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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI know I'm preaching to the choir, but, "Al-Qaeda takes Fallujah"
I actually know something about that town, having stormed it in the second battle thereof.
This, this, this was my complaint 10 years ago. This. Right here.
Saddam Hussein was an evil, evil motherfucker whom I was not for one second sorry to see jerk from a noose. No doubt on that. But, he was good at one thing, and that was keeping Wahabi fundamentalism out of Mesopotamia. Give the guy that: if you showed up in his Iraq waving the AQ flag, you would be dead before the morning.
Killing Saddam may have been personally gratifying for some (myself included) but in itself it did nothing to advance US or world strategic interests. This is where the Rumsfelds and Wolfowitzes of the world were complete children; oddly enough they should have listened to Kissinger here. Any activity a Power like the US takes on must be weighed by its outcomes. You cannot simply have "good intentions" (and for that matter, Wolfy, et. al. didn't even have those).
We made Southwest Asia infinitely less secure for US and world interests by our invasion. This is one very clear fruit of that.
LuvNewcastle
(16,820 posts)He was an awful man, but he served a good purpose. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. had to have known that taking out Saddam was essentially opening Pandora's Box in the Middle East. I knew it; lots of people in other countries and on the internet knew it. I read their opinions at the time. The question is, if they knew that they were stirring up a hornet's nest by invading Iraq, why did they do it? People don't invade countries unless they have some purpose in mind.
Bingo
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)JHB
(37,133 posts)That became clear after Coalition forces stopped and Bush started started making speeches about Iraqis dealing with Saddam on their own while allowing Saddam to put down uprisings in Basra and elsewhere: he was fishing for someone in the Iraqi military to stage a coup and replace Saddam with a fresh face. (Didn't matter if he was as bad or worse than Saddam as long as he didn't have Saddam's bad press.)
The problem was that nobody had been groomed for such a move, and one thing that Saddam was skilled at was making sure nobody else could cultivate a base of power (part of why he kept a lid on the wahabis too). Thanks to that, at the critical moment nobody was willing to stick their neck out where it could get cut off, so Saddam stayed in (reduced) power and what followed was a decade of sanctions, no-fly zones, and the occasional cruise-missile strike.
I think the neocons convinced themselves that they could just install Chalabi for a similar "swap out" of leadership. They were very full of themselves (that whole attitude of "while you reality-based people dicker around studying the situation, we act and create a new reality" . And they still are: It's not as if they paid any price for being wrong.
catbyte
(34,174 posts)planned since that shady, secretive "Energy Summit" he presided over in January 2001. 9/11 provided the perfect excuse. It will go down in history as one of the worst things the United States has ever done.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)catbyte
(34,174 posts)Obama administration? He'd most likely be housed in Leavenworth right now. Ugh. They can get away with anything just as long as their legislation is mean-spirited enough. Well, unless you get caught with another guy...
Dash87
(3,220 posts)If your business is killing bees, you hope for stirred-up hornet nests. The less-than-ethical person (example: the whole defense industry) also creates further need for their services.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)more money and power you get. No one gets fired over failure to prevent a terrorist strike, they just get more funding and more power.
kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)of US-Israeli interests and keep the MIC in operation. While we watch the inflamed region, guess what...Israel get to do whatever it wants in the Palestinian territories...and we do nothing. Meanwhile the military industrial complex continues to grow and devour all social safety nets in its path...world-wide. It's the whirlwind we have inherited through our and Israel's self-invoked "exceptional-ism."
Only Iran is left from the PNAC list...and we have set in motion internal strife and will soon turn a blind eye to more Israeli attacks inside Iran...as we have already done.
LuvNewcastle
(16,820 posts)The MIC, Israel, and the Saudis have been guiding our foreign policy, and it's killing the country. We're falling apart on the domestic front and the GOP stands in the way of any plans that would hold it together.
Despite all his problems, Obama has thwarted the efforts of the people who've been guiding our foreign policy, and that's where all the hate comes from on the right. Obama has been the only thing standing between us and a major military conflict. I don't expect us to get involved in something major for the rest of his term unless we're attacked, but of course there are people who are only too willing to make that happen.
kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)burnsei sensei
(1,820 posts)Gamal Abdel-Nasser, along with Anwar Sadat, were stabilizing figures.
These men were not all admirable, nor were they, with the exception of Sadat, generally friendly, but they knew how to keep a simple form of order that facilitated tolerance.
Here in the West, tolerance facilitates order, in the ME, it's the other way around.
And we've never learned that lesson.
TxGrandpa
(124 posts)Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)ibeplato
(66 posts)In 1991.....
If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?
rustbeltrefugee
(17 posts)Invading Iraq was the single largest money grab in history. Bush/Cheney should be swingin like Saddam. I am very close to Fallujah right now and it doesn't make me feel real secure, but not surprised that its happening.
erpowers
(9,350 posts)I am not trying to contradict you, but things did not go as planned. I am not saying I agreed with team Bush, but they really thought the war was going to be much easier than it actually played out. It seems they really believed Iraq would be a replay of World War II. They expected soldiers to be greeted as liberators. As a result, American soldiers would be they for decades. American soldiers would have provided the stability needed to keep Al Queda out of the country.
RVN VET
(492 posts)I don't completely: it is possible that Cheney and Wulfie and Rummy, et al, were simply too stupid to see what the elder Bush warned his idiot son would happen. (And George senior did try -- privately and publicly -- to advise young Georgie not to invade.) I know that seemingly smart people can be incredibly stupid when they are ideologically blinded.
But it's also possible that none of the above men -- except elder Bush -- really gave a damn about the consequences AND were so stupid as to think they could still get the oil, regardless of the shambles they created of the country.
Personally, I think all the crappola about being welcomed as liberators, the war paying for itself, the inevitability of a pure and wonderful democracy springing up in the aftermath of the blood bath of was was just that: crappola, created by the neo-cons and fed to a media eager to eat it. And it wasn't so much that they all knew it wasn't going to happen that way. It was that they really, truly didn't give a good g*d damn whether it did or not. As long as they got the oil. (And that, of course, didn't work out for them too well.)
Deny and Shred
(1,061 posts)They had faith in Chalabi to 'unite the clans'. They chose administrators of things like the transition to a market economy based on a favored Senator recommending one of their aides. They believed in their ability to manage the populace after de-baathification. They ignored the possibility of an insurgency, and disregarded Colin Powell's Pottery Barn rule. They ignored Gen. Shinseki and went with a third of the troops he recommended. They didn't protect people or property, allowed weapon stockpiles to be unguarded, etc.
They thought the transition to democracy would be smooth. After the first election (with the purple fingers) something like 90% of those elected fled the country for fear of being murdered.
I found Imperial Life in the Emerad City to be a fascinating read about just how much delusion was going on.
Chrom
(191 posts)n/t
yes, yes, yes.
JHB
(37,133 posts)...and the groupthink of the self-deluded.
Their scenario could only work if a whole string of iffy assumptions fell their way. If any of them didn't pan out the way they expected (and plenty didn't), they didn't even have the capacity for a "plan b" because they lowballed the manpower needed in order to bribe and bully Congress to get the AUMF passed. A Desert Storm level of manpower would make it impossible to even pretend that "quick and cheap" sales pitch was true, and forced greater scrutiny of the WMD claims.
Their main thing was getting troops over there. Past getting rid of Saddam and getting the oil, they really didn't give a damn.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)sendero
(28,552 posts).... (and predicted by many) as to seem to be the actual plan.
LuvNewcastle
(16,820 posts)They were trying to create a perpetual war machine.
ewagner
(18,964 posts)You are, alas, preaching to the choir but the truth needs to be shouted from the rooftops until the ignorant SOBs who can make a difference start to listen.
Thank you also for your service....and especially for your service in Fallujah...I understand it was hell on earth.
mountain grammy
(26,573 posts)malaise
(267,845 posts)CFLDem
(2,083 posts)Oil is just a bonus.
malaise
(267,845 posts)Someone always gets rich
CFLDem
(2,083 posts)get the red out
(13,459 posts)Yes to everybody in this thread.