Publication of Bush Memoir Reopens Old Debates
The publication of George W. Bush’s memoir last week predictably reopened the debate on his presidency and the decisions he made following the 9/11 atrocities. In particular, the debates and issues surrounding the invasion of Iraq were argued once again with the familiar protagonists taking up their old positions right and left of the front line.
But more important than these historical arguments, are the consequences that Bush’s foreign policies, and especially the invasion of Iraq, had on global affairs and the U.S.’s ability and willingness to shape them.
Outside of Iraq, perhaps the most significant long-term impact of the 2003 invasion is the mortal blow it struck to the notions of an idealism-based foreign policy and the concomitant fillip it provided for a realist renaissance.
With the benefit of hindsight, it has become clear that Saddam’s regime was never the threat to international security that it was imagined to be. It turned out that there were no WMD and that the intelligence used to make the case for war was heavily embellished. Nor was there any impending humanitarian crisis. The imposition of no-fly zones over the north and south of the country by coalition forces actively curtailed Saddam’s ability to persecute the Shia in the south and the Kurds in the north, as he had done immediately after the Gulf War.
So the misbegotten Iraqi adventure served none of its stated purposes. Perversely though, the invasion actually undermined one of the central tenets of the Bush Doctrine: preemptive war. The theory was that in a world riddled with terrorism and terror-supporting states, preemptive war was the only way to avoid attacks like 9/11 or worse. But in 2003, Iran, not Iraq, was rushing towards nuclear capability and it was Iran which was the world’s biggest state sponsor of terror. Tehran’s clandestine nuclear program had already been exposed and its patronage of its terror proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, ultimately led to two wars with Israel in 2006 and 2008, and continues to destabilize the region.
It seems clear that the invasion of Iraq and the descent of the country into anarchy and sectarian violence severely hampered Bush’s ability to deal with one of the most serious threats to international security of our times: a potentially nuclear-armed, terror-supporting Iran. Following the adoption of UN Security Council 1441, diplomacy and weapons inspections were given less than five months to be effective before Operation Iraqi Freedom was given the go-ahead. But Bush allowed six years of his presidency to pass by after Iranian dissidents exposed the existence of secret nuclear facilities at Natanz and Arak. Is there any better illustration of just how self-defeating and enervating the invasion of Iraq was to Bush’s desire to safeguard the interests of the U.S. and her allies from the threat of WMD and terrorism?
Preemptive war was not the only victim of the misadventure in Iraq. The cause of liberal interventionism, which was significantly bolstered in the pre-Iraq war years, was also undone. The NATO campaign against Serbia in 1999 to prevent ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and the UK’s critical intervention in Sierra Leone in May 2000 to prevent the sadistic Revolutionary United Front from committing further atrocities, were both examples of how interventionism could avert the kind of crimes against humanity witnessed in Africa and the Balkans during the 1990s.
Lord, but I hate having to defend Bush!
No WMD? Really? We captured 100′s of tons of Yellowcake uranium that Hussein was not supposed to have. This nasty dictator was known for attacking his neighbors, Iran, Kuwait, and internally, the Kurds… with gas! What the heck do you think he was doing with uranium, huh?
Darfur? Oh, no intervention happened because we were tied up and it spoiled the mood for everyone else? Really? Let’s try that again, shall we? No one ever intervenes unless we do. What was stopping the Chinese? The Russians? They can manage to attack their neighbors. Surely they can manage a small intervention. Except, they never do good deeds.
We are not obligated to intervene. We, like everyone else, have the right to pursue our own selfish interests. Iraq? Darfur? Hmm, let me think. Nope, gotta go with killing that annoying bastard, Saddam Hussein. So much Islamic violence to stop, so few troops.
We did a good thing intervening in Iraq. Even though that was not the purpose, that’s what it turned out to be. The great difference being that Iraq is somewhat developed and civilized. It can actually be salvaged. Darfur? Another armpit of the world.
If Bush had not invaded Iraq, and instead had intervened in Darfur, the Dems would have demonized him for that, too. They make whatever political hay they can, no matter how right the cause.
The correct answer was to do neither… or at least make a more direct case for invading Iraq. “We are ticked at the Muslim world, and are looking for someone to punish. Hussein has been a pain in the kiester, and he is a monster to his people. We are volunteering him for buttwhupping!”
All that said, Bush’s foreign policy was poor.
He should get blame for 9/11. If he were not being a “domestic guy”, and had been paying more attention to the President’s actual job, foreign policy, perhaps they could have stopped it. Perhaps he couldn’t have, but we’ll never freakin’ know, will we?
Afghanistan was a failure. We knocked out the Taliban, except we are still fighting them years and years later, with no end in sight, and effin’ Bin Laden still free!
Iraq was a boondoggle. Bush should never have done it, primarly because he was unqualified for the damned job. Besides, because his Daddy left it unfinished, you couldn’t help but feel he had some personal agenda, even if he did not. It was grossly mismanaged. If he had won it quickly, the Dems do not take charge, and we do not get today’s disastrous administration.
Failure in Iran. Failure in NorK. Failure in China. Failure with Russia. Failure, failure, failure. Because he was a “domestic guy”. That’s how he spun it. He freely admitted he was ignorant of foreign affairs. (He did get India and SKor right, though.)
But it was a choice between him and McCain. Forbes was running, too. All of them are moderate Republicans. The Bush Presidencies are what moderate Republican government looks like people. Take a good, long, hard look. If you do not like what you see, quit voting for Dem-Lite!
Then it was a choice between Bush and Kerry. Ugh! I voted Constitution Party. Don’t blame me for this.
Now we have Bush and Kerry on steroids: Obama! F! And I do not mean that as a grade, although that also works.
This was a stupid, Leftist article. All the criticism of Bush from the Left, but compared to what? We see what a Dem President Obama looks like with foreign policy! Beyond ignorant! I want Leftists to shut up about Bush’s foreign policy, because they have no leg to stand on in the debate. Bush is looking better every single day, in comparison. How sad is that?
“Miss me yet?” Almost. Feh. /rant
well said— bush was not a conservative but to modern lefty libs even fdr is a moderate
if bush 1 hadn’t been such a pansy and marched into bagdad for the head of sadaam— if clinton hadn’t been an uber pansy and did something about the uss cole, somalia, alqaeda— and so on and so on
the lesson is that when you try to cater to libs as a repubic you are only harming yourself
it is definitely a step into the twilight zone when George W. Bush, when compared next to obama, looks much more like George Washington
To Marc Malone: Sorry but there is no debate and no defending of either Bush or the fools who voted for him, especially in 2004: Bush was a malicious liar and incompetent who was fond of hiring other malicious liars and incompetents. This was pretty damn clear by 2004, so his reelection deserved headlines like this.
To defend Bush at all is to be utterly clueless, no exceptions, and this comment is typical:
Lord, but I hate having to defend Bush!
No WMD? Really? We captured 100’s of tons of Yellowcake uranium that Hussein was not supposed to have. This nasty dictator was known for attacking his neighbors, Iran, Kuwait, and internally, the Kurds… with gas! What the heck do you think he was doing with uranium, huh?
This is such a perfect example of why smart, well-informed, and ethical people don’t vote Republican: in order to vote to vote Republican, apparently you have the join the Dumbass Club as well: back in 1980, Iran bombed and damaged an Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction named “Osirak” at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center. A year later, Israel made a surprise attack, codenamed “Opera,” on the same reactor, that supposedly crippled it for good. Israel, like Iran, did this out of fear that the reactor could be used for making nuclear bombs, but this was/is a disputable point. During the 1st Gulf War in 1991, the reactor was bombed again by the US, completely destroying it. Radioactive waste from the Osirak plant — the “yellowcake” (which was actually supposedly too low grade to even make much of a dirty bomb.) was sealed up in drums by the International Atomic Energy Agency and stored elsewhere at Al Tuwaitha. The 2003 US invasion lead to yet more bombing, and widespread looting, including at Al Tuwaitha, so it was decided to move the drums of yellowcake out of the country for better safekeeping. While this yellowcake may not have been good for even making dirty bombs, it was still toxic nuclear waste that had to be handled and stored carefully.
And that, my non-friends, is the true story of the Iragi yellowcake. Anything else you may have heard is utter BS, intentional or otherwise, like pretty much everything else that may have been brought up to try to show Bush as being not *that* bad of a President. Sorry, but yes he really was at least that bad, and if you voted for him, you were/are still a friggin idiot. No exceptions.
and this my friends is your typical lefty drone
“i am right— everyone else is a moron…”
deluded and narcissistic to the core…
BC never has any of his facts straight, and with good reason: He lies and he makes them up as he goes along, making up silly stories which conform with his wishful thinking and with his delusions and with his perverse agenda. BC has his head so far up his ass that he doesn’t have a freaking clue what is going on out here in the real world. In other words, he is cuckoo …, so cuckoo, in fact, that he doesn’t realize how cuckoo he appears to others. It’s a waste of time to discuss issues with that loony. He isn’t even rational, and he lives in his own little world. It’s best to just ignore him.
“You got that right” stupidly wrote: BC never has any of his facts straight, and with good reason: He lies and he makes them up as he goes along, making up silly stories which conform with his wishful thinking and with his delusions and with his perverse agenda.
Brave, bold words, dumb*ss — care to try to back them up by pointing out *anywhere* where I’ve been wrong? Every time one of you numbnuts rant that I lie or make things up — despite my almost always making the effort to linking to indisputable sources as support — you never, ever back it up. And if I challenge you guys to do so, you always wimp out. It’s been pretty damn clear for a while now that Bush was no only a colossal, deadly failure as a President, but that his re-election showed beyond a shadow of a doubt what a trainwreck our so called “free press” has become. As I stated more than once, nobody but nobody smart, ethical and well-informed voted for Bush in 2004, yet he was re-elected. Few if any smart, ethical and well-informed people voted for Republicans this last election, yet Republicans took over the House and threatened the Senate. So I guess it’s safe to say you think Bush is better than Obama, and that you voted recently to “take our country back” or for some other bumper sticker-level BS talking point targeting clueless rubes, eh?
Does all this mean that middle-America is mostly made up of gullible morons, or are they simply badly served by what passes for a news media these days? Studies and polls consistently show a disturbingly large portion of the U.S. severely confused about the basic facts about any “controversial” topic, to the point that it appears that the more the media “coverage” of a given topic, especially by the right wing media, the more the confusion.
I personally think the blame is 50-50: just because ignorance is encourage doesn’t mean it has to be embraced.
“You got that right” stupidly wrote: BC never has any of his facts straight, and with good reason: He lies and he makes them up as he goes along, making up silly stories which conform with his wishful thinking and with his delusions and with his perverse agenda.
Brave, bold words, dumb*ss — care to try to back them up by pointing out *anywhere* where I’ve been wrong? Every time one of you numbnuts rant that I lie or make things up — despite my almost always making the effort to linking to indisputable sources as support — you never, ever back it up. And if I challenge you guys to do so, you always wimp out. It’s been pretty damn clear for a while now that Bush was no only a colossal, deadly failure as a President, but that his re-election showed beyond a shadow of a doubt what a trainwreck our so called “free press” has become. As I stated more than once, nobody but nobody smart, ethical and well-informed voted for Bush in 2004, yet he was re-elected. Few if any smart, ethical and well-informed people voted for Republicans this last election, yet Republicans took over the House and threatened the Senate. So I guess it’s safe to say you think Bush is better than Obama, and that you voted recently to “take our country back” or for some other bumper sticker-level BS talking point targeting clueless rubes, eh?
Does all this mean that middle-America is mostly made up of gullible morons, or are they simply badly served by what passes for a news media these days? Studies and polls consistently show a disturbingly large portion of the U.S. severely confused about the basic facts about any “controversial” topic, to the point that it appears that the more the media “coverage” of a given topic, especially by the right wing media, the more the confusion.
I personally think the blame is 50-50: just because ignorance is encouraged doesn’t mean it has to be embraced.
Sorry for the semi-double post — the PJM server connection stopped responding on “Preview” and then crashed when I tried to reload the page.
No apology necessary. Nobody bothers to read your comments and nobody takes you seriously.
Sorry, but the yellowcake pig won’t fly.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/yellowcake.asp
Saddam’s nuclear program was well and truly shut down. That WAS one thing the whitehouse knew before 2003. If they could have, the whitehouse would have dearly loved to wave the spectre of a nuclear threat, but they couldn’t. The claimed doubts about saddam’s other programs simply didn’t exist for the nuclear side. So they had to go with a “WMD” and hope people thought it meant nuclear. Individual commentators and officials could wave the spectre of mushroom clouds and 10 minute warnings (or whatever), but they simply couldn’t claim outright that saddam had a nuclear program. Hans blix saw to that.
So no, the yellowcake wasn’t a justification. It’s not a weapon (although I guess you COULD drop it on somebody, or throw it at them really hard), he didn’t have the means to MAKE it into a weapon, the good guys knew about it and they had it stowed.
Meanwhile, I’m really looking forward to seeing the photos of those vast, multi-storey underground supervillian lairs that AQ were running in afghanistan. They HAVE found those, right? It’s where they were parking all their chemical weapons trucks
I think you’re being harsh on bush, though. I don’t think his foreign policies were any worse than his domestic ones.
When we elect a guy with a 91 IQ as POTUS we ask for lots of bad decisions. Dubya is just a poor little rich brat with about as much analytical ability as a cockroach. His miniscule intelligence made hima “flipoff” candidate, like Quayle, Ford, or Truman. That is to say, in arranging for his nomination, the Rothschilds flipped us off by seeing to the election of such a dullard. Obozo is another example. It shows their contempt for the American electorate. A contempt which is well deserved, given the amoral incompetents we have placed in office.
There were many reasons for Operation Iraqi Freedom:
1.) You mention the “No-Fly” Zones, over the Kurds in the north, and the Shi’a in the south, as if the allies (mostly American and British, with some French flyers added in rotation, I think) as if those missions could have been sustained forever. What they DID accomplish was to put thousands of additional hours on the airframes flying those missions, wearing them out much quicker than either the manufacturer or the services themselves ever anticipated. And replacing them is proving to be elusive as well; look at the smaller than required F-22 program, and the troubled (behind schedule, over budget) F-35 program, which ALL the services are relying on. It was also hell on the training the pilots required to stay combat ready; flying over and over the same route is NOT good training for dog-fighting.
2.) How much longer would you have had Saddam impoverish and starve his people with the “oil for food” swindle? not to mention corrupt those wonderful people in the UN? And no one really knows WHAT he was doing with all that money, but it’s a pretty sure bet that some of it was used to fund “the insurgency”, Al Qadea and chaos that nearly ripped post invasion Iraq apart.
3.) If you look at the strategic implications, of first, and invasion and overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, and an invasion and overthrow of Saddam in 2003, you will see that the planners in the Pentagon (and elsewhere) were perfectly aware that Iran was right there between them. If you’re trying to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear capability, and wished to signal that you were serious, I think that being surrounded by the largest, battle-tested military in the world, and as many of its allies as it could convince to participate, would be a pretty good indication of the seriousness of their intentions. Why do you think the revolutionary guards were so fervent in their attempts to plunge Iraq into civil war, by supporting any and all insurgency against the coalition?
4.) Americans REALLY don’t believe in “preemptive war;” you basically have to attack them and kill thousands of their citizens before you awaken the “sleeping giant.” The error in judgment that Pres. Bush made was not necessarily engaging military forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but in NOT ensuring the American PEOPLE in general were engaged in the conflict. When they are, there is not much they will not countenance, including the invasion of Iran to overthrow the mullahs and prevent them from gaining nuclear capability.
Some of that money went to the families of Arab suicide bombers who murdered Israelis. See http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/04/03/world/main505316.shtml. And some people are still stupid enough to believe that he had nothing to do with international Jihad.
Lets also account for the restrictive Rules of Engagement, and Dubyas’s famous endorsement of Islam as “a great religion.” Either this adam henry
is an imbecile; or evil incarnate.
This is the sole phrase in this imbecilic article that has significance. It reduces the weight of the writer’s sentiments to Monday-morning quarterbacking.
Those of us with functioning memories recall that during the Clinton Administration, the conviction that Saddam was seeking weapons of mass destruction was as strong as it was when President Bush decided to depose him. We remember that British Intelligence claimed, and still stands behind the claim, that Saddam had sought uranium from Niger. We remember the 200 tons of yellowcake he tried to hide by export, which has since been transported to Canada. And we remember that he used poison gas — a weapon of mass destruction on his own dissident subjects.
We remember that 69% of the votes in the House and Senate were for war, despite John Kerry’s subsequent claims to the contrary.
If the consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom have proved averse — and beyond question, some, at least, have — that does not impugn the decisions of the men who assessed the evidence a priori, applied their best judgment, and decided to remove a threat to the military status quo of the Middle East. Any fool can predict the past.
Not to mention in hindsight, according to some latest news I’ve seen, didn’t an Iraqi airline pilot state that he and another pilot were shipping yellow-cake uranium out of Iraq to Syria? Also wasn’t there a report from another sourse talking about the movement of chemical weapons production to Syria? If these reports are true, then isn’t the claim that Iraq did have the plans and materials, but moved them to Syria and others, true? The fact of the matter is, we would have been attacked and were labeled the Evil West, Great Satan, etc., long before we went into Iraq. For any one to blame Iraq on the current war is mislead if not delusional. Our way of life/culture has always been labeled the enemy. No matter the outcome in the end, at least we finally had the guts to do some thing and face our enemies instead of buying them off, pretending they actually like hearing us speak, or bow down and kiss their butts.
Dear Egghead:
Why don’t we try something different and ask the Iraqi people some 20 million if they want Saddam back? What you say is based on 20 20 hindsight as usual. We did not know for certain that Saddam had weopons of mass destruction. Most everyone believed he did!!! The war was undertaken on this basis and in the process we rid the world and the people of Iraq a true murderous tyrant!
Your problem is familiar and comes with the typical lack of perspective that we have come to expect from those with an axe to grind on George Bush. However if Iraq were still under the terrorist regime of Saddam we would have two rogue states in the Middle East causing trouble instead of just Iran.
Whatever anyone wants to say about Iraq and George Bush, he looks pretty good when compared to teh current group of bozos in office.
Lets give it a rest on Bush.
One of the crystal clear legacies George Bush left the world is a side-by-side living comparison of decency, honor, love of country and the class, grace, style, dignity and personal determination not to spend his life bad mouthing our nation and his fellowman.
Mr. Bush is the exact opposite of his successor and liberal Democrats; including the assembler of the trash Jeremy Sharon regurgitated in this article; a sleazy effort at capitalizing on the good works of someone else for his/her own personal gain.
As I write this opt-in no comments to this article had been posted. I predict that a very high percentage of the ones that will come shortly will mean that Mr. Sharon has to unzip his trousers in order to spit any more of his garbage.
I guess the battle now begins on the Right over whether to defend or disassociate present conservative politics from the war in Iraq. I would begin questioning Sharon’s account by pointing out the enormous resources wasted, and the enormous political liabilities entailed, in maintaining the sanctions on Iraq. So, post 9/11, given the need to deploy those resources differently, in more aggressive, transformative ways, should the US have: 1) simply withdrawn all the forces enforcing the sanctions; 2) eliminated the need for the sanctions by eliminating the source of that necessity: the regime of Saddam Hussein. If you say (1), then please explain how such a response would have been interpreted after 9/11, given one of the main complaints of al-Qaeda was US forces in Saudi Arabia. If we say (2), then we have narrowed options considerably, and are arguing about war goals and means, not the action itself.
“With the benefit of hindsight, it has become clear that Saddam’s regime was never the threat to international security that it was imagined to be.”
Says who? Every major nation at that time thought Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction and Saddam was an active supporter of terrorism in the Middle East. He even tried to have George H.W. Bush assasinated on a trip to Kuwait. And, if this guy was so harmless, why did the United Nations, hardly a bastion of conservative thinking, pass over a dozen resolutions condemning Iraq and its leader? Face it, if the Oil-for-Food program was any indication of how the UN operates, the UN was going to do nothing about Saddam Hussein. Therefore, was the world just going to let Saddam merrily continue is reign of terror both inside and outside of Iraq, or was it going to do something about it? Well, if it was up to the UN, they were going to do nothing. George W. Bush thought that, if the UN was going to survive, it had to enforce its own resolutions. If people think that the overthrow of Saddam was a mistake, then they should never again moan and groan about any other homicidal dictator that clings to power. After all, it’s what they want, right?
So why did Libya stop it’s WMD program again?
How many Al Queda were killed fighting in the Iraq civil war again?
Why did Syria exit Lebanon again?
It looks like that incompetent Dubya even managed to end the civil war in Algeria.
Well, this is your opinion. It remains your opinion. You view the Iraq War as disabling the US ability to engage in ‘pre-emptive war’. You ignore the real problems in the Middle East – the strangehold on the people of Islamist tribalism.
I agreed and agree with the Iraq war because its agenda, about which you never mention one word, was to enable democracy to emerge in the Islamic states of the Middle East. The goal was to set up a democracy in an area that had never had such a political system – because Islamism operates, politically, in a two-class hereditary tribal structure that rejects a middle class. Democracy is the political system of a non-herediary or three class political system.
Once a population reaches a critical threshold of a multi-million size, and moves into an industrial rather than agricultural economy, a nation must empower its emerging middle class. The Islamist states were refusing to do this, using both police, military and religious repression. This led to deep unrest – and it was diverted into radical Islamism against…not the home regime, but the West.
The agenda of breaking this strangehold, to empower the Iraqi middle class, and thus, give them economic and political power within their own country – i.e., to enable democracy – was and is a vital part of the ‘war against Islamic fascism’. You ignore this. You also ignore the UN – which is supposed to be the world’s intervenor and supposed to deal with such situations as..Darfur. Did it?
If that had indeed been the goal, if it had been stated as such, then I would have completely supported the invasion of Iraq. The problem is, that is not how it was sold to the public. Then it was bolloxed.
You have to properly market it, and then you have to execute. Bush did neither.
I wonder if you would have actually supported an invasion to ‘enable democracy’. I wonder. Certainly, it WAS referred to frequently but it was not given, at the time, as the main reason. Why was that?
My assumptions are that very, very, very few people are aware of societal structure. Most seem to think that a nation is governed the way it is…by choice. The people’s choice. That somehow, irrationally, includes dictatorships, totalitarian rule…When it is pointed out to them that people don’t like such systems, the counterargument is: ‘well, they should rebel’ – utterly ignoring that these regimes are kept in place by vicious, murderous military rule and mindblinding theological and ideological rule. People who say ‘well, they should rebel’ are speaking within the security of a democracy where you can, without harm, speak up and reject and dissent. So, it is untrue that you choose dictatorship or that you can readily rebel.
Then, the majority have no understanding that the mode of governance is also directly linked to demographics, or population size. They have no knowledge of, for example, the infrastructure of a tribal political system and how and why it exists; how it functions only in a non-industrial, no-growth, medium size stable population – and is disastrous for a growth, urban, industrial, multimillion size population.
Whenever the term ‘democracy was used, the majority of western voices was ‘oh, we have no right to go into another country and change their govt’. That is..if they want a dictatorship and no democracy – it’s up to them. The majority view is that you CHOOSE or REJECT a democratic mode. The majority don’t understand that – you have NO CHOICE about the political mode..once you move into an industrial mode and a growth economy and large populations.
So- to declare: “we are going to Iraq to enable democracy’ would have brought even more massive fury than the WMD.
And most people don’t understand the basic cause of Islamic fascism – which is a tribal political system. They think it’s due to ‘western imperialism’ or US oil interests, or Muslim anger over not being Top Dog in the world..or..Israel-Palestine..or. They don’t understand the deeper infrastructural cause.
So- I cannot accept that telling the west about the need for democracy as a tactic to deal with Islamic fascism – would have been accepted by the majority.
“Democracy” is not a panacea. It requires an intelligent and virtuous electorate for success. By definition democracy cannot prosper in islamic countries, because of the large number of unintelligent people and because there is no such animal as a virtuous islamic. A religion which practices conversion by force and capital punishment for apostasy is hardly virtuous or efficacious. And Islam itself contradicts the notions of democracy. Sharia and our Constitution, eg, are contradictory. Regime change, eg, Germany and Japan, can only work after total subjugation of the populace. And Dubya failed to do that, by a sight.Kindly, he’s a klutz. More probably, something a whole lot worse.
Wow. I could not disagree more.
So the US supposedly had a responsibility to help the people of Darfur but not the people of Iraq? Did you know that Saddam killed far more people than were killed in Darfur? Are Iraqi lives worth less?
The US bottled up Saddam in the no-fly zones, but at considerable expense. And the sanctions against Iraq were not good for the Iraqi people. But you think it was better for the Iraqis to be bottled up with Saddam torturing, murdering and suppressing them than to be liberated?
I could not disagree more.
Did the Iraq War make the US look weaker? Not by a long shot. In case you did not notice, we won. We incurred relatively few combat casualties. We scared Syria out of Lebanon and made Libya turn over its nuclear program — all because they did not want the US knocking down their doors next.
The Iraq War was a success and Bush was right to go there.
We did not win. We are still there. Still fighting. And the ragheads are still slaughtering one another. As they always will.
Your opinion is still 100% wrong. You still completely miss the point, but on foreign policy and the reason and purpose for finishing the Iraq business.
1 we were not containing Irad as SH was about to get all sanctions lifted by the corrupt French and the other Euro trash making money off of his oil. All that wonderful “containment” would have been over.
2 This crap about US standing in the World…what are you kidding. They hated us before they hate us now. Big difference is now we have our military square in the middle of the screwed up region and there is not a damn thing they can do about it. We are in control and that is bugs you so much..Well tuff darts. Bush protected us and our current BOZO in office won’t. Thanks god we went into Iraq when we did…I can only imagine where we would be now if we had not..
It is amazing how your are just so wrong about so many things.
Re: “they hated us before…”
They also hated us during–during the time when our carriers were delivering water, food, and medicine after the tsunami. That was the time when the UN was holding conferences and calling us stingy and when foreign journalists were mocking Bush for always having a military answer to everything. The author of this article must have also missed the criticism of our actions in Kosovo and the anger at our pushing for action in Bosnia.
Iranian intelligence played US agencies like a violin, feeding them daily doses of exactly what they wished to see and hear to feed the hysteria and invade Iraq. What Iran did to US intelligence and White House is one of the greatest intelligence coups in modern History, which effects are still rippling through the economy and political structure.
Their main conduit was Ahmed Chalabi, on the Pentagon payroll until 2004, but it was the mindset within the Bush White House that allowed foreign operatives to manipulate so easily, they saw what they needed to justify an invasion.
Nations rise and fall based on single decisions that have rippling effects though their economies, political and social structure. The Invasion of Iraq set off ripples that are working their way through the economy, allowed for election of President Obama, and will continue to create and cause various events…it can take a generation ( 30 Years ) or more for effects to play themselves out.
Buckle in and hang on for the ride.
Although we may not have found significant stockpiles of WMDs, we certainly found dormant chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. We may also have seen truckloads of WMDs shipped to Syria just before the invasion, if you believe the deputy commander of CentCom at the time, Gen. Michael Delong. (I’ll put the link and quotes in a reply to this.) We also know Saddam was providing funding and training to terrorist organizations in the Middle East.
We gave diplomacy and weapons inspections 12 years to work. They failed because of Saddam’s intransigence. Possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died because diplomacy and inspections were given so much time and because Saddam preferred to hoard millions in cash and spend his Oil-for-Food money on new palaces, providing mansions for his allies, and re-arming rather than on food and medicine for his people. There was no “impending” humanitarian crisis, rather there was an ongoing one.
There were a number of reasons given for the invasion, including enforcing UN resolutions, ending any WMD threat (present or future) from Saddam’s regime, ending Saddam’s support for terrorist organizations, ending Saddam’s repression of the civilian population (not just in the north and south, mind you), and more. The liberation of Iraq accomplished these goals.
I remain unconvinced that the intel was embellished. In addition to a number of US agencies, British, French, and Russian intel agencies all claimed Saddam had WMDs. The very fact that Saddam had spent years blatantly foiling weapons inspections alone was pretty good evidence.
There were certainly costly mistakes made by the Bush administration as well. Any argument that Bush was entirely right or entirely wrong, or that the effects of the invasion were all good or all bad, is simplistic.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/interviews/delong.html
Quotes (I’ve added in “PBS:” and “Gen. Delong:” for clarity.)
PBS: And this debate about weapons of mass destruction and developing all that information, all the talk about whether the stuff existed, did that ever cross your field of vision while you were down here, both running Afghanistan and preparing for Iraq?
Gen. Delong: Yeah, because we saw it in Iraq. We had people on the ground in all the different places, and we knew where the stuff was, and we also knew that the U.N. inspectors during this period of time had to tell Saddam a week ahead of time they were coming to place X. We watched trucks come in, take the stuff out, go to another place as the U.N. inspectors would go in. By this time now, this is 12 years that Saddam has been moving his chemical weapons around. So we knew there were weapons of mass destruction. Now, how much or what kind, [we] weren’t sure.
But two days before we did go into Iraq, we watched truckloads of it go into Syria, truckloads of it. Now, these chemical weapons, you’ve got stuff here and stuff here that by themselves are not potent. You mix them together and you put them in the nose of an artillery shell or a bomb and you weaponize them, and it becomes a weapon. …
PBS: You saw it how? How did you know?
Gen. Delong: With people on the ground and with technical systems. We saw it. It wasn’t a matter of speculation; we saw it happen. Now, are they ever going to find it in Syria? Hell, no. Is there still some buried in Iraq? Yes, there is. It wasn’t too long ago we uncovered an artillery round with sarin gas in the nose. I mean, it was old, but why was it buried? You’ve got a country the size of California in square miles, and we now find MiG-25s, the largest fighter in the world. Occasionally, our guys with metal detectors will say, “Oh, there’s something here”; we’ll dig up one of these MiG-25s that have been buried.
PBS: So you still believe –
Gen. Delong: No, this is truth. Whether they find it out or not, I don’t know. But it went to Syria; probably some went to Lebanon; and maybe some even went from the south, went across to Iran. But we saw it go to Syria. …
The workable solution was to take out the Iraqui elite and let the underlings put it back together in some fashion not threatening to us.
A few bombs in the right places; not this mess.
For more on domestic politics, check out The Bond Project at http://www.thebondproject.blogspot.com
I hear the American people are paying $200 million per day for Bush to travel around promoting his book. It’s true! I rad it on Drudge and heard it all over Fox for like a week. Is this really where we need to be putting our hard-earned tax dollars?
“I hear” a pretty much a toothless, self censored, mundane, used and discarded Modern Liberal whimper. And it’s free.
It must pass for something somewhere.
Don’t light a match near your funny orifice Born sleazits. The Funhouse Mirror has enough Cracks in it.
And the Neutered Goldstein Galore? What a force. Wow! Clang!
Whatever.
Hmmm, all I hear are what sound like crickets.
If you put your ear to Mr. Lucky’s ear, you can hear a howling wind and the ocean, just like with a big, empty conch shell.
Mr Lucky: There is no such thing as “luck”. You can’t be what ain’t, in other words. So, you ain’t you. But you’re somebody- or you couldn’t type a blog. Now, who is y’all, really? A grasshead? A crackhound? Not one of those who trolls in the mensroom at Union Station? Got it! You’re my third cousin, Wojiecz, who graduated the eighth grade at age 26 only because he got too big for the seats. Right?
Is that all that you have? You’re beating a dead horse. Get some new material, senseiless.
New material? How about Jeremiah Wright? Michelle’s arms. Obama’s ears. He plays golf. Palin’s being attacked!!! Jeremiah Wright. Jeremiah Wright. Jeremiah Wright. Jeremiah Wright. Jeremiah Wright. Jeremiah Wright. Jeremiah Wright. Birth certificate!
You don’t lie to have the ridiculousness of Fox News pointed out to you. You’ve bought in 100% and to hear such stuff makes you all pinchy inside. Live with it.
Like I said, senseless, get new material, and while you’re at it, get a life.
Doesn’t whiney senseless remind you of a cranky, little baby, fussing and whining and sulking and squirming in his high-chair with a soilded diaper, throwing spoonfuls of his baby food all over the kitchen to get attention?
The debate continues to be focused on the wrong things…although the very things the Bush admin unfortunately emphasized.
The stalemate of the Iraqi situation had to end as the ‘oil for blood, I mean food’ program was becoming increasingly corrupt, we couldn’t/shouldn’t run the no fly zones indefinately, the no fly activity was causing trouble with Saudi Arabia, lack of Saddam compliance with the terms of the armistice and with terrorist activity clearly linked to Saddam after 9/11 that whole situation needed fixed.
The debate should be centered around how we prosicuted the war and more importantly how we managed the situation after the initial invasion and overthrow of Saddam. That’s where the idealism of democracy as a solution crashed into mean ol’ reality.
By leaving Iran untouched we basically did Iran’s dirty work and opened the way for Iran to dominate Iraqi politics.
If we don’t deal with Iran properly then I’d say the venture is looking like a likely failure. Certainly the idealism of imposing democracy on a culture that is not prepared for democracy is a failure.
I still don’t get why authors like Jeremy Sherone ignore this to make their point.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/24/60minutes/main3749494.shtml
This was on prime time in January of 2008. Conveniently ignored and “swept under the carpet”, this could have changed the outcome of the election. Here is the same subject on a different channel:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/interrogating-saddam-4729/Photos#tab-Photos/0
Why are these being ignored, Mr. Sharon?
How the heck did Mr. Sharon get the space to promote all this misinformation on this web site? How can there be any denying Saddam had WMD? He used them on his own people, and the UN gave him years to hide them (like the buried Russian jet fighter and chemical labs) and also transport them out of the country. One has only to read Iraqi general Georges Sada’s book “Saddam’s Secrets” to see how valid Bush’s decision was, and how all the crap like Mr. Sharon’s article worked to our disadvantage by undercutting Bush’s progress and make us a laughing stock to those who knew. Pajamas Media made a big error here. Before you know it, Gore will be writing here about how the poor polar bears are starving.
“Pajamas Media made a big error here.”
Oh I don’t know. I appreciate PJM showing the depth of the idiocy cultivated by the other side. In small doses at least it’s amusing from time to time.
Now, I’ll grant you, mindless and spiteful drivel of that Rosen-whatever character or Navarette ends up being a useless drag…
In Saddam’s Secrets, his Gen. Georges Sada writes,
“I’m convinced that Saddam came close to having nuclear warheads
by the beginning of the second Gulf War. -
“You can’t begin to imagine what Saddam would have done
if he had been given just a little more time.” (p200).
Thank you, President Bush!
A discussion of this subject here might be tolerable if one, just one of you clueless blowhards was aware of the primary reason why it was imperative for President Bush to put boots on the ground in Iraq. (sigh)
Ohh, yawn, it’s so exciting to read your comment! You’ve informed us that you are Mr. Know-It-All (admittedly this is only your self-definition, but heck…), and that we ignorami are bereft of, not merely information, but quite probably (in your esteemed estimation) even the capacity to understand What You Know.
Ooohh.. please tell us why Bush ‘did it’. Otherwise, gosh, we’ll just conclude that you are a sanctimonious bit of self-inflating puff. Or is it that you don’t want us to deflate you? Hmmm?
Yeah, right, like with your ignorance, you could “deflate” anyone.
Get real. You aren’t just dumb and delusional. You are also a fool.
Wow. Nice, solid response. Purely ad hominem. “Well… well… you’re just a poopyhead! So there!”
Calling ETAB “dumb and delusional” is ignorance. He has been posting here a long time. He is actually very smart, educated, and extremely knowledgable.
However, people (not just Leftists, sadly) tend to have poor manners, and so they call folks who disagree with them, stupid and ignorant. They have to, or they are forced to possibly have to re-examine their own beliefs, and perhaps be forced to change their minds.
This is why it is so important to debate in civilized fashion. If your beliefs can withstand scrutiny, then you have nothing to fear. If not, then you must change your thinking on things, or lose your integrity. Hurling insults, rather than engaging in honest discussion, fails the worst, because folks will NEVER be swayed by such.
What it does achieve is keep your own side in line, never to be swayed by the arguments of the other side. Ad hominem closes minds on both sides!
Cliff? Cliff Claven, is that you?
An absolutely absurd article.
Sharon gets published by The Guardian once in awhile.
It’s easy to see why.
“In hindsight” that article was not a very valuable use of my time.
Mr. Sharon
You’re right, of course. The key to this is that Iraq was no threat to the United States, and wasn’t in a position to be one, either. Hussein was bottled up effectively enough.
One compelling argument regarding pre-emptive action is that although the US itself doesn’t directly depend on middle east oil, most of the countries it trades with do. For the sake of middle eastern stability (affecting the stability of our trade partners) one could argue that pre-emption on behalf of “business” is also good for the US. Certainly this has ramifications for foreign policy objectives.
What ought to happen is a thorough review of what we in the US think we should be doing. Are we an empire? Are we a republic in the paleocon paradigm of “friends of liberty everywhere but guardians only of our own”?? What are US foreign policy objectives, and what should they be?
Oh, and good luck trying to ferret out anything useful from the replies of the far right crowd who infests this place. Most can’t tell strategy from tactics from objectives, but they’re all towering intellects.
Sure, because terrorism was never a threat to the United States, right? And Saddam wasn’t able to get anything into or out of Iraq without our knowing, was he? Of course not. And he never had WMDs, never trained or funded terrorist organizations, and of course never had any intention of resuming the WMD programs he never had.
Keep up the disbelief, gentlemen. It makes your lives so much simpler.
I think you are making some assumptions which require proof.
First, your assumption that Hussein under Iraq was no threat to the US is a naive claim. As you point out in your next paragraph, no nation exists in isolation. The fact that he’d been under sanctions for years by the UN meant that he was a threat to the stability of the Middle East region and a support for the growing Islamic fascism of the region. That involves the US, as I’m sure you are aware. That – and his previous attack on the Kurds, his attack on Kuwait as well as his repression of Iraqis, on the Marsh Arabs etc, was a key element in the reality of the ME fragility.
Second, does your promotion of ‘pre-emptive war’ include, as does the author of this article, moving into such places as Darfur? After all, that is a civil war, it is not related to Islamic fascism (although any area of unrest with a Muslim population can now be linked to Islamism)- and the US is not the police of the world. That is the job of that corrupt institution, the UN.
Oh, and as for a debate on the foreign identity of the US, I think that has long been argued that the US is not an imperial power; it has no interest in taking over the lands of other peoples. But again, the world is networked and isolation is impossible.
And finally, this is not a ‘left’ or ‘right’ argument. What is at issue is the reality of Islamic fascism, its causes (which are primarily the lack of democracy in the Islamic nations and a concomitant refusal to modernize Islam and remove its political axioms)..and how to deal with enabling Islam to move into a modern global world and participate constructively and collaboratively.
What I’ve read here by both Sharon and ETAB (and others) are assumptions, conjectures and opinions, which are not supported by the facts.
Bush put boots on the ground in Iraq for two reasons primarily, which require you to think back to events which were developing in the Middle East even long before 9/11.
In view the unrest and a series of closely related events which were occurring not just in Iraq, nor just in Afganistan, but all over the Middle East in such places as Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Saudia Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and Chechnya to name a few, developments which were becoming increasingly more volatile, only to be virtually ignored by the incredibly irresponsible, lazy and incredibly incompetent Clinton Administration, presumably because Bill Clinton was too preoccupied with getting blow jobs from Monica …, the Bush Administation decided upon coming into office that, to discipline Iran and to restrain Iraq and to reduce tensions and frictions in the Middle East between a variety of militant factions all over that region and to bring some semblance of peace to that region, they wanted to put a stronger presence (a larger police force, if you will) in that region, and because it was centralized and it already had good airfields and other already prepared areas, it was the best staging area for our troops in that region. It was that simple. It was the best centralized staging area for troops and aircraft, and in ways too numerous to list here for the sake of brevity, it was more successful than any of you realize. Bush would have put troops and aircraft on the ground in Iraq even if 9/11 had not occurred.
You haven’t clearly outlined your two reasons – and you haven’t read my posts, which state that the reason for the Iraq War was the need to introduce a democratic infrastructure into the area.
You haven’t outlined the nature of the unrest in the region – an unrest with which I fully agree existed/exists – and is due, I suggest, to the infrastructure of political tribalism within an industrial economy and a multimillion population. You cannot have political tribalism in such an economy and population size; the hierarchical bonds of kin must be rejected in favor of a civic mode of political organization that empowers a non-kin based middle class.
Iraq, as a central site, and a site that was already under censure for causing destabilization and fascism in the area, was a ‘best site’ for trying to destabilize the growing Islamic fascism of the area and enable the people to move into democracy.
Your view is only that Bush wanted a site for a military police presence in the area – and I consider this too short-sighted a view and inadequate to deal with Islamic fascism. Bush wanted, and has said this repeatedly, a democratic infrastructure in the region – which infrastructure would diffuse to other areas. You can see this desire for democracy recently in Iran – with the massive demonstrations for democracy- brutally put down by the govt…while Obama stood by and did nothing, said not a word of support for democracy, not a word of encouragement for democracy.
The question is – how does one destabilize Islamic fascism? The best tactic is to empower the people, politically and economically, in their own country. That’s democracy.
I will go with “the simple truth” described above, as opposed to what you said.
You’re dense, shallow and disingenuous. He clearly stated briefly both of the reasons why Bush put troops in Iraq. You chose to ignore them, just so that you could override his valid points with your screwy opinions. That’s sleazy, don’t you think? In any case, you have tunnel vision and he tried to get you to look at the bigger picture, not just what you heard from the thoroughly discredited MSM. (sigh)
Liberals maintain that Hussein pretended to have WMD because he feared Iran. They also believe Hussein would have stood by and watched as Iran developed nuclear weapons. These beliefs contradict each other.
I believe Hussein would have re-started his weapons programs as soon as sanctions ended – as was inevitable – and that Iraq is a failure only if the standard was the establishment of a Jeffersonian democracy in Arabia. I concede that the victory was significantly tainted by the war weary election of someone completely unfit to be CIC and who is standing by as Iran develops nuclear weapons.
“All that said, Bush’s foreign policy was poor.”
EXCEPT for the part that Bush checked the real source of WMD proliferation in the world, ie, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Iraq – A. Q. Khan.
Saddam had had nuke parts on order with Khan, the “father of the Islamic A-Bomb” for Pakistan.
SOMEHOW nobody’s gotten around to mentioning the unexpected international security dividend the war in Iraq ushered in: READ “The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World’s Most Dangerous Secrets…And How We Could Have Stopped Him”
http://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Jihadist-Dangerous-Secrets-Stopped/dp/0446199575
Well, Bush finally did.
(But – somehow, amidst all the navel gazing Bush bashing – the Truth never soars here….Hmmmm. Why is that?)
We need a Golem-Globus movie (ie, Israelis – Hollywood would never touch THIS) to tell the ignorant masses (not to mention, ignorant elites) the Truth about the great good Bush did!
So, instead, read my little notice. I mean, Voltaire could have written apothegem about this….(!)
“All that said, Bush’s foreign policy was poor.”
Bullsh*t.
Like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright were extremely wishy-washy and indecisive and all four of those chronic procrastinators have consistently exercised incredibly bad judgment in all matters pertaining to foreign policy and the best interests of this country. That’s what happens when ditzy Democrats use affirmative action to select their candidates, rather than candidates which are qualified to hold those offices.
G.W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney had sufficient experience and they were sufficiently self-assured that they were consistently decisive, making the decisions that needed to be made quickly, and accomplishing what needed to get done.
Bush was respected by world leaders. Obama isn’t. Clinton wasn’t.
As to the article…..just one opinion among many of what happened and its fallout. One, I must say ignores facts at the time and goes with media reports far too much for my taste.
At the time there were at least seven reasons stated for ‘going into Iraq’. WMDs was just the only one the media and the UN felt worthwhile to consider.
In particular (a) Saddam was funding, openly, suicide bombers in the West Bank against Israel and threatening to bomb Israel himself. (b) As we were fighting in Afghanistan he was lending support to the opposition and terrorists were finding safe haven in Iraq and Iran as they flowed out of the war zone.
As for Bush, not a perfect. But as for his foreign policy; better than his father, better than Clinton and better than Obama. And, he loved his country.
Heh – notice the ‘reality reply’. Not one word of data, evidence, analysis. No debate or discussion. Just personal insults. That’s the reality of what type of person?
Why all the crocodile tears over Saddam Hussein’s demise? Saddam
richly deserved his long walk off a short pier. He was responsible
for the deaths of millions of people – Iraqi, Iranian, Kurdish
and Kuwaiti. After 9/11 the U.S. simply could not allow Sadam
to continue being the destabilizing influence he was.
The United Nations placed sanctions on Iraq, upon cessation of
hostilities in the 1991 Gulf War, concerning Saddam’s ongoing
WMD program. Now if everyone knew that Saddam actually did not
have a WMD program what was the reason for the sanctions? What
was the reason for keeping the sanctions in place for close to
12 years if everyone knew that Saddam did not have a WMD program?
The sanctions effectively ruined Iraq’s economy. Why ruin Iraq’s
economy over a WMD program everyone knew didn’t exist?
The fact is everyone (the U.S. – Clinton & Bush – Britain, Russia
France, Germany, Israel, Egypt etc.) believed Saddam had a WMD
program. Saddam’s behavior in the years leading up to the 2003
invasion did nothing to dispel this belief. The U.N. Resolution
always specifically called for Saddam to open his country to
inspections and for him to PROVE he had dismantled his program.
Saddam never did, hence the long walk off a short pier.
Bush’s decision to destroy Iraq’s military was the right thing to do
and was highly successful. Bush’s failure was in the handling of
the occupation and in his waiting for 3 long years (and only after
4,000 U.S. combat deaths & his party’s loss in the 1996 mid-terms)
before finally ordering the ‘Surge’. It’s also apparent that Bush
never had the stomach to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, with or without our invasion of Iraq.
Bill – and simple truth (I presume you are the same) – don’t move into personal insults; that’s useless as an argument.
No, you didn’t clearly state your two reasons – just to say that there is unrest is not even a description, for it fails to describe the nature of the unrest and certainly, neglects to examine causality.
No, the MSM doesn’t analyze societal structures and the difference between tribal and civic political structures, nor does it deal with population pressures or economic modes. So, I’m afraid your attempt to denigrate my outline by suggesting that it comes from the MSM is invalid.
I am considering the larger picture – which is one based on economic mode, political mode and demographics. You only consider that there was ‘unrest’ (without analyzing why) and that Bush wanted a military presence (without analyzing why). Try again. Without the insults. Just deal with the issues.
Lying that I’m posting as two people won’t alter the fact that you’re wrong. Deal with it, dimwit.
Further to my comment above, it is not enough to say that Bush wanted a ‘military presence’ to ‘calm things down’ without examining what was causing the unrest – and also – what justification there is for an external nation to go into an area just because it sees ‘unrest’.
After all, there’s plenty of unrest in Somalia, Congo, Zimbabwe, Darfur, etc – but does the US see itself as going in to provide some measures against this unrest? No.
The situation in the ME is not about unrest (and what is causing this unrest???) but is about the infrastructure in that area that causes Islamic fascism…which is certainly measurable as ‘unrest’. What is the cause of this fascism – and my point is that it is caused by the refusal to move into a civic political mode that empowers a majority middle class. That’s why Bush moved in – to enable democracy, which is a political mode based around the middle class.