Sum Ting Wong

And yet, Iraq was as much as "won" as evidenced by Obama's recognition of the fact. Now the fact is Obama threw away an American victory to appease his wanker base.
I am not saying Obama got us into Iraq, I am saying he screwed up the hard fought victory. Whether you agree with the original decision to go in is irrelevant.

jungle

We would all do well to remember that one man was not responsible for the entry or exit.

There was a lot of bad judgement involved from a lot of people for a long time.
Where was the good judgement in the last 60 years? What was the prize?
Who won? Is it possible there were no winners?

Sum Ting Wong

[QUOTE=RomeoJulietLima;1670446]Exactly, my question! This thought is for everyone. Okay so we have WWI, then WWII onto Korea, Vietnam,,Mideast wars. Where does it end?

Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I/II, Afghanistan...all have been fought to a conclusion, not fought to victory. And we aren't the better for it. And what's worse, the American people are have no stomach for pointless war, which is all we have done for 60 years.

One thing is certain, unilateral declarations of wars end is infantile, delusional and symptomatic of American political solipsism.

ShyGuy

There was never any "victory" in Iraq.

Sum Ting Wong

The fact is that we did go to war (as a country, with bipartisan congressional and international approval). And we "won" the war - we achieved our tactical and strategic objectives. When it was politically expedient, the left shamefully turned on our troops and our commanders, including our Commander in Chief. The final act of their betrayal was Obama's failure to negotiate an agreement with the Iraqi government to keep a U.S. presence in the country that would likely have allowed us to better control the situation on the ground and protect our hard fought victory (and defend an important ally). Obama's and the left's intentional abandonment of Iraq has eroded all that those who fought and died for.

We can't change the past but neither should anyone be allowed to rewrite history. Whether you agreed with the war in the first place or not, many good Americans died to achieve the victory that Obama has more than given away - he has allowed a far worse situation to metastasize. Remember his mealy-mouthed, feckless and shameful betrayal of our troops and their sacrifices when (yes, when) another 9/11 style attack is planned and launched from the new terrorist safe-haven that is Iraq.

ShyGuy

Victory by achieving tactical and strategic objectives? What might that be? There was no al-Qaeda running in Iraq because Saddam kept them out to keep his power. We overthrew a Sunni majority and installed a Shiite power through "democratic" elections. There is no successful end to this. At some point, the US would have had to pull out. Didn't Obama want to keep troops in Iraq in small numbers but Maliki refused to provide immunity to the US soldiers from Iraqi law? In any case whether last year or 5 years from now, once US soldiers were gone Iraq was going towards a civil war.

Sum Ting Wong

AQ not "running" Iraq? I'd say that you're correct. But Saddam Hussein had plenty of ties to all sorts of terrorist groups, including radical Islamist jihadis. The Pentagon announced back in 2008 that an investigation into over 600,000 documents captured at the end of the invasion of Iraq showed operational links to al-Qaeda affiliated groups.

Here are excerpts from that report:

Take a look at (Extract 25) "The Army of Muhammad is working with Osama bin Laden. … “this organization is an offshoot of bin Laden, but that their objectives are similar but with different names that can be a way of camouflaging the organization.”

On pages 34-35 of the report, we find communications between their Bahrain agent and IIS (Iraqi Intelligence Service) headquarters the Iraqis list their aims as attacking Jewish and American interests anywhere in the world, attacking American embassies, disrupting American oil supplies and tankers, and attacking the American military bases in the Middle East. A later memorandum from the same collection to the Director of the IIS reports that the Army of Muhammad is endeavoring to receive assistance [from Iraq] to implement its objectives, and that the local IIS station has been told to deal with them in accordance with priorities previously established.

The Iraqi support for AoM may not be an operational link, but it’s certainly a financial link that goes right to Osama bin Laden.


The most recent military conflict during which the Left rooted for an American victory was World War II. In every fight since that time, the American Left has mischaracterized US involvement as being avaricious, acquisitive, imperialistic, or genocidal. During recent wars, the Left have augmented their practice of impugning American motives by also maligning American troops, who have been smeared as being thieves, rapists, torturers, and baby killers.

And those are just the slurs issued by our current secretary of state.


ShyGuy, you simply do not know what you are talking about.

http://a.abcnews.com/images/pdf/Pentagon_Report_V1.pdf

ShyGuy

What is/was better:

Iraq under Saddam Hussein as in 2003

Iraq today with ISIS takeover in 2014

You are trying to justify the War in Iraq and it isn't working. No one is buying it. Saddam's links seem to have been benign with no operational input and certainly nothing to do with 9/11. Sure there are excerpts but give it time and even Maliki will make the same links/connections.

jungle

We might conclude that setting up a puppet government in Iraq, Vietnam,Iran, or Afghanistan might not lead to the desired outcome.

GogglesPisano

Yes. There's a lot to be said for minding our own ****ing business.