Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Last Combat Brigade Leaves Iraq
Today the last full combat brigade left Iraq. Probably a good time to have a discussion about the war coming to an end. Should it have started to begin with. Are we better off as a nation for fighting it? What about the region, is it more or less stable without Sadam Hussein pretending to have WMD's? Are Iraqis better off? Thoughts
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The war with Saddam began in 1990. The U.S. didn't start it, so the question of whether it should have started to begin with is out of our hands.
ReplyDeleteWe are better off as a nation having concluded it.
Saddam didn't just pretend he had WMDs, he pretended to have more WMDs than he had. The U.S. found WMDs after the 2003 invasion. But, the war was only partly about WMDs (a very small part).
I'm not sure regional stability should be a primary goal. Stability is illusive.
Saddam and his sons were monsters. The Kurds and Shia are better off. I hope the Sunni Arabs accept that they are 20% of the population and must embrace a consensual constitutional framework for ruling the country. If so, they'll be better off too.
Iraq is another hand-me-down, post-colonial conflict from the British Empire. It really brings into focus the fundamental question impacting American foreign policy post 1991: is America responsible for all the problems that have derived from the British empire: Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan. Every place where we have committed our troops, British troops have been before (and are now again, only as a supplement to our forces). Take a long look in the mirror, America. Do you want to wind up like England? They spread themselves too thin as well, and look where it got them.
ReplyDeleteThis article says it all:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html?_r=1&hp
In the long run - it was a bad move to invade in 2003. Saddam and his sons were monsters yes, but we had Saddam contained. He had no air support, he did not have much of an army. He was not a threat to the US. We could have taken just him and his sons out via assassination through covert ops.
There are monsters all over the world. We can't invade every country that is a threat - to Justin's point - we can't spread ourselves too thin. Where do we go next? Iran, North Korea?
We need to rebuild this country first.
Bush wanted to democratize Iraq - it was a nice ideal to achieve but not a realistic one.
Saddam was responsible for 100,000 deaths. Well, there have been over 100,000 deaths as the result of the topple of Saddam and there are many more to come. Very sad.