Prewar justifications: bringing democracy to the ME

More about ends and means:

If we succeed in establishing an independent secular democracy that can support itself economically and militarily without our help, that would be incredible. I'm saying that process is important, but the fact is I could never ignore a result like that. It may be five, ten years before we see how it turns out. But if the result comes true, I'm going to eat some crow, process or no.



But still. Integrity counts.

 

Sorry, some more thoughts:

Why couldn't we at least have used enough diplomacy to use Turkish airspace? God this pisses me off even to this day. Can you imagine what this invasion would have been like if we invaded on two fronts? They would have rolled right through the Kurdish area, of course. We would have reached and completely surrounded Tikrit and the now infamous Sunni triangle in, what? Two weeks? Ten days? Less? Would the Baathists have been able to form an effective insurgency then?

Why couldn't we have gone in with enough troops to hold the country down for reconstruction? Why did Rummy plan a war on a best-case scenario? What kind of f*cking planning is that? Anybody, in any job- you make a plan based on a best-case scenario and it's guaranteed you'll get bit in the ass. Rummy did this with a military invasion and occupation.

Sure, you say, hindsight is 20/20. This isn't hindsight. They were told adamantly by the pentagon to use double the manpower pre-invasion.

It's great to have leaders who are steadfast and unwavering.

Except when they're wrong.

 

If they did, then I didn't hear about it.

Just take the list we started with, subtract Poland and England and there you have it.

 

DING DING DING !!!!


We have a winner !

DD

 

Dwight Eisenhower was a great leader who didn't lie to the American people to start a war. IIRC, we avoided getting involved in WWII right up until we were actually attacked by one of the participants. In that way, the occupation of Germany and the occupation of Iraq are WORLDS apart.

See me in fifty years and if this is the case, I will agree that the ends were positive. I will still fault GWB and his cabal for the means since the errors in judgement have been massive, and I will never believe that means like Abu Ghirab and lying to the American people to start a war justify ANY ends.

If GWB wanted to keep my respect, he should have sold the war as a way to bring democracy to the ME. The way he went about it has earned my derision and scorn.

 

Well judging by his re-election the majority respect the choice he made, and we have to live with it.

If a stable middle east is the outcome, then it was the right move.

Because sitting back was just getting us attacked, and don't you think 9-11 counts as an attack?

Sure, Iraq and 9-11 are not linked, but if there is a rogue nation out there that is willing to help terrorists, and harbour them, aren't they a threat to the American people?

DD

 

What if GWB had played the cards he actually had. What if he said that there is a 50/50 change that Iraq has some sort of WMD (most likely chemical) and while they have not had close ties to Al Qaeda or OBL he as President could not take the chance that they would partner in the future, leading to another attack on US soil with WMD this time.

This is a much softer sell that would play better in Europe. Where it would not sell as well is with the right wing nuts at home.

This all boils down to judgement and GWB's lack thereof.

 

We do have to live with it, but judging by the polls, the majority of Americans definitely do not "respect the choice."

IMO, it would have been the right move had he not cooked up "intelligence" and had instead promoted the war as a way to remove Saddam and instill democracy in the ME.

We were already TCB WRT the 9/11 attacks. We took out the Taliban and began taking out AQ, a move that I supported fully as it was a direct response to 9/11 and the people who perpetrated that attack.

I was a bit upset that we were diverting attention away from AQ in general and Bin Laden specifically when we invaded Iraq. However, I thought the threat of WMDs in Iraq trumped those concerns. When I found out that the "intelligence" was faulty, I became VERY upset that we had diverted that attention when we could have mopped up AQ and the Taliban and probably caught Bin Laden, too.

We should have finished in Afghanistan, then Bush should have made his case for war without hyping nonexistant WMDs. Had he done that, I would now be praising Bush as a leader instead of denigrating him as a liar.

Iraq was not helping or harboring terrorists. The terrorists came in response to our invasion, or haven't you seen the reports?

Saddam could not have conceivably been a threat to us for quite some time given the weakness of his military. He could not have armed terrorists given the lack of WMDs. Saddam had too much of a sense of self-preservation to threaten the US given what we did to Afghanistan as evidenced by the fact that he offered to allow the CIA and FBI to come verify what the weapons inspectors had found: nothing.

 

GWB failed in his diplomatic effort with Europe. GWB did not have a plan to win the diplomatic "war" in Europe leading into the Iraq "liberation". GWB truly acted like that once he made his decision the rest of the world should fall in line, diplomancy be damned. (I expected school board politicians to be better mannered than this.) GWB diplomatic failure with France and Germany shows a lack of judgement. If GWN had only used intel on which we, France, and Germany agreed, bulding a bridge spanning the distance between us and them would have been possible.

GWB gave many justifications for the war (Kerry found 22). The core justification was WMD, in a complete and total oversell of what intel we did have. Overselling the chemical WMD is one thing; having The Bomb by Christmas is an outright fabrication. Not caring if the main justifications of the war with Iraq were factual also show a lack of judgement from GWB. Again, GWB is treating pre-emptive war justifications as a secondary issue to having made up his mind.

The US's plan for winning the peace in Iraq shows more lack of judgement from the President.

 

Care to elaborate? How does the Lend Lease Act amount to lying in order to start a war?

 

We may have "taken sides," but the declaration of war against Germany didn't happen until December 11th, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor.

Even so, I would argue that we "took sides" in said war in response to the agression and invasions by Germany, which still sets it worlds apart from Iraq. GWI was justified in part because Saddam invaded another sovereign nation and I supported that action just as I would have supported WWII. Neither was an elective war based on trumped up "intelligence."

As such, comparisons of the occupation of Germany and the current occupation of Iraq simply don't hold water.

 

I supported GWI because Saddam invaded a neighbor and that amounts to aggression. That aggression, combined with the WMDs that the United States sold him, made for a combination that needed to be dealt with.

The current war in Iraq was not about "security" given that Iraq could not have been a threat to the US in the foreseeable future and the fact that the only WMD found in Iraq was a decade old and incapable of killing even a single person. Those facts, combined with Iraq's utter lack of any type of connection to terrorists go to show that this war had nothing to do with "security."

I would have at least respected GWB if he had sold the war as being for "freedom," but he decided to lie or at least exaggerate WMD "intelligence" instead. It is interesting how when the GOP (and Faux News) repeat something over and over again, the mynas just turn around and start parroting the line about "freedom."