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Ten years ago today, the US invaded Iraq. We're mostly gone, can we say mission accomplished? The majority of Americans (around 70%) supported the decision to go to war at the time. I'm sure many posters here are among them. How'd you feel? If you were a supporter, what made you change your mind? As for myself, among other reasons, I was in favor of the war because it could make good television. There were other reasons, but I can't remember them anymore*. Edmund Burke said, "A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood." Wonder if our leaders followed that idea.
*Ah remember one. We need to fight them there so we don't fight them here. Since we haven't had a successful terrorist attack since the Iraq War, that worked out well. Though, more Americans died in Iraq than September 11, but perhaps the next terrorist would have been bigger.
yeah, the reason we haven't had a succesful attack since 9/11 had something to do with IRAQ? Seriously?
Your smoking some pretty legal weed there
I don't remember being that opposed to it at the time, but I didn't think it was a good idea. It didn't take me long to be a full bush hater though (after voting for him on round 1).
“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.” –George Orwell, New Statesmen (1937)
I don't think that's true. That's only one reason it can happen. It also happens for ideological reasons and for treaty reasons. WWI only became "world war" because various treaties caused what would otherwise have been a local conflict to go multinational. The moneyed classes were obligated to go to war regardless of profit. NATO and the Warsaw Pact were similar multinational defense treaties. Germany and America only declared war on each other in WW2 after Pearl Harbor. Germany only declared war on America to support Japan. Then the wars in Korea and Vietnam were ideological wars. There were no industries or resources that prompted those wars. And in the Civil War, seccession was prompted by the moneyed class in the South - but they intended to leave peacefully. It only became war because of ideology. The actual attack on Fort Sumter that caused the war after the South told the garrison there to leave and the commander of the fort refused.
Obviously any war has money involved. Somebody somewhere owns a factory or sells goods in a particular market or has natural resources that will be affected. But to say that war "only" happens because of these things is incorrect. War always affects big money, but big money doesn't always precipitate war. Orwell was a smart man, but I don't agree with him on that quote.
We didn't have to wait 10 years for this reflection. We had the answer in 2004 and this is the NYT editorial then:
Quote:
New York Times Editorial
October 7, 2004
The Verdict Is In
Sanctions worked. Weapons inspectors worked. That is the bottom line of the long-awaited report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, written by President Bush's handpicked investigator.
In the 18 months since President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, justifying the decision by saying that Saddam Hussein was "a gathering threat" to the United States, Americans have come to realize that Iraq had no chemical, nuclear or biological weapons. But the report issued yesterday goes further. It says that Iraq had no factories to produce illicit weapons and that its ability to resume production was growing more feeble every year. While Mr. Hussein retained dreams of someday getting back into the chemical warfare business, his chosen target was Iran, not the United States.
The report shows that the international sanctions that Mr. Bush dismissed and demeaned before the war - and still does - were astonishingly effective. Mr. Hussein hoped to get out from under the sanctions, and the report's author, Charles Duelfer, loyally told Congress yesterday that he thought that could have happened. But his report said the Iraqis lacked even a formal strategy or a plan to reconstitute their weapons programs if it did.
For months, administration officials have tried to deflect charges that they invaded Iraq under false pretenses and have urged critics to wait for Mr. Duelfer's verdict on the weapons search. The authoritative findings of his Iraq Survey Group have now left the administration's rationale for war more tattered than ever. It turns out that Iraq destroyed all stockpiles of illicit weapons more than a decade ago and had no large-scale production facilities left after 1996, seven years before the invasion. This was a matter of choice by Saddam Hussein, who desperately wanted an end to sanctions and feared that any weapons programs, if discovered by inspectors, would only keep them in place.
Even after U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998, a period when Western intelligence experts assumed the worst might be happening, the Hussein regime made no active efforts to produce new weapons of mass destruction. The much-feared nuclear threat - that looming mushroom cloud conjured by the administration to stampede Congress into authorizing an invasion - was a phantom. Mr. Duelfer found that even if Iraq had tried to restart its defunct nuclear program in 2003, it would have needed years to produce a nuclear weapon.
Since any objective observer should by now have digested the idea that Iraq posed no imminent threat to anyone, let alone the United States, it was disturbing to hear President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney continue to try to justify the invasion this week on the grounds that after Sept. 11, 2001, Iraq was clearly the most likely place for terrorists to get illicit weapons. Even if Mr. Hussein had wanted to arm groups he could not control - a very dubious notion- he had nothing to give them. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/op...er=rssuserland
Ten years ago today, the US invaded Iraq. We're mostly gone, can we say mission accomplished? The majority of Americans (around 70%) supported the decision to go to war at the time. I'm sure many posters here are among them. How'd you feel? If you were a supporter, what made you change your mind? As for myself, among other reasons, I was in favor of the war because it could make good television. There were other reasons, but I can't remember them anymore*. Edmund Burke said, "A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood." Wonder if our leaders followed that idea.
*Ah remember one. We need to fight them there so we don't fight them here. Since we haven't had a successful terrorist attack since the Iraq War, that worked out well. Though, more Americans died in Iraq than September 11, but perhaps the next terrorist would have been bigger.
I was NEVER for it, but regrettably I did not participate in the protests against the War because I never thought that it would last as long as it has.
I thought it was a snow job. The lead up to it was pretty classic war mongering. Cheney's mushroom cloud crap,etc. The fact that Bush launched another tax cut in May of 2003 was evidence enough for to conclude he had no common sense or fundamental sense of responsibility.
I have seen no evidence since then to change my mind.
Here's the thing. Saddam Hussein was no idiot, or a terrorist. He was a mafia boss. He would NEVER have attacked the USA. He knew full well we could and would destroy him and ruin his racket. No, he wanted to oppress and terrorize his people, shake his fist at us occasionally for bravado points, and keep his syndicate going. Even I could figure that one out. To claim that the central government could not is absurd. They knew, and they lied.
It was just empty talk, none of the Democrats had the guts to do anything about it. It took Bush to take a risk and then most of the Dems followed like sheep.
Yes, it took Bush to take the risk........and to put the lives of other parents' children in danger.
I have often wondered if he would have been as willing to take that "risk" if his daughters' lives were being put in jeopardy........all simply based on taking a "risk."
Ten years ago today, the US invaded Iraq. We're mostly gone, can we say mission accomplished? The majority of Americans (around 70%) supported the decision to go to war at the time. I'm sure many posters here are among them. How'd you feel?
War mongering with Iraq was old news to me, when it was first proposed. I expected a Gulf War redux months before 9/11 came about (much less used as an excuse to have the troops march in). I hated war mongering against Iraq, and I was among the 30%. My take on the subject, has not changed in 12+ years.
A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran
"I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage."
The worst of all this is that the GOP war mongers refuse to learn anything from the experience. They are juicing up to invade Iran now. As if that will be another cake walk.
I didn't like it then, and I still don't like it.
I feel the same way about the "war" in Afghanistan.
We have no business being there, the whole dam country isn't worth one American life!
Obama said he would get us OUT of there! So far, that has been a LIE!
There should not be one single U.S. soldier, sailor, marine, or airman over there, and whatever equipment or buildings we can't bring home should be destroyed.
GET US OUT OF THERE! NOW!! COMPLETELY OUT!!
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This deserves a bump
