of not having done that, then.

The current situation, unfortunately, can cripple on for a very long time. The Iraqi resistance does not have the power to eject the U.S. occupation by imposition of military distress; it can only succeed through effect on the political climate in the United States. This can be achieved through combination of several factors, none particularly pleasant. The most important of these is forcing a degree of frightfulness in suppression on U.S. forces that repels the populace of our country. The most damaging to our country in the long term is the perversion of our political life in clinging to the bankrupt policy that is already evident, for there is no doubt the authors of this policy would be utterly unmoved by an popular outcry against its continuation, as they feel themselves above the people, and guided by divine inspiration in their actions. This will lay bare fissures that could prove a genuine threat to democratic rule.

[bemildred]

9. I appreciate your thoughts Sir.

They are well taken, but focus on domestic concerns. It is true
that the Iraqi people lack the means, unaided, to expel us soon.

Without meaning to be arbitrary in separating domestic and foreign
issues, it seems to me that the loss of international legitimacy is
the most important thing. We are far from the independent bastion of
liberty that we once were. One may already observe the disrespect with
which the blatherings of the Bushites is met, the shift in the tectonic
plates of international order, and there will be no recovering of that
credibility, no re-ascent to the throne.

(I'm sorry, I just love a bit of purple prose.)

[rockymountaindem]

8. In my opinion the greatest foreign policy blunder

was this country's isolationist attitude on the eve of WWII.

Edet fur bd speling.

[bemildred]

10. We came out of that one with half the worlds industrial capacity.

And our enemies (at the time) in ruins. We had to invent some
new ones (enemies) it was so bad. I don't consider that a blunder,
just good dishonest politics.

[K-W]

12. You missed his point.

His argument is that our policy at the beginning of the war was a blunder, not our policy once we entered it and after.

Had Hitler or Japan felt that the US would oppose them, perhaps they wouldnt have acted as aggressively as they did, and perhaps if the US had been there from the start to fight back, the war would never have gotten off the ground.

[bemildred]

14. No, I got it.

I just think it was intentional.

[K-W]

15. The Iraqi blunder was just as intentional.

So I dont see your point.

[bemildred]

16. The Iraqi blunder was a blunder. nt

[K-W]

18. That truism does not support your point.

Just because something is done on purpose does not exclude it from being considered a blunder as the Iraqi invasion proves.

[bemildred]

20. A bit slow are we?

I mean that in my opinion the "isolationist" period before
we entered WWII was intentional political strategy and not a
blunder, as evidenced by the outcome.

All this by way of contrast with Iraq, which was handled in a very
ham-handed fashion politically and which clearly is a blunder.

Just to be clear, I consider whether such things are "blunders"
or not by whether they appear to achieve the goals intended or
the opposite.

In this case, I consider that FDR achieved what he set out to do,
very much so.

[rockymountaindem]

30. Had the US been a louder voice against fascism during the 30s

for example, had we not placed an embargo on the Spanish Republic in their war against Franco, WWII may have been avoided. Probably not, but maybe.

[bemildred]

33. That is true, but it assumes we wanted to avoid WWII.

I disagree. It seems clear to me that FDR wanted WWII
and he wanted the US in it, at the appropriate point. The
outcome was US world hegemony and the firm establishment of
the current national security state, no mean feat.

I'm not defending it, BTW, I think we should have jumped in
and kicked Franco's ass, but that is a different question.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

13. Read Philip Roth's novel

"The Plot Against America."

I'm no fan of Roth's, but the premise of this novel - that Charles Lindbergh defeated FDR in the 1940 election, is compelling, and pretty deftly done.

Book fizzles out in the last 50 pages, but the story - pogroms, riots, killing of Jews in America - is beautifully done.

[sleipnir]

17. I would rank it up with another co-related failure.

The abandonment of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.

I feel that Reagan and the CIA dropped a figurative bombshell on the region after the failed to support the Majahadeen attempt to establish a peaceful regime.

Nearly all of our modern security issues can be tied directly to this horrific failure of US policy.

[K-W]

19. How about the failure to bring the post-revolutionary Russian

government to the diplomatic table, or at any point seriously attempt to create a peace between the USSR and the west even when we were allies in a war.

(this is a failure for both sides, although it is my impression that the US was more insistant on having no peace but our peace than the USSR)

[sleipnir]

22. A good point, and well taken.

Stalin would have been a tough sale to the American people as an ally beyond fighting Nazi's. His manner would be difficult to shift, considering the USSR had just won a war against the Germans, minus a good chuck of their male population. Hubris was on Stalin's side, and eventually it chipped away his pedestal.

[bemildred]

23. Certainly of a piece with the present problem.

The Iraq war just seemed more like a precipitating agent
in unpleasant change to me. Had we not gone in there in
such an incompetent way, things would have continued as
they were, at least for a while yet. It seems reasonable
to argue even that had we done a good job in Iraq it would
have had something like the desired effects.

But the thing that strikes me about Iraq is that it is
having exactly the opposite of the intended effects in
foreign affairs, the end of US hegemony rather than a
re-assertion of it.

[KamaAina]

24. Um, what about nuking Japan?

We're still the only country that has fired off a nuke in anger.

:nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

:nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

:nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

[rzemanfl]

26. Nasty but effective. If we'd nuked Tora Bora when Bin Laden

was still there we could have declared the "War on Terror" over in 2001.

[bemildred]

27. A credible alternative.

:thumbsup:

I could quibble, it's a bit more speculative about what the
consequences would have been - a world where nukes were never used
"in anger" - but certainly the effects of that choice were as
far reaching as what we face now.

[SouthernDem2004]

28. I don't know about that.

I would disagree with the "anger" part for one. Also, at the time it was the best option they had.

[KamaAina]

31. "Fired in anger" as opposed to tests

I would disagree with the "anger" part for one

Many countries have tested nukes, but only the U.S. has actually used them against another country.

[SouthernDem2004]

35. But anger?

The invasion of mainland Japan would have been extremely costly for both sides. American casualty predictions alone were from between 100,000 and 200,000.

[bobbieinok]

38. mistakes post WWI?????

--forcing new country divisions in Europe, then not joining the League of Nations.........totally pulling out of Europe

--invading Russia at the end of WWI in support of White Russians

--totally ignoring events in Russia

[NoPasaran]

32. Another candidate for hugest blunder

At the end of World War 2 the United States supported the efforts of France and the Netherlands to reclaim their East Asian colonies, Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, rather than recognize the indigenous governments of Ho Chi Minh and Sukarno, which had declared independence with the collapse of the occupying Japanese Army. The US abandoned its legacy as an anti-colonial power and pursued a losing strategy of resistance to the wave of decolonization that swept Asia and Africa over following decades. This blunder had serious consequences both for the US (including the Vietnam War) and the post-colonial nations, many of which were devastated by proxy wars between the US and the Soviet Union. My understanding is that had Roosevelt lived, he would not have provided the arms and the shipping that Truman did; the world we grew up in paid a terrible price.

[bemildred]

36. Mixed feelings.

The US was already a colonial power, since the Spanish war, and
the ruling elites liked that, it seems clear. Politically it was
still a hot potato as there was still a lot of public sentiment
against foreign entanglements, etc. So that would have already
been another USA from the one that was.

What FDR would have done is an interesting question. I've read
widely varying opinions, and I don't know of anything really telling
in sorting it out.

Truman clearly thought the national security state and all it's
trappings were a great idea, but at the time it worked out pretty
well, it is only now, later, that the flaws in that become clear,
and a few hundred years ago nobody would have considered anything
else, I mean you get to "rule the world".

Long term of course it was stupid (IMHO), maybe on the order of the
current mess, we had a real chance to create a new, stable, legitimate
world order and threw it away in favor of sticking our nose in the
slop-trough as deeply as we could for as long as we could, very
short-sighted and cynical.

[DerekG]

37. Finally! A dissenting voice against Truman!

I consider Truman to be the worst president of the 20th century: his administration undermined populist movements in Greece, Italy and Vietnam; his exacerbation of the "communist menace" would give thugs like Nixon and McCarthy license to declare war on the Left (leaving us with nothing but Cold War liberals); and he set in stone a national security apparatus that would destroy our republic and put the world in a stranglehold.

Alas, that political hack is all but deified around here.

[bobthedrummer]

34. Yep, it's all that and a bag of chips-and still a work in progress...

:puke::argh:

[Flammable Materials]

39. I prefer to be a bit more diplomatic about it.

I prefer to call it a "TOTAL GOAT FUCK".

[Deja Q]

40. Iraq? How about:

! Russia selling weapons to Syria
! Russia selling weapons to Venezuela
! S Korea ditching the dollar
! GM going bankrupt, bleeding their stockholders in the process
! Other countries poised to ditch the dollar
! The US using Israel to attack countries for it
! Repukes saying they value life yet cap medical damage lawsuit judgments, which was why Schiavo was able to be kept on life support for 20 years. x(
! N Korea saying the US isn't the only country that can pre-emptively attack and is boastful that it's got nuke capabilities
! Rice whinging about China's ecnomy and how it's now a threat, even though the US had happily built it up for them, 30 years in the making
! Rumsfeld, one time friend of Hussein now enemy - we made our own enemy by giving them weapons and such
! 9/11, Bush's connections with the OBL family and why the OBL family was flown out, amongst other questions and secret documents/meetings

! Never mind 'peak oil', which seems to be the impetus for MOST IF NOT ALL of everything that is happening.

How much more need I go on?

I think the US is in big trouble. The world is too. The doomsday clock should be reading 11:58 for real and I will not discount the use of nukes at this point; not when the Russians of late told the US off about its sham democracy gambit on the middle east as a shroud to hide the obvious truth: We're there for the oil (and that hasn't been a shining success either!).