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Has Iraq made us weaker?
It's really a dumb question. Of course the Iraq War has made us weaker, and what a shame. I realize there will always be a delusional few out there who like to insist the Iraq War has made us stronger (and safer). I'm sure our President would be one of them. But who cares what he thinks. He's been a font of bullshit since day one.
One needs only to look at the Iran situation to separate fact from fiction. Our invasion of Iraq has empowered and emboldened Iran, and had much to do with the election of their extremist president, who I doubt would have won the election if we were not occupying Iraq. Even supporters of the war agree that our occupation of Iraq has stirred up anger and resentment in the Islamic world.
It's tempting to say "Who cares if they don't like us?" But that misses the point. Iran is now going after a nuclear weapon and we are much less able to do anything about it than we were before the war. We certainly do not have the strength to threaten them militarily. Our troops are already overcommitted, if not exhausted. As a former Marine, that pisses me off!
The real payoff of our idiotic invasion of Iraq is very likely to be a nuclear weapon in the hands of Muslim extremists and for this I would have to give part of the credit to our embarrassing excuse for a president who, only four weeks ago, stated again that he would do it all over "even knowing what he knows now." The nerve of him! And people accept this? That to me is unbelievable. Then again, over half the electorate believes in Noah's ark (ignoring inconvenienbt facts like the 220,000 species of beetles that exist on our planet), so what should we expect?
I'm fully aware of the upside of a "free and democratic Iraq" -- as well as the downside of an Islamic republic aligned with Iran, the incredibly huge cost in treasure and reputation, a Sunni (not Al Qaeda) insurgency that is far from over, and the tens of thousands of deaths and ruined lives, both civilian Iraqi and American, this unncessary "war of choice" has caused.
Again, I remind our president and his supporters of two facts: 1) We did not go to war for purpose of "freeing the people of Iraq." And 2) so-called "terrorism" was Saddam's enemy as much as ours. There was no terrorism whatsoever in Iraq until we arrived.
One needs only to look at the Iran situation to separate fact from fiction. Our invasion of Iraq has empowered and emboldened Iran, and had much to do with the election of their extremist president, who I doubt would have won the election if we were not occupying Iraq. Even supporters of the war agree that our occupation of Iraq has stirred up anger and resentment in the Islamic world.
It's tempting to say "Who cares if they don't like us?" But that misses the point. Iran is now going after a nuclear weapon and we are much less able to do anything about it than we were before the war. We certainly do not have the strength to threaten them militarily. Our troops are already overcommitted, if not exhausted. As a former Marine, that pisses me off!
The real payoff of our idiotic invasion of Iraq is very likely to be a nuclear weapon in the hands of Muslim extremists and for this I would have to give part of the credit to our embarrassing excuse for a president who, only four weeks ago, stated again that he would do it all over "even knowing what he knows now." The nerve of him! And people accept this? That to me is unbelievable. Then again, over half the electorate believes in Noah's ark (ignoring inconvenienbt facts like the 220,000 species of beetles that exist on our planet), so what should we expect?
I'm fully aware of the upside of a "free and democratic Iraq" -- as well as the downside of an Islamic republic aligned with Iran, the incredibly huge cost in treasure and reputation, a Sunni (not Al Qaeda) insurgency that is far from over, and the tens of thousands of deaths and ruined lives, both civilian Iraqi and American, this unncessary "war of choice" has caused.
Again, I remind our president and his supporters of two facts: 1) We did not go to war for purpose of "freeing the people of Iraq." And 2) so-called "terrorism" was Saddam's enemy as much as ours. There was no terrorism whatsoever in Iraq until we arrived.
posted by Jim Fleming | 3:25 PM
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