Iraq: Choose your presidential options.

[Bootstoots]

Where is the "Don't withdraw in the first place" option?

J

Maybe in some poll from 2010 or 2011?

 

[onejayhawk]

Maybe in some poll from 2010 or 2011?

None the less, it is the correct answer.

J

 

[Cutlass]

None the less, it is the correct answer.

J

If you're going to go retroactive, then the correct answer is to never go into Iraq in the first place. It was the worst foreign policy mistake the US has made in at least the past 100 years. Nearly 200, actually.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Where is the "Don't withdraw in the first place" option?

J

That option lost the election in 2008, sorry
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-mccains-100-years-in-iraq/


Link to video.

Troops were out December 18th, 2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.–Iraq_Status_of_Forces_Agreement


It lost the election in 2012 too (Romney wanted more troops there instead of none)

Link to video.

Russia is the biggest geopolitical threat? (0:34)
Man Romney was so dumb.


I'm actually kind of on Obama's side on Iraq.
If the goal was a viable democracy, we had to let them go on their own eventually.
10 years of involvement seems like plenty of effort and if it doesn't work then it probably never was going to work.

 

[Kaitzilla]

...
After all, the world that matters largely ends beyond either seaboard for most Americans.

Yes, this is true
There is a reason the international section in the newspaper is 2 pages.

Thank goodness Canada counts as a foreign country that we can visit.

 

[Formaldehyde]

There are a number of conservatives who should finally take Barack Obama's words to heart. Whining about the Russians is so 1980s, and even they it was well over 30 years too old.

You don't build a supposed democracy by banning the primary political party of sizable portion of the population. You also don't foment sectarian violence by deliberately making that democracy the tyranny of the majority over that very same minority, which also used to rule the country.

You can hate Saddam Hussein for a multitude of reasons, including being the overly willing puppet of the US government until he discovered his invasion of Kuwait wasn't appreciated, much less approved. But he did have a reasonably secular government that managed to keep the Sunnis and the Shia from killing each other, at least much of the time.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I don't want to invade Iran, Graffito. I think I've mentioned that a couple times now.

I'm talking about after 9/11 when the US was on fire to go root out some terrorism. The WTC was a pile of garbage filled with bodies and fire trucks in the middle of New York City.

The electorate was looking for terrorist blood. Bush, being an idiot, invaded Iraq. Terrorism is supported by Iran. They have terrorist training grounds there. Iran is working hard on WMDs, and everyone knows it. At that point in history, Iran.

Understand?

I thought that OsamaBinLaden and the majority of Hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, funding and money from Saudi Arabia, the majority of all foreign fighter in Iraq fighting American troops from Saudi Arabia, support and money flowed mostly from Saudi Arabia.

Bush was an idiot for not stopping 9/11, but then again hes entire 8 year administration is one long list of incompetence, corruption and cronyism.

 

[onejayhawk]

There are a number of conservatives who should finally take Barack Obama's words to heart. Whining about the Russians is so 1980s, and even they it was well over 30 years too old.

You don't build a supposed democracy by banning the primary political party of sizable portion of the population. You also don't foment sectarian violence by deliberately making that democracy the tyranny of the majority over that very same minority, which also used to rule the country.

You can hate Saddam Hussein for a multitude of reasons, including being the overly willing puppet of the US government until he discovered his invasion of Kuwait wasn't appreciated, much less approved. But he did have a reasonably secular government that managed to keep the Sunnis and the Shia from killing each other, at least much of the time.

You can hate GW Bush for a number of reasons. He still left us positioned to stop exactly this.

I am reminded of the Watts riots of 1965. After the dust settled, an LAPD task force was set up to prevent a recurrance. The task for was dissolved in the 1980s because it was considered racially insensitive. It would have been ideally situated to deal with the 1992 riots. Regardless of your opinions on going into Iraq, you have to be a an unthinking partisan to not recognize the advantages of keeping what we paid for.

J

 

[JollyRoger]

What our grandkids paid for.

 

[FriendlyFire]

You can hate GW Bush for a number of reasons. He still left us positioned to stop exactly this.

I am reminded of the Watts riots of 1965. After the dust settled, an LAPD task force was set up to prevent a recurrance. The task for was dissolved in the 1980s because it was considered racially insensitive. It would have been ideally situated to deal with the 1992 riots. Regardless of your opinions on going into Iraq, you have to be a an unthinking partisan to not recognize the advantages of keeping what we paid for.

J

WASHINGTON — The war in Iraq has become a “cause célèbre” for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment of the U.S. that probably will get worse before it gets better, federal intelligence analysts conclude in a report at odds with President Bush’s contention of a world growing safer.

In the bleak report, declassified and released Tuesday on Bush’s orders, the nation’s most veteran analysts conclude that despite serious damage to the leadership of al-Qaida, the threat from Islamic extremists has spread both in numbers and in geographic reach.

 

[Kyriakos]

^'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me...fool...uh...can't get fooled again!'

Unless you are the electorate.

 

[r16]

I was always under the impression that the reason the Kurds don't already have their own separate country in northern Iraq was that Turkey wouldn't allow it because then their own Kurds would want to break off and join them?

Being totally landlocked would be another major issue of course. Along with selling their oil.
Turkey would be ok with a Kurdish Iraq being their own country and helping them to access the ocean?

for the purposes of discussion under discussion the geographic term is not that old and there's no 'stan whatsoever . For access to sea this is how our idiots running the country and the think tanks and stuff have all become Kurdish ; stealing Arabian oil is the sole things defines great power status afterall .

 

[Tahuti]

You can hate Saddam Hussein for a multitude of reasons, including being the overly willing puppet of the US government until he discovered his invasion of Kuwait wasn't appreciated, much less approved. But he did have a reasonably secular government that managed to keep the Sunnis and the Shia from killing each other, at least much of the time.

Saddam Hussein strongly favoured Sunnis over Shias. While Saddam was personally hostile to Islamists, the recent ISIS uprising was supported by former Ba'athists.

 

[onejayhawk]

What our grandkids paid for.

Note the operative phrase.

Funny how passed on debt comes up in this context and not in others.

J

 

[onejayhawk]

Saddam Hussein strongly favoured Sunnis over Shias. While Saddam was personally hostile to Islamists, the recent ISIS uprising was supported by former Ba'athists.

You have that right.

In 2005 I was in the Taji base, near Baghdad. There was a young local worker, maybe 17, that wanted to tell me something, but did not speak English. He pulled out an ear and did a scissors action with two fingers of his other hand. One of his coworkers translated. He wanted to apologize for joining the Republican Army. They threatened to cut off his ear if he did not.

The conscripts were Shi'a. Only Sunni could be officer. Taji was one of the Republican Army's main bases. They converted it to a permanent US Army base in Iraq. If anyone has read The Last Centurian, this is where the warlord was marshaling his troops to attack the American column coming north. The book is a modern version of Anabasis, ie Xenophon and the 10,000. As in the Greek story, a small detachment of the falls on troops formed for parade and guts the army, though outnumbered more than 10-1.

J

 

[Borachio]

Note the operative phrase.

Funny how passed on debt comes up in this context and not in others.

J

I don't understand it. How can grandchildren have paid for anything?

 

[BenitoChavez]

We paid with money we didn't have. Money our grandchildren were supposed to have. So in essence we paid for it with their money on their behalf.

Maybe? Sorta?

 

[Borachio]

Well, yeah. I guessed as much.

It just doesn't seem to be true that they've paid, though. Who's to say they won't ignore it, declare themselves bankrupt, or pass it on to another generation?

It might be more accurate to claim that they will pay, or at least someone will pay, but that's not what's being said, which is that they have paid.

They bloomin' well haven't. They don't have any money, yet.

 

[BenitoChavez]

Well I suppose all those are possibilities but it seems like the US wants to pay off its debts eventually, just because it seems like the right thing to do.

Also, I have to agree with your semantic argument.

Thing is I'm not sure what was paid for. I'd assume JR's post was referring to the Iraq war, but he wasn't specific. But if we are getting into a debt argument here, then it seems prudent to point out that the US debt grew significantly more under Obama than Bush. Also, to bring this post back on topic, if we go back to Iraq to help with the ISIS it would undoubtedly increase the debt even more.

Things to consider...

 

[timtofly]

They won't then either. It will have already been spent. They will not even be spending their grandchildren's money either.