The Iraq War retrospective Thread

[kandrathe]

Ok, I'll bite, but I dare say I'll regret it...
I've heard of 0/20 foresight, but your rather wistful hope that Iraq will ultimately prove to be a success may be the first example I've seen of 0/20 hindsight.;)

I promise it will be a friendly discussion... for my part of the discussion at least. :) I see your opinions are very strong here. Zero? Really?

In this case, anyway, foresight was 20/20. The potential for disaster, and the dishonesty of the Bush administration, was obvious at the time. Perhaps what couldn't have been predicted in advance was the criminal incompetence of the Bush administration in managing post-invasion Iraq.

Obvious? I dare say not. The UN Security council was not certain, and the most of the worlds intelligence services were not certain. The only people who were certain, were those who chose not to believe the evidence. It was clear that the confidence in the intelligence was over blown, and politicized to justify the war. You use the phrase "criminal incompetence", but I'm not exactly sure what you are talking about. There were "crimes" committed by soldiers that have occurred, and have been prosecuted. Is there a global standard on how competently war is to be conducted? I think it's easier for us to be an arm chair five star general, than to actually do the job.

The story is no different than it was before. After 9/11, and -- who knows -- maybe before, the Bush administration was determined to go to war with Iraq. We can speculate about the reasons (and I certainly have my own ideas) but given the secrecy and dishonesty of the administration, we may never know for certain exactly how they made that decision or who really made it.

Yes, we agree that the "New American Century" folks were hawkish on Iraq. But, also, many people including Saddam, had the opportunity to steer events away from the war. War was not inevitable. It was a choice, and not just a Bush choice.

What is clear, though, is that 9/11 gave them the opportunity to use exaggerated intelligence to sell the war to a frightened and angry American public, who was as uninformed as ever (not referring to anyone on the LL, of course:)).

Actually, the American public was about 60/40 on the war early on. It became higher after the tanks rolled into Baghdad, and then quickly dropped to about 30% support once it started looking like securing the peace would be hard. It was the US Congress who was mostly unanimous in authorizing the use of force against Iraq. It is also false to think of this as a "right-wing" affair. Consider The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, signed into law by Mr. Clinton.

The post 9/11 climate of fear, stoked in part by right-wing media, drowned out the political and public opposition to the war to a degree that is frightening in itself.

I wouldn't characterize it as fear. It was a mood of anger seeking retribution against anyone who was threatening, and Iraq was a handy fixed target. I'm sorry I don't see the "right-wing media"? The only place that right-wing media has any foot hold is talk radio. All the other media venues (newspapers, TV, magazines) are dominated by "left-wing media". What happened is that the "left-wing media" either got swept up in the momentum of the moment, or kept their mouths shut lest public opinion turn on them. But, they were there to publish the daily death count and bring video of every single struggle and tragic event that happened in the entire country of Iraq. They were certainly there to show the American public every day how horrible the aftermath of war can be.

One would like to think that things like the internment of Japanese-Americans or McCarthyism were things of past, but the current "war on terror", of which the Iraq war (a real war) is one side product, shows that fear mongering is a political evergreen.

I'm not sure how you connect the internment of Japanese-Americans here. As for politics being 90% "fear mongering", well hell yeah I agree! How about the war on global warming?

I guess, for most Americans, invading Iraq was pretty much the equivalent of getting into a fight with their wife, going to a bar, and punching the guy sitting on the stool next to them.

Actually, no. For most Americans, war is the contemplation of having your wives, husbands, sons, or daughters killed and the contemplation of higher taxes to pay for the war. It is a little insulting to think that Americans make decisions like drunkards. As for Americans being confused about Iraqi ties to terrorism... Consider this speech delivered by Sen. Clinton the day before the authorization of force. "And finally, on another personal note, I come to this decision from the perspective of a Senator from New York who has seen all too closely the consequences of last year's terrible attacks on our nation. In balancing the risks of action versus inaction, I think New Yorkers who have gone through the fires of hell may be more attuned to the risk of not acting. I know that I am." -- Sen. Clinton

Any suggestion that the Bush administration was "misled" by false intelligence into going to war has it completely backward. It was perfectly clear during the build-up to the war that they did not care about the truth (in this as in many other things) and only wanted the intelligence that would support their case, whether or not it was reliable.

I agree. I stated this back in 2003. The reasons for war with Iraq were more complex, and other than the window dressing presented (publicly) to the UN Security council and the American public.

Also wrong is any suggestion that the Iraq war was the right thing to do, it was just managed badly. The fundamental mistake was invading Iraq in the first place. When you invade and it turns out to be a disaster, you cannot argue with a straight face that hindsight shows the invasion could've been a good thing if it had been done differently. I don't know how gung-ho cheerleaders for the war, like William Kristol or Douglas Feith, or Paul Wolfowitz, can continue to appear in public and pontificate on their views. If I'd said or done what they did, I'd crawl into a cave and never utter another word in public again.

I'll take this as your opinion. It's easy to lambaste the actions that are taken, but harder to offer the alternative.

The Iraq war is a disaster created by the Bush administration, and it's all the worse because it should never have happened. It was an unnecessary war planned by people with no conception of the possible human costs of war.

Again, this is your opinion. You are wrong on the last part regarding the "no conception".

As a result hundreds of billions of US dollars (probably trillions, but there's no need to inflate any estimates when it comes to the costs of the Iraq war)...

About 500 billion so far.

thousands of American lives, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives...

The "war" was actually very swift and with the lowest cost of life in world history. The aftermath of fighting the insurgency and securing the peace is where foreign and domestic terrorists decided to blow away soldiers, and civilians. Who built the IEDs and planted the bombs that killed all those people?

...the destruction of the educated Iraqi middle class, and probably a lost generation of Iraqi children.

And, it was different in Iraq the decade before the war under the Clinton plan?

And none of this is over yet. Bush will go back to his Texas ranch and clear scrub under the watchful eye of the secret service, no doubt as certain as ever that he did the right thing for the country under God's watchful eye, leaving this train wreck behind him.

It will be interesting to see what the next administration does.