Really, that’s it. What did we win after spending so much blood and treasure on this war?
By my reckoning Iran has been the big winner in this war.
And, where is all of that ‘free’ oil we were suppose to get from the “war that will pay for it’s self”?
Geo-Political motivated Oil contracts, the World’s best Wheat Seed Banks (for Monsanto & GMO’s), Summerian ancient archeological artifacts et al. LOTS of money made for contracts for political players, et alia etc…
ETA: DARPA/Research, Testing & Development for the “MIC” that will eventually attempt to rule the world through Global Banking Cartel since they actually run our GOV. All the new toys get justifiably field tested etc.
Let me preface my statement by saying I spent a long time over there.
I don’t think we won anything, but we didn’t loose either. In terms of blood, compare the loss of life to previous wars. This was not a “lost generation”. We have loss more folks in one day in prior wars than we lost in Iraq.
In terms of the oil, I know for a fact that that many Western countries are getting good deals on the oil, partly because the Iraqis are incapable of getting it out to the ground like we can.
I don’t know the answers, but I don’t worry about it either. I will leave that to the armchair historians.
We are still at war against Islamic extremists and it is not going to end anytime soon. All I know is that we kicked some big time ass over there and lost some good folks.
A few bad men got rich, some great men lost their lives, and America helped boost it’s imperialistic title.
What blows my mind is that there are still people in this country who try and justify the war in the first place. One thing we should all agree on is that is was a huge mistake to ever go in there in the first place.
I imagine the same simpletons who still support Bush and his controllers are the same simpletons who still try and justify the War in the first place. Bush and the Iraq war stained America pretty good, and that’s in my eyes, not some foreigners who I don’t give a damn about.
JM2CW:)
Globalist agendas and objectives were acheived.
The regime of Saddam Hussein must be toppled immediately, by U.S. force if necessary. And the entire Middle East must be reordered according to an American plan.PNAC, Rebuilding America’s Defenses (1997), p.51
It blows my mind the short memory people have.
They forget the mindset of everyone just after 911. They forget that every intelligence agency in the world stated Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he used mustard gas & nerve gas sarin against his own people the kurds so we knew he had those. Saddam himself repeatedly claimed to have had weapons of mass destruction apparently a blustery tactic to ward off the Iranians. Often times when you lie it comes back to bite you!
Saddam invaded Kuwait and the belief was if he annexed Kuwiat without oppostion he was then on to Saudi Arabia.
Saddam diverted money from food for oil program to fund Palestinian terrorist paying familes $25,000 each to sacrifice their sons & daughters to be suicide bombers in Israel destabaling an already destabled area even further. He was a major threat to stability in the middle east. And yes it’s often about oil. Get over it, the world runs on oil. Until the liberal enviromental wacko tree-hugging panty waist in this country stop fighting drilling in our own country we have no choice.
In hindsight, W has many warts but he wisely heeded Thatcher’s advice not to go all wobbly IMHO.
My memory’s just fine, thanks.
It was fucked up from jump street.
I said it back when and everything that has come to pass simply reinforces that original assessment.
And what blows my mind is how some folks won’t say “shit” when they have a mouthful.
In your case it’s just piss poor bad judgement & total lack of wisdom all the way around from what I have seen.
Disagree.
I think we can all agree Saddam was using chemical agents against his people (Kurds specifically). The 17 March 1988 attack is an example of this. I agree with taking Saddam out of power. I don’t agree with some of the platforms that we moved on from that initial goal.
Practicing appeasement politics and using sanctions, as Chamberlin did with Hitler, do nothing to stop a dictator of their caliber. I often draw parallels between the two (Saddam/Hitler). Both practiced genocide and scapegoated minorities in their countries, they invaded neighboring counties, ignored sanctions/embargos/treaties, etc. Clinton tried repeatedly to slow Saddam down, so did the UN with their inspectors, whom Saddam repeatedly turned away. Appeasement just doesn’t work. “those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” -Winston Churchill
Call it being an armchair historian, but my lowly knowledge as a civilian that attempts to educate himself would lead me to believe that we did right by getting rid of Saddam. I apologize that I lack the firsthand knowledge some mil here have, and that I undoubtedly don’t have all the facts. But that’s my stance with the aforementioned limited educated that I have on the matter. Merry Christmas.
This one appears to be about to go off of the rails, and while I’m not persuaded that there is any one non-controversial answer to the questions posed in the opening post, I think we can do better than going after each other with inflammatory rhetoric. If you’re feeling the urge to blow someone’s face off here, please stay out of the thread altogether.
On a personal level, I was abroad when the September 11th attacks came, and watched the road to war from a foreign land where well-intentioned friends and neighbors often asked me to help make some sense of what they were seeing in the news. Admittedly, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time (or, more accurately, it seemed like a pretty disproportional response based upon what we could glean from public sources), but my standard reply was that I believed that our government “knew some things that I/we did not” about what was happening in that part of the world, and that was about as much as I really needed to know, as my part in the equation was to follow orders – not to debate the political merits of the cause.
Looking back after having spent no little time in the region myself, I still believe that what we thought we knew provides a relevant context for understanding how we got there. There was plenty of reason to suspect that Mr. Hussein’s government possessed, or was in active pursuit of, the weapons in question. Some of them had actually been used, and the evidence was clear that there was strong official interest in others. We now know that many of the actual details were fabricated to keep the Iranians in check, but for our part, I’m not sure that the price of being wrong and intervening anyway wasn’t preferable to the price of being right and doing nothing. Call it an intelligence failure if you like, but even that strikes me as an over-simplification, and I’m not comfortable with one-size-fits-all criticisms of our national resolve that come well after-the-fact. We thought we knew what we we getting into, and it was serious enough to take action. We may not have been entirely right, but neither were we entirely wrong. In either case, a despot with visions of a powerful new Caliphate was laid low, and we gave Jihadists a regional focal point for engagement that didn’t involve further attacks on our mainland. Did we gain in other ways? Sure. Did we lose in other ways? Sure. War is rarely the neat, tidy thing that we all envision it to be from our history classes or books. To suggest otherwise is to broadcast a rather startling naivety.
I read some very good analysis from the founder of the private intelligence company Stratfor* a year or two ago that really put all of this into sharp relief: America did not need to “win” in Iraq (or Afghanistan) in the traditional military sense in order to score a decisive victory. Our involvement in these campaigns has totally de-stabilized the efforts of those extremists and/or political opportunists seeking to unify the Islamic world against the West. As cold as it might sound, as long as the Arab/Islamic world remains in a state of relative disarray (i.e. factional infighting with no consolidation of power under any one ruler/dictator/Imam/Ayatollah), they are consigned to irrelevance and we win. There are other metrics by which one might seek to evaluate these wars, of course, but in the final analysis, our blood and treasure defused a pretty significant time bomb.
Me? I’m far more interested in where things appear to be headed with North Korea. Or, to take a longer-term view, with Mexico.
AC
Thanks for the post, and sounds like a great book. I’ll have to pick it up.
Well said, IN. I’ve noticed the most opinionated folks back home about the Iraq War have never spent a single day there, but proceeded to lecture and postulate about our involvement there like the foreign policy experts that they are.
Not intending to be argumentative, but how can the rest of us civilians have a stance on foreign policy? Are you saying we shouldn’t have one at all? Just remain quiet and have no opinion? Many of those that make FP decisions in DC don’t have a military background.
I believe the overriding point is simply that the loudest criticisms often seem to come from those with the least actually invested. Guys who have left blood and sweat – or comrades – on a field of conflict tend to have a pretty substantive basis from which to air strong opinions, whether they ultimately happen to be right or wrong. Those who have not made this same kind of investment are expressing a largely academic viewpoint that is best stated in those terms (i.e. without all of the charged rhetoric or overt expressions of indignance).
AC
Got it
Going after Saddam, and taking the fight to the jihadist (over in Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia) was, in mind, a discussion. The rebuilding policy afterwards, and the misconception of open arms of the Iraqis was just plain bad. A better strategy, and one that wasn’t laden with PC crap to appease the left and the liberal world would have been a great tool in winning more than just dead terrorists; an actual stable Government that I don’t have to count on folding in possibly six months.
We left to early in my opinion, and doing so for political expedience. Consider the MSM hasn’t covered Iraq like they did during Bush’s time in office, but Afghanistan is always on the tube, is telling. The surged worked, though the idiot in charge didn’t vote for it.
Another thing to observe: Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and scores of other high liberals before the invasion, and some prior to Bush’s inauguration, said Saddam was a big threat and needed to be taken out. Yet, now it is a bad war we shouldn’t have done. Guess because it wasn’t “their” war.
Like the Chief said, please don’t jump the shark with this thread. I just want to know what people think we actually gained from our war in Iraq.
I was in the First Gulf War and when we left then I had a sinking feeling that our work was not done and we would be back. As we draw down in Iraq this time, I am left with the same feeling.
I was at a funeral at Arlington where one of America’s best was being lowered in the ground. His mother was so grief stricken that she needed two ushers to help her stand and walk off the field. It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. What exactly would you tell her? Why did her son die? What did he die for? What cause were we fighting for in Iraq that was so just, righteous and important that her son should die for it?
We won the prize for allowing ourselves to fall into the same trap as the USSR and are headed downhill on a path to financial self destruction just like they did.
Saddest part is we have lost A LOT of good people in the process…
Off-topic note: A very interesting book, especially his analysis of our links to the Eastern European states. I agree with his thoughts regarding our long-term prospects with Mexico as well.
On-topic: I think it’s always a good idea to respect those who went. I’m not calling anyone out here. I think all the M4C members have a great deal of respect, or they do not experience a long stay here.
I keep all those warriors in my prayers.
We helped escort large numbers of Jihadists off the planet, that is always a good thing.