The New Iraq, Five Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread

So...we should not have gone in back in '91?


come on, j-rod. don't be obtuse. we didn't go into iraq. we kicked them out of kuwait, and left it at that.

 

come on, j-rod. don't be obtuse. we didn't go into iraq. we kicked them out of kuwait, and left it at that.

Did we leave it at that? I thought we had a cease-fire agreement. And, BTW, we certainly did fight in Iraq in '91.

 

you know what i mean, j-rod. and if you don't, plenty of other people do.

 

Ok, so let me rephrase the question: Should we have involved ourselves in Kuwait?

 

Ok, so let me rephrase the question: Should we have involved ourselves in Kuwait?


of course. and we did the right thing by leaving things where we did, and not marching into baghdad.

"For the U.S. to get involved militarily in determining the outcome of the struggle over who's going to govern in Iraq strikes me as a classic definition of a quagmire."--dick cheney, 1991.

 

Ok, so should we have enforced the cease-fire agreement?

 

iraq never violated it, so no dice. ender has eviscerated your psuedo-arguments before, j-rod, and i'm content to let him do so again. have a good night.

 

So...he did declare all of his WMS's?

He allowed weapons inspectors in unmolested?

He allowed patrolling of the no-fly zones?

He didn't have any contraband conventional weapons?

He followed the Oil-For-Food program?

No. He certainly didn't.

 

Iraq did indeed violate the cease-fire agreement.

However, our attempt to enforce it had far more negative than positive consequences.

 

the main point is that invading iraq as we did, regardless of the justification, was a monumentally bad idea, and even more poorly executed in its aftermath than conceived to begin with. countless tales of ignorance of the area and its culture, and an almost childlike naivette.

history will be harsh indeed in its judgment.

 

That's the attitude that allowed Saddam to show the Middle East that a military victory by the West has no consequences.

The bottom line is this: If you agree that the actions taken in '91 were correct (and they were) then you have to know that there can be no other final outcome than what we have right now.

Re-read my first post today.

Saddam would have to either hold up his end of the cease-fire or be relieved of power.

 

Yes, because surely the attitude of, "Sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting, 'I can't hear you!'" has worked so brilliantly thus far.

 

No consequences? He tried to invade Kuwait, he provoked a war, lost Kuwait in the blink of an eye, and showed the world that his supposedly elite forces were pushovers, and that Western forces could pulverize Arab armies any day of the week. Saddam was completely contained after the war; he went from being a major regional threat to no threat at all. Again, no consequences?

Bush Sr. had the sense to make Gulf War I a short war, to make it end before anyone could figure out how to wear the Western military down. By contrast, what we've done with this war is show everyone how to fight us to a stalemate.

The insurgents can't defeat a Western army, and they know it. But they don't have to. All they have to do is make us bleed, show the world that we can bleed.

Face it: After Gulf War I, the world thought we were invincible. All we've accomplished with this war ? besides the tens of thousands of dead people ? is proving that we aren't.

You don't really think a technicality justifies all that, do you? Or that we're better off now than we were before we went in?

 

By contrast, what we've done with this war is show everyone how to fight us to a stalemate.

no, worse: we've repeated the failures of vietnam, which people thought was virtually impossible back in the 1990s. most experts of all political stripes at the time would have bet heavily against that ever happening gain.

but it has.

 

J-Rod, whilst I don't disagree that Saddam was in violation of his requirements under UNSCR 660 and all subsequent relevant resolutions (cf. UNSCR 1441 (2002)), I would however like to hear your opinion of this quote:

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different ? and perhaps barren ? outcome."
A World Transformed (1998) by George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft

E_S

 

Well, the current violence is more relatable to the Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian divisions rather than the US occupation, wouldn't you think, E_S?

Sure, the invasion opened Pandora's Box in relation to removing the lock Saddam had on the unification situation due to rule by force...

If the Sunni and Shi'ites were more vested in national identity than religious affiliation, I tend to think we wouldn't be having nearly as much of a discussion about it now.

 

Looking back on the war with quotes like that, I just don't get how we got ourselves into this mess. At the time of the war I supported it, but my excuse was that I was still in High School and Foxnews was my only source of information. Bush Jr. & co had already gone through this before, what is their excuse?

I think our total victory in Desert Storm lead us to get cocky and think we could do whatever the heck we wanted. 9/11 is what made us want to do whatever we could.

 

See what happens when you don't teach your sons how to read?

 

I've demonstrated how and why the concept of national unity in the MidEast is a foolish concept at least a half-dozen times, but I see the neo-expert crowd forgets that when discussing Iraq and the region.

The Sunni and Shi'ite divide existed before the US invasion, DM, and all that the invasion did was remove, in effect, the barriers and safeguards on either side. That is, had the US heeded Bush the Wise (Also known the Bush Who Understands International Relations), Iraq would not be in the mess it's in now and the US wouldn't be bogged down in an unwinnable war, and it would "have been a dramatically different ? and perhaps [less] barren ? outcome."

E_S

 

That's really it though -- there is no Iraqi national identity, or it's a very distant second to the relious/ethnic identitites. There's a Kurdish identity, a Sunni identity, a Shiite identity. And that was obvious to people who paid attention before Bush the Idiot decided to invade.

Thomas Friedman made a point at the start of the war, we'll find out if Iraq is the way it is because Saddam is the way he is, or if Saddam is the way Saddam is because Iraq is the way it is. He hoped for the sake of the war that it was the former. As he has stated recently, and should be clear to everyone at this point, it'S the latter.

EDIT: At the start of the war, the neo-cons especially tried to draw parallels to Germany. Turns out they picked the wrong European country -- Iraq is alot more like the former Yugoslavia, a country of ethnic groups that hate each other, only held together by a strong-armed dictator.

 

You can always go back and blame the Brits for forcing together such a bad marriage, E_S...





What do you think the fate of Iraq if Saddam would have remained and died in office, E_S? I tend to think it would have probably ripped itself apart anyway, eventually....

The above poster quoted Friedman, who made the very valid point:

we'll find out if Iraq is the way it is because Saddam is the way he is, or if Saddam is the way Saddam is because Iraq is the way it is.

I think we know the answer to that now.

 

The Sunni and Shi'ite divide existed before the US invasion, DM, and all that the invasion did was remove, in effect, the barriers and safeguards on either side.

I think it would be proper to add that only the safeguards were taken down. There was still required an element that was needed to exploit that lack of safeguards. This of course happened and by virtue of the US's position, there was inherently no reliable way they could have defended themselves from such an occurance.

The thing about an unpopular occupation or an unpopular presence that lasts several years, is that if its unpopular enough sooner or later its opponents are going to find out ways to effectively damage it.

 

Well, the current violence is more relatable to the Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian divisions rather than the US occupation

But we're still seeing IED attacks on coalition troops every single day.

 

My opinion is this:
The US should not have gone in back in '91 if we weren't willing to enforce a cease-fire.

The UN should not have supported the '91 oporation if it wasn't willing to enforce a cease-fire agreement.

Go back and look at my first post yesterday and review the three options we had after defeating Saddam...

At this point the coalition can do one of three things:

1) Remove Saddam from power.

2) Sign the agreement and strictly enforce it's conditions.

3) Sign the agreement and attempt to be as forgiving as possible in it's enforcement.

The long term final result of any options would eventually lead to the removal of Saddam. Anything else would lead to a perception of weakness and an opening for attack.

The bottom line is this: By removing Saddam from Kuwait we had no choice but to eventually remove Saddam from power.

After Desert Storm I was just a drunk 22 year old and even then I could see that. Are you telling me that a drunk 22 year old had a better grasp on reality than Bush Sr.?

 

The bottom line is this: By removing Saddam from Kuwait we had no choice but to eventually remove Saddam from power.

Why? Because you say so? Prove this. Prove that Saddam's minimal violation of the ceasefire agreement demanded his removal from power.

Removing Saddam was incredibly inconvenient and keeping the status quo seemed agreeable to everyone. Even Kuwait did not demand he be removed from power, and supposedly they had the greatest stake that anybody had in the entire affair.

So if even KUWAIT isn't demanding his removal from power, where do you get that the US, half a world away, somehow had "no choice" but to do it? Where is this phantom pressure you refer to?

And where would this weakness be that would be an opening for an attack? That's rediculous! There is only a perception of weakness when there is a perception of attention or a battle of wills. The world perception of Iraq was that the US had won the contest of wills. Everything else was the US unwilling to be further inconvenienced if anything else, which is not a perception of weakness. Nobody's dumb enough to take Saddam not reporting 5% of his WMDs which were probably defunct anyway and say "Look, Saddam is strong! Look at how he clings to the shreds of his military! The US is weak becase it only 'mostly' smashed him and sent his country into ruin."