... back in 2003 that we would be in Iraq for at least 15 years. I remember Cheney and Wolfie and Rummey and Willie "The Bloody" Kristol and the rest of the preposterous, warmongering blowhards at AEI and Heritage telling us we would be greeted as liberators, the fighting would dissipate quickly, it would pay for itself and we would be out of there within months.
Ah... the heady days of 2003, shock and awe, WMD, mushroom clouds, Iraqi links to Al Qaeda, freedom on the march, mission accomplished, all sweet memories.
How seriously has this country been misled by the 'serious' men in and out of this administration, those starry eyed, rosie cheeked arbiters of American patriotism and American exceptionalism, I would say very, very seriously.
"President Bush has never given a date for a military withdrawal from Iraq but has repeatedly said that American forces would stand down as Iraqi forces stand up. Given Mr. Qadir’s assessment of Iraq’s military capabilities on Monday, such a withdrawal appeared to be quite distant, and further away than any American officials have previously stated in public."
NYT - January 15, 2008
But don't worry folks, the surge is working, everything will be fine, freedom and democracy can get a little messy but we're in the home stretch, just 10 more years to go and this whole Iraqi fiasco will be worth it. We'll look back on these days and laugh, phew! That was close for a minute there huh?
Ask yourself, how many trillions of dollars will we have poured into Iraq by then, how many more of our finest and bravest will have died or been brutally injured and how different will the middle east look in another ten years?
I for one can't get my head around the enormity of ten more years of this crap.
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2 comments:
We're still in Germany, We're still in Japan, we're still in Korea. We're still in Kosovo. As long as we don't lose, we stick around.
I think that there was a chance that it could have gone as easily as some predicted. Initially, we were greeted as liberators in many places. There were others who predicted 50,000 casualties taking Baghdad. They turned out to be wrong, too. Probably best not to make predictions about the future, eh?
This could have gone better, and it could have gone considerably worse. Everything gets harder when there's people shooting at you. There really was no pre-existing blueprint on how to do this, unless you want to use twice as many troops as we had to do the job. The good news is, next time it should go much better. And there will be a next time.
We were stuck with a quandary in Iraq. We were essentially presiding over Saddam's house arrest, yet he was still in power, still amassing billions from oil-for-food, still funding and harboring terrorists, including Al Qaeda, still retaining the ability to re-start his WMD programs within a very short time. Dude, we've already been in Iraq for seventeen years. The question is, how do we want to leave it? With a murderous lunatic in power, to be succeeded by his even more murderous sons? Or as a democracy which could point the way for lasting reform in the region?
Despite the long litany of mistakes and failures which guys like you trot out at every opportunity, the fact is that compared to jsut about any other conflict of a similar magnitude, this one has gone well. You want to compare this with WWII? Korea? Vietnam? We had single days with more casualties than this whole war.
It seems to me that the security of the whole world would be enhanced if nut-jobs like Kim Jong Il, or the mullahs in Iran understood that they too can be removed, or better yet, if they were removed.
Are we 'occupying' Germany, Japan, Korea or Kosovo, I'll answer for you... no!
One does not go to war on the 'chance' that it 'might' go well and if that indeed was the premise then this entire administration should be locked up. Plus, a mealy mouthed admission that 'this could have gone better' is really beyond the pale.
Finally, for the umpteenth time, Saddam Hussein was not harboring Al Qaeda terrorists, this Cheney inspired conflation, along with the WMD, mushroom clouds, mobile labs and meetings in Prague, has been debunked on numerous occassions and only diehard, dead-enders still cling to this implauseable and frankly fantastical notion.
It seems to me that the safety of the world will be much improved once Bush and his bumbling minions are removed from office.
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