[BREAKING NEWS] Obama to Announce All Troops Out of Iraq by End of Year

You know what is sad, mc mark? Most people won't even notice that he did that. They simply don't pay attention. Newt needs to get back on his medication. The American people need to wake up and smell the coffee.

 

You are mistaken. Whatever Obama is for, they are against.

 

WHY?

It's not their Bozo's inspire any confidence, for anything for anybody. Even the freaking 1% must be see net worth losses greater than their tax losses in their future if we lose the middle class and go into a depression. Penny wise pound foolish.

 

I never said that. The Iraqi government re-opened their investigation following the release of the cable. I submit however, that my original link regarding this story's reemergence (in a thread about Boehner of all the odd things) did not make this explicitly clear.

Irrelevant. Unless you're doubting the information in the article, the release of the cable directly re-energized the Iraqi government to not allow US immunity.

 

Obviously Newt is an idiot, but the above is reasonably accurate.

 

I don't believe it will be viewed as a defeat.... but I do believe that it will be viewed as a waste of time ultimately. However, 99.9% of that will fall on the shoulders of GW.

 

I mean call it what you will, but if you wasted your time and didn't win... It's a decade length war, not a trip to Vegas. Sad, expensive defeat. Of course, this is George Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld's fault.

 

Exactly. Semantics is just that - in virtually any sense this was a defeat. I'm not even sure how it could be a "victory" since the end goal was never clear. In a sense then, it was doomed from the beginning.

 

It is not a defeat militarily but it was stupid and expensive from a country perspective.

If we are not going to charge them for liberation, then what was the point?

DD

 

lol. We can charge nations for "liberation" they did not want and that did not succeed? Damn, a lot of countries owe the USA some serious bucks.

 

I would love it for the USA to start charging countries for security, we spend far too much on a large military that protects all the other countries for free.

The point about Iraq was more in the humorous vein though, I never believed we should have gone there, if we wanted Saddam dead we should have assasinated him with a multinational hit squad. Not go in militarily.

There was no battlefield and no other army to fight after the first 3 months....

And if we are there, spending money to rebuild etc, they should be paying for it.

DD

 

I don't think we have provided quite the qualified 'nation-building' service you see. I feel guilty about sending this bill. It's own our damn fault they are stuck with such a huge mess. The best thing we can do is to get our with our heads, and celebrate that no more American soldiers will have to die for such little diplomatic pay off.

If the powers and forces of the Arab world were bothered enough to blame America for 9/11, I can't imagine what they are going to do when we try to bill them for unsettling the entire landscape of Islamic politics with nothing to show for it.

 

Oh, I agree, no way we send them the bill etc, but the fact that there was no reason to go into Iraq in the first place, makes it all the more worthless.

Now we will have tons of troops that have been traumatized by being over there, and nothing to show for it.

Iraq would have fallen like Egypt and Libya - but I guess some could argue that none of those would have fallen if we weren't over there toppling Saddam.....

Meh.....who knows....all I know is it was a waste of time, money and most importantly LIVES on both sides.

DD

 

I say we adopt the Swiss model.

Not us, not our probelm.

Of course, the US is too entreched in global economics and global affairs to adapt that quickly. Switzerland and Sweden get away with armed neutrality because they remain (for the most part) isolated, and thus don't have any interests at stake.

We on the other hand have created an unstoppable machine, where we now have interests all around the world.

 

You guys have short memories and quick judgments.

1. Saddam did invade Kuwait and threaten the Saudi's. THE American way of life depends on Saudi oil, right or wrong it's a current fact. He gassed the Kurds, our sympathetic identification in the country at the time. Before the invasion it was not unreasonable to assume the populace would be thankful for his removal. Our Army did royally kick butt. It's only the conditions after we dismantled the civil structure in the country and left an armed insurrection that got us in a quagmire.

2. Given time, maybe a couple of decades, Iraq may be a stable enough member of the world community. And compared to what? Pakistan has been a pretty respected country, Gadaffi's Libya was on the UN Human Right's council; the World standards aren't that high.

As long as they are exporting oil, and are not exporting Islamist terror that's as good as before the war. If they hold democratic elections and extend some basic human rights and freedom of information, that's a win.

 

Was all of that worth the lives of 4,000 + US soldiers and 100,000 + Iraqis?

 

The war for natural resources is going to get more deadlier than that eventually. This is going to be a minuscule amount compared to the numbers we will see in future wars.

 

I agree with that as well

 

So we were just getting ahead of the curve?

And some people actually wonder why I advocate conserving energy so much..

 

Look, the lesson was learned.

I said somewhere back in the thread, as a pretty damn liberal internationalist I thought this was the way to a Utopian future, but in every war there are unintended consequences and this one was a bad mother. It still may be a step for a world where democracy, as flawed as even ours is, is the norm and strongmen are anachronisms. If that become true in 50 years, then yes.

And really the domino's are falling fast. The Arab Spring is not happening in a vacuum. We might have seen 50 years of change already happen in the last 10 because of a radical catalyst.

Making historical judgement is hard, events happen the way they happen, there aren't many similar alternatives to compare and contrast. But anyone would have to say Libya was an improved action of a similar nature. There could have been a bigger flare up over the recent disinformation with Iran (yellowcake/asassination by a car salesman). And we are keeping an learned distance from Syria because it would be like another Iraq.

I've said I would just as soon see China take over development of Afghanistan.