Was the Iraq War Inevitable?

Parent Cafe
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<p>At least one historian seems to think so:</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/why-iraq-was-inevitable-11456?page=all[/url]”>https://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/why-iraq-was-inevitable-11456?page=all&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Now before you get up in arms about the source being a Conservative Commentary Magazine, please understand that this article has also been linked to bi-partisan sites as well. The article itself outlines historical facts which can not be disputed, regardless of which side of the aisle on which one sits. Extremely informative about the circumstances leading up to the current situation, particularly during the Clinton Administration.</p>

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<p>Read the rest and see if you think Al Gore would’ve acted differently.</p>

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<p>It’s too early to judge any presidency yet. They are just now beginning to put the long-term effects of the Ford/Carter/Reagan eras into some context. I also believe the ware was coming, one way or another. The difference is that it could have been executed better. In the long run it was a necessity. The one difference is if it had been Gore instead of Bush the liberals would be making excuses for why he did it and the conservatives would all be hacked off. Pretty much the opposite of where we are now.</p>

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<p>I so agree with pmrlcomm. Maybe not the war is inevitable part, haven’t read the article yet. I agree about the sides being changed.</p>

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<p>I completely agree. I think history will tell a very different tale than the current conventional “wisdom.” I also think that the contested election looms large over the Iraq war and won’t recede until enough time has passed that the anger dissipates.</p>

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<p>The “hot” war in Iraq started in December 1998, with the massive aerial bombing of the country by Clinton, after the genocide had failed, two U.S. sponsored coup attempts had failed, negotiations with Chemical Ali to overthrow Saddam Hussein had failed, and after passage of the Democratically sponsored illegal Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. </p>

<p>The war was indeed an outgrowth of bipartisan foreign policy that required a major and massive ground-based U.S. military outpost in the Middle East, especially after Reagan turned tail in Lebanon, and it was quite clear that Saudi Arabia was kicking the U.S. out.</p>

<p>But the article is an interesting case of “selective memory”. It was Bill Clinton who kiced UNSCOM out of Iraq, not Saddam Hussein. And UNSCOM presented not one iota evidence, not one, that Saddam Hussein had any ongoing WMD programs, any plans for WMD programs, or posed any kind of imminent threat to anyone. This was just part of the Clinton/Tenet “Big Lie” of January/February 1998. And following the beginning of the war in 1998, the SOLE source of information - to all the intelligence agencies - was Curveball, who was discredited by the English, French, and German intelligence services long before the Bush decided to rely on him in making the case for the ground invasion. The main culprit here was Colin Powell (who had lied to the international community before on the destruction of Iraq’s SAM missiles during the Gulf War, and before lying to the United Nations avoided any contact with international intelligence agencies who had already discredited Curveball’s musings before he went to before the General Assembly.)</p>

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<p>mini - glad you weighed in on this.</p>

<p>Given the circumstances inherited by the Bush Administration & the things that transpired after his election, do you think he, or any other POTUS would’ve acted differently?</p>

<p>Do you think Bush relied on Curveball’s intell b/c he was looking for a way to justify a ground war? Or is it that the possibility (however remote) of our enemies becoming more & more equipped to do us harm was a chance he couldn’t take?</p>

<p>I think Bush thought it would be better to err on the side of safety for the U.S. (is it better to act wrongly than not act at all when you’re the Prez & the safety of your citizens & perhaps even the survival of your country is at stake?).</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong - I’m beyond trying to defend this war. Whatever the reasons, we can all agree that it was poorly executed (may I call your attention to the fact that McCain was protesting the strategy & calling for Rumsfeld firing). I still think that it’s better to fight alQaeda over there than waiting for another attack on our soil, and the desert of Iraq is a better battlefield than the mountains & caves of Afghanistan. And we certainly needed a base of operations in the area to even fight in Afghanistan.</p>

<p>Poorly executed? Absolutely! Unjustified? Probably. Inevitable? Possibly.</p>

<p>I think we can all agree that it was a tough hand to be dealt as POTUS during your first year in office.</p>

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<p>Let’s just make sure that whoever we elect POTUS next is better equipped to deal with potential situations like this. This will be my primary subject for determining who to vote for. I will go to my grave convinced that had Gore been in office that we may not be in this current mess (Iraq) but we would be in one potentially worse (even many of my most liberal friends agree that Gore would have messed it up). I absolutely believe we would have been hit again by terrorists on our soil because he would have been less decisive, right or wrong. Look at how he handled the “stress” of losing the election. He and his supporters whined (going on 8 years now) about it. Let’s try to avoid something like this. I’m at least convinced that if McCain loses, no matter the circumstances, he will accept it and move on without all the wailing and crying.</p>

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<p>“we would have been hit again by terrorists on our soil because he would have been less decisive, right or wrong”</p>

<p>Terrorist attacks are caused by American indecisiveness?</p>

<p>Would decisively offering foreign aid to Luxembourg have “worked” as well as decisively invading Iraq?</p>

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<p>McCain told my group: After he lost the 2000 primary, he “slept like a baby” - woke up every two hours & cried. :)</p>

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<p>Got to love a honest guy, lol.</p>

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<p>“Given the circumstances inherited by the Bush Administration & the things that transpired after his election, do you think he, or any other POTUS would’ve acted differently?”</p>

<p>Well, there are two ways to look at it. Certainly no one forced Bush into a ground invasion. There were no WMD programs, plans for programs, or imminent threats, and everyone knew it. As Tenet said, it was a “slam dunk” that everyone would buy it, because they’d already bought it in 1998. So he didn’t have to invade, didn’t have to lie. It was voluntary action.</p>

<p>But it wasn’t voluntary action to protect the U.S. against terrorists (or against Saddam Hussein). That was merely the “occasion” of the invasion. There was an opportunity to further bipartisan foreign and military policy - an opportunity to set up permanent military bases (and, no, Afghanistan would not have fit the bill), the President saw it, and he took. </p>

<p>I don’t think there is ANY chance that he took action because he perceived that he was protecting America. None whatsoever. Had that been the case, there would be 150,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2002. </p>

<p>As for “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” - purely an American invention. Didn’t exist before the invasion. Didn’t even exist AFTER the invasion (folks forget that a local group went through the process of actually changing their name!) And had virtually no arms, until General Betrayus armed them by “losing” $190 million in U.S. weaponry, including 115,000 AK-47s. To this day, you never see pictures of the arms caches in Anbar - because all the weapons used to kill Americans were supplied by Americans.</p>

<p>Had Betrayus not armed Al-Qaeda, the surge would have been superfluous, and the ethnic cleansing would have been wholly unnecessary.</p>

<p>Would others have acted differently? Who knows? For all we know, Gore might have nuked Afghanistan.</p>

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<p>Most of the US deaths are not from arms fire but from explosives supplied by Iran. The last thing they want is fire fights with US soldiers.</p>

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<p>There are times for diplomacy and times for action. Right after 9/11 required decisive action. I think Gore would have hemmed and hawed and that could have had devastating effects. It could have emboldened the terrorists (this is, of course, all opinion and conjecture). At least GWB had them running to avoid being blown to bits. Please don’t confuse this with Iraq…two different things entirely.</p>

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<p>I say we blame the Serbian Duke for getting himself killed way back in 1914… it all went downhill from there ;)</p>

<p>If that doesn’t happen, we’re not in Iraq today :)</p>

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<p>I’m pretty sure this all started somewher back with Cain and Abel…lol</p>

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<p>“Most of the US deaths are not from arms fire but from explosives supplied by Iran. The last thing they want is fire fights with US soldiers.”</p>

<p>Wrong. The vast majority of ANBAR deaths were caused by AK-47 gunfire.</p>

<p>As for the explosives - on four occasions now, the U.S. military has said it will present evidence to reporters that arms are being supplied by Iran. In each and every case, they have cancelled the show.</p>

<p>Wonder what they are hiding?</p>

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<p>The death rate for soldiers in Iraq has been FAR less than in Vietnam. </p>

<p><a href=“http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=psc_working_papers[/url]”>http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=psc_working_papers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>But these are not helping.</p>

<p>[Pajamas</a> Media » How Iran Is Killing U.S. Troops in Iraq](<a href=“http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/how-iran-is-killing-us-troops-in-iraq/]Pajamas”>http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/how-iran-is-killing-us-troops-in-iraq/)</p>

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<p>This article relies heavily on statements by Douglas Feith who was determined through investigations to have ginned up the intelligence that led to the Iraq War. He was a long-time advocate of going to war with Iraq.</p>

<p>This is just more useless palaver and propaganda, meant to protect the reputations of people who lied to the American public to take this country to war under false pretenses. Whether as Mini does one wants to include Bil Clinton as part of the guilty parties doesn’t really matter to me. </p>

<p>What matters to me is that this is an effort to put lipstick on the “spent $2 trillion dollars to go to fight a war that was one of choice and cost hundreds of thousands of lives and really only succeeded in giving over Iraq much more solidly the Iranian sphere of influence” pig.</p>

<p>What shows that the war was not inevitable – aside from the obvious fact that it was a war of choice – is that there were none of the weapons of mass destruction that were so advertised in position by Hussein. It’s really that simple. And we didn’t need a war to get us to uncover that. This situation could have been handled much more adeptly and with threats of force and perhaps actual force without us occupying the country and trying to build a democratic govt. there.</p>