History will judge Iraq withdrawal harshly
Couldn’t agree more with John’s argument here. Whatever your views on whether the Iraq war was justified in the first place, or the reasons why it was justified, or how it has been conducted to date, the facts on the ground are what matters now. (I certainly don’t intend to re-argue this tired old debate.)
Those facts demand that the war is brought to a successful conclusion, so Iraq’s democratically elected government can govern the country and defend its people. To show that freedom is a common dream of all humanity, and not - as I wrote in this comment - just some cultural idiosyncrasy of the West. And even if you also disagree that there are philosophical or strategic reasons to win it, premature withdrawal will precipitate a humanitarian calamity far greater than the war caused. Greater, indeed, than Saddam Hussein brought on his own people. Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time the so-called “peace camp” stood by and watched. Does The Killing Fields ring any bells?
I agree with the post. The post was similar to what I have been trying to get across to the pack up our toys and go home crowd in my region.
But history will judge the idiotic decision to invade Iraq even more harshly.
History has already judged the decision to stay in Vietnam too long harshly.
@gasdocpol: There’s always one, isn’t there? That wasn’t the point, now was it? How much more explicit do I have to be that your complaints about the decision to invade Iraq are not at issue? That I (to quote myself) “don’t intend to re-argue this tired old debate”?
Ivo Vegter
It is easy to see why you do not want to talk about the decision to invade Iraq. At the very best, you would have to admit that the invasion was an honest mistake. but nonetheless a very serious mistake. At worst you need to answer the charge that the Bush administration lied us into the mess for less than honorable reasons and far from being good world citizens we were inperialists and trouble )
The same people who could not forgive Clinton for a juvenile caper that in no way hurt the USA want to give a pass to GW Bush who has caused huge damage to the USA and elsewhere. The don’t even want to clear his good name. They want a coverup.
THAT SAID THERE ARE REASONS MORE GERMAIN TO RESOLVING THE IRAQ PROBLEM.
I think , but you would disagree that Iraq is a problem. In order to understand any problem , it is often useful to understand how the problem evolved. We are not going to have much credibility in the world community if we continue to spout fiction that makes sense mostly to the bible smackers of the red states.
To ignore the reasons why the White House made the decision to invade Iraq and assume that it was a noble cause is to confuse the issues.
I don’t assume anything. I don’t disagree that Iraq is a problem. Of course it’s a problem. That’s why there’s a war on.
What I’m trying to do is not confuse the issues. I - like many other people - have spent years debating the decision to invade Iraq, arguing where mistakes were made, and defending why the decision was sound. Those - like you - who haven’t been convinced yet, aren’t likely to be convinced at all. So I’m guessing it’s a waste of time to try to convince you now. You think it was a bad decision. Fine. Good for you. But now what? That’s what I’m trying to discuss. If you want to discuss the rationale for a decision taken in late 2002 or early 2003, that’s your problem. That’s you confusing the issues.
Oh, and if you’re a year younger than my father, and Congress finds you guilty of perjury, while you’ve publicly sworn to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, because you just happen to be the President of that august country, I wouldn’t call that juvenile. Or a caper. Let alone both.
I would argue that the actual damage to the USA or anyone for that matter anyone resulting from Clinton’s lying is exactly ZERO. The damage done to Americans and others caused by Bush/Cheney lies is MASSIVE.
I cannot imagine a more flagrant violation of a President’s violation of the constitution than lying us into a fiasco the magnitude of Iraq.
If the decision to invade Iraq was to get control of Iraqi oil and set up military bases in Iraq permanently and put in place a military presence that could help Israel Iraq it could have been a a good decision on the condition the operation were not botched.
You might get the bible smackers to believe that our cause was just but no one in other countries is going to believe that and we will need them to help us out of the mess Bushy created.
My answer to the problem is to explore the question of partition of Iraq. If that were to happen, GW Bush would come out of Iraq smelling like a rose for having deposed saddam and making it possible.
I JUST TOLD YOU HOW GW BUSH CAN SAVE HIS LEGACY.
I feel one of the problems we face was brought up over on “Nukes News and Views” when Nuke made the following comment:
[Reconstruction officially took twelve years in the US, and unofficially took one hundred years. It’s going to take the Iraqis a while as well. And, just as the Democrat party has become the last best hope for an AQ victory in Iraq, it is the US Military’s leadership of the counterinsurgency that is providing the last best opportunity for the Iraqis to make it.]
http://nukegingrich.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/the-last-best-hope/
And as one of the posters remarked we were a lot tougher on our own people during reconstruction than we are being with Iraq.
GW Bush should have thought about that before he lied us into that fiasco. GHW Bush DID think about that and said so in his memiors.
But then GHW Bush was a Phi beta Kappa athlete scholar at Yale, a sucessfuil businessman , congressman, CIA director RNC chairman, Envoy to China, UN Ambasodore and nothing like his neer-do-well kid.
@gasdocpol: Clinton’s lies were illegal. It doesn’t matter whether you think it did damage to the US. (I think it did, by distracting him from more serious matters, and draining the political capital he needed to do more than just lob the occasional cruise missile at the guy who headed the “most wanted” list at the time and the guy who was breaking one ceasefire agreemeent and UN resolution after another.) It is also not accurate to say that Bush or Cheney lied, and if you do want the support of other countries, it might help not to spread such partisan propaganda. For what it’s worth, I am from another country, and I’m no “bible-smacker” (to use your mildly offensive term).
@thescoundrel: I wholeheartedly agree with that view. As I wrote to the editor of a local magazine who advocated cut and run regardless of the consequences:
I am not sure animosity can ever be completely eradicated. But the affects must lessened and controlled for survival. The US civil War is an example of that. It has been finished for over a century and their are still outstanding issues and animosity left over. To not try and fix the Iraq problems condemns the people left behind. We did that once before following Bush Srs. invasion of Iraq. No one is really sure just how many people were killed and tortured after the world abandoned the Iraqis to Saddam’s revenge.
We do have some indications of numbers in Cambodia, South Vietnam, and other places where the US got involved, but lacked the patience, stomach, strategy or political will to see the intervention through to a successful conclusion. They’re not pretty.
You’re right on animosity. Even though it will probably remain a feature of a new Iraq, residual animosity does not preclude a stable, peaceful society. South Africa is living proof of that. However, if the US were to betray the Iraqis’ trust by precipitous withdrawal, such animosity would quite probably flare up into an orgy of sectarian revenge and external insurgency. That would be much worse than merely having to face down cynical questions from domestic opportunists who are prepared to sacrifice American credibility in the world for their own political ends.
Ivo Vegter
1. If you do not want people to lie to you, do not ask them about their sex lives. I would suggest that virtually everyone lies about sex to some degree.
2. What took place between Monica and Clinton was between bill , Hillary, Monica and god and none of our business.
3. If there were some evidence that Clinton spent some significant part of his waking hours in persuit of sexual activity, there would bhe some validity to your claim that it was a harmful distraction. I would submit that Clinton did more consructive things in one hour by accident than GW Bush did on purpose for weeks if not years. OK Bush probably devoted some serious thinking to the Harriet Myers nomination and privatizing social security , but it is my opinion they were both dumb ideas.
4. Richard A. Clark who was in GOP White Houses going back to Nixon as well as Clinton’s White House has given direct testimony that GW Bush was totally oblivious to Bin Laden while obsessed with Saddam from his first days in the presidency.
5. The biggest lie that Bush/Cheney told was that we needed to invade Iraq immediately . The other lies were in support of that lie. Either they were very inept and stupid or they were lying. There was no reason to invade Iraq for the reasons they gave (which kept changing)
6. NOT ONLY DO I CLAIM THAT THEY LIED, BUT I CAN TELL YOU WHY THEY LIED. The real reason for the Iraq invasion was to carry out the Neoconservative agenda as expressed in PNAC.
7. I would say that it is safe to say that most of the world does not buy the Bush/Cheney version of things o you hadly speak for foreigners.
What is about “I certainly don’t intend to re-argue this tired old debate” you don’t understand?
The post was about what should happen now in Iraq, how a stable democracy is achievable, and what the consequences of precipitous withdrawal would be.
It’s not about whether you thought Clinton was hard done by, or whether I thought Clinton was useless anyway, or whether either of us thought Bush was a competent president, either before or after 9/11, or whether the invasion of Iraq was justified. And NO AMOUNT SHOUTING AT ME IN CAPITAL LETTERS is going to make me interested in or agree with your paranoia, hatred and blamestorming. So stop it, please.
I am not a fan of precipitous withdrawall either.
What should happen in Iraq now?
I have devoted a blog exclusively to that question (except for my very last entry which you would want to ignore where i talked about PNAC) I invite you to scroll back through my other entries rather than repeat my arguments
What i propose actually would have GW Bush coming out of iraq smelling like a rose because by deposing saddam ,he would have made it all possible.
Basiclally i would want to get people with diverse backgrounds including Turks and Kurds who live in the USA and Iraqis, Syrians Europeans etc. I would like to get someone like Brownback or Biden or Jim Baker or George Mitchell to oversee and moderate discussions of how it might be possible to partition Iraq.
I know what you propose on your blog. If you’d bothered to stick to the subject instead of whining endlessly about your pet hates, I’d have had an opportunity to explain why I think it’s a dumb idea.
Not that you’d care, because your opinion is vastly superior to mine and as you say, I hardly speak for foreigners. That I actually am one, and I actually live in a country that actually succeeded in making the actual transition from actual oppression to actual democracy, well, who actually cares?
Now I made an effort to work out your contribution to this blog to date. On this post, you mentioned your proposed solution exactly twice: once at the very end of your third comment, and again in the very last line of your last comment. First and foremost, you took the opportunity to dispute the reasons for invading Iraq, whine that Bush lied, questione the Republicans’ motives, and raise Clinton’s impeachment for good measure.
Your verbiage add up to almost 1000 words, of which less than 10% were even remotely near the point. The rest you spend shouting at me, making sweeping allegations, raising irrelevant issues, denigrating others, and insulting my intelligence.
On a previous occasion, you commented eight times, though by the second comment you were well on your way turning a perfectly rational political philosophy discussion into an opportunity for gratuitous Bush-bashing and all-caps shouting. I asked you to stop it, pretty please. You ignored this polite request. I asked you again just now. You ignore me again. You won’t mind if I return the favour and ignore you from now on, will you? Thanks. You’re so kind.
[…] was the right place at the right time, the reality today is that precipitous withdrawal would be disastrous for Iraq, and deal a severe blow to America’s ability to combat terror and tyranny in future. It will […]
It may be too late to get out of Iraq with anything intact. We overstayed our welcome on our very first day there. You can’t shock and awe people into a democracy. I don’t know how we are going to keep the Iraqis from killing each other, but we certainly aren’t helping them now, any more than we helped either the VietNamese or the Cambodians. The end result of those Killing Fields you mention was that the VietNamese liberated Cambodia. Maybe now Iran and Syria will have to liberate Iraq.
The only hope lies in asking the United Nations to help us to get out of there and help the Iraqis take back their own country.
I agree that the UN - or at least, those countries who claim to support democracy but opposed the invasion - should have offered to help build a free, democratic nation in Iraq. I think it’s a disgrace that they didn’t. But I disagree that the intention ever was to “shock and awe people into a democracy”. No, you can’t impose democracy by force. But in order for freedom and democracy to exist, the tyrant must be removed. Failing their voluntary concession of power (as happened in South Africa), removing a tyrant requires force. And even if the tyrant concedes power, such a process is unlikely to be a nice, bloodless affair.
“”Maybe now Iran and Syria will have to liberate Iraq.”"
It will be hard for either Iran or Syria to liberate Iraq as they are part of the support groups for the insurgents that are tearing apart the country. Iran is not popular within most of Iraq. The Iranian leadership is not even popular within Iran. I do not see Iran accepted as a liberator by Iraqi citizens excepting the Muslim radical conservatives. Syria might be more accepted but then the country will fall back to the Nazi based Baath party which Saddam was part of. If the same Iraqi hierarchy of politicians were to be given back the power by Syria, it is almost a certainty that a bloodbath similar to the one following the previous Iraq war where we packed up and went home would follow. Both are lose-lose situations for the world and the citizens of Iraq.
Not to mention that describing the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, could only be described as “liberation” by comparison with the Khmer Rouge. It’s not like Cambodians were actually free; they just got particularly murderous tyranny replaced with less murderous totalitarianism.
[…] was the right place at the right time, the reality today is that precipitous withdrawal would be disastrous for Iraq, and deal a severe blow to America’s ability to combat terror and tyranny in future. It will […]