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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (788872)	6/10/2014 1:59:29 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576376

>> WHAT did we accomplish? >> Yeah, we got rid of Saddam, but Saddam didn't like terrorists and he at least kept them at bay. There are a couple of things here. First, the question was "whether we did the right thing." That decision was made at the time the "thing" began with the information that was available at that time. While there are plenty of Monday-morning quarterbacks, these are people who had the luxury of changing the strategy after it turned nasty. Saddam needed to go. He was a totally destabilizing force in the region, and he had to be dealt with. The WMD issue was solely one of convenience; the president had been told by the CIA it was a "slam dunk" and who could argue against it? And of course, his political opposition didn't -- they had the same information and made the same decision based on it. But there were plenty of other reasons that could have, and in retrospect should have, been given. Most notably the oil, which taken alone, created a sufficient national security interest to warrant our removing him. You, I suppose, forget the Iran/Iraq War and the attempted takeover of Kuwait. We were going to have to maintain a substantial military presence in the region from now on to protect the oil -- both in Iraq and elsewhere. And the possibility of giving those people freedom and the positive effect it would have had on the region can't be discounted. That the current president fucked it all up is neither here nor there; Bush couldn't have reasonably anticipated someone like Obama would have been elected to follow him (you would think at least someone of H. Clinton's competence would have been elected). >> Now, we'll have another dictator in Iraq, I don't know what will happen in Iraq over the coming 20 or 30 years, which is the relevant period of time. I do know that the so-called "Arab Spring" SHOULD have been a positive, and Obama turned it into an absolute mess. Iranians were ready to move toward a sensible government and Obama blew that opportunity (twice). Same with Libya, Egypt and Syria. A competent president could have made something of those opportunities that were created by Bush and the Iraq War. And in fact, no cogent argument can be made against the Iraq War, other than, as wars do, it got messy. But Bush left it in a stable situation, which would have worked well to our advantage had it not been totally screwed up by his successor. I don't know what the history will be when I am dead and gone, but my guess is that Middle East will develop as a result of the so-called Freedom Agenda. 50 years from now, the history will be written by real historians and not the fake historian Douglas Brinkley--Doris Kearns Goodwin crowd. >> Now the Sunnis of Iraq have become a breeding ground for terrorists. We've heard these predictions since 2005, perhaps earlier. And it just hasn't happened. It is the job of our president to make certain that doesn't happen. Obviously, this one doesn't have a clue, but we will not always have the worst president in history. For now, the terrorism in Iraq is essentially local in nature.