My Iraq post on another thread, FWIW:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Ms. Gilespie (sp?)
a Bush representative in 1990 - give Saddam the impression
that Kuwait was none of the US's affair - or business, which led them to miscalculate, and invade?
To me, everything we have done in Iraq since has been a mistake. You could argue that our continued occupation of Saudi Arabia, as a result of Gulf War I, provoked the terrorists, who saw us as occupying their holy land.
I think we should have stayed in Saudi after Iraq attacked
Kuwait, and prevented them from invading the Kingdom. Then, we would truly have been the good guys - and Bin Laden
and others probably would not have attacked us. I am
not excusing what they did - I'm saying it might have been
prevented if we had not been seen as occupying Saudi.
Now - we compound the mistake by occupying both Afghanistan and Iraq. How is this solving the problem? And how did Iraq become our problem (other than the fact that the Reagan admin. gave them arms and money to prop them up against Iran). Of course, if we had not overthrown the leader in Iran, in the 1950s, then they wouldn't have been
so mad at us either - get the picture?
The more we meddle there - the more it comes back on us - that's all I'm saying.
We were perfectly justified in going after the terrorists after 9/11. I only wish we had killed Bin Laden - but we
let him slip away into Pak.
Now, we don't want to upset Pak or Saudi, so we pick an
easy target - Iraq (or so we were told). They didn't attack
us. Almost no one in the world agreed with what we did - and still do not. It is not a coalition. It is 90% US, some British, and a handfull of others.
In the meantime, I don't think it is solving one thing. It will not prevent terrorists in surrounding countries from hating us. It will not prevent WMD development in the rest of the region.
It does make for wonderful recruiting of future Al-Qaeda
people - who will want to kill more of us.
I think it was not well designed, and they don't know how
to get out of it now. Now we are told - this is war - we
will have more days like this. Same faulty logic as Vietnam.
We were there - and thousands were killed - so we have to stay and finish it right? or what? We pulled out, Comms came
in - did the world collapse? No - just 55000 + American lives lost- and 2 million or so Vietnamese - and a whole
lot of resources wasted. |
