George Will says W 2003 decision is worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history

[deltex1]

The chance of disarming Hussein without war is equal to our chance to de-nuke iran without war.

 

[The Rabbi]

BB 10165493

The libs here simply cannot believe we won the Iraq War. No matter how many times I point out we achieved every objective set in the Congressional Resolution the answer is always "Ya-butt".

There is no "Ya" "yes" or "yeah" in my rebuttal to your fooled-by-Bush delusions. Military force against Iraq was authorized in the October 2002 AUMF for only two reasons. Both were required.It was not one or the other.

One was IF it became necessary to protect the national security of the USA. The second was IF it was necessary to enforce relevant UNSC resolutions with regard to Iraq. One month after the AUMF was passed and at Bush's request, the UNSC unanimously passed Resolution 1441. That resolution gave Saddam Hussein a final opportunity to comply with all the resolutions filed against his regime over the years.

So Bush did not achieve the one critical AUMF objective to enforce UNSC resolutions to disarm Iraq at all or from the start. In fact Bush defied UNSC 1441 and did the opposite of enforcing it. So how was it that the AUMF objective was achieved when the objective was to disarm Iraq without war if possible. But Bush started a war after telling the UN inspectors to leave.

You can't build a case based on the AUMF. Trying to do that is absurd.

Look at the Congressional Resolution authorizing action. It lays out objectives. We achieved every one of them. Case closed.

 

[gipper]

Why do Americans allow the POTUS and the elites to take the nation to war based on lies over and over again? Have they not learned war is the health of the STATE???

 

[deltex1]

Maybe it begins with the lies they tell to get their jobs in the first place.

 

[Redfish]

Will has never understood Iraq....that's okay, he doesn't know much about baseball either. ABC threw him out because he's like Peggy Noonan wearing a bow tie...self-absorbed and boring. Few leftists will ever get over Iraq which is weird because none of them had the guts to go there, right or wrong. Same as our era dirtbags...they wanted Vietnam lost to prove everybody else wrong. It's what they were taught by fellow travelers in the public schools....if we ever intend this Nation to be anything but a sodomite sewer again, the schools must be closed, boarded up, every teacher and admin fired...have a national debate about what we want future children taught and by whom before those schools reopen the doors.

we are of the same generation, 58,000 americans died in viet nam for NOTHING. When will we learn that lesson?

 

[JakeStarkey]

George Will, one of the few American intellectual who can honestly opine, had be wary of Iraq from the beginning. So had Dick Armey and others who thought it was a terrible mistake.

 

[BullKurtz]

Will has never understood Iraq....that's okay, he doesn't know much about baseball either. ABC threw him out because he's like Peggy Noonan wearing a bow tie...self-absorbed and boring. Few leftists will ever get over Iraq which is weird because none of them had the guts to go there, right or wrong. Same as our era dirtbags...they wanted Vietnam lost to prove everybody else wrong. It's what they were taught by fellow travelers in the public schools....if we ever intend this Nation to be anything but a sodomite sewer again, the schools must be closed, boarded up, every teacher and admin fired...have a national debate about what we want future children taught and by whom before those schools reopen the doors.

we are of the same generation, 58,000 americans died in viet nam for NOTHING. When will we learn that lesson?

For nothing? If you're a Viet Vet I feel sorry for you for saying that. If not, STFU. What could have been accomplished will never be known because we weren't allowed to chase Nathan home after Tet when we could have. I believe Thailand was saved. I believe the dominoes stopped falling thanks to us....I believe we learned that conscripting citizens wouldn't work anymore. I believe we got better at fighting asymmetrical warfare there from what we first learned fighting the japs in the Pacific. I believe we set the stage for the chinese and Viets to hate each other's guts for another century. I believe we groomed an officer corps that went on to win Desert Storm while the russians wathced their client state disassembled without a peep out of them. I believe that our time there influenced the Viets toward our culture...they're great gamblers and love to have their own businesses, Maybe we did win the Vietnam War.....like everything in the orient....things sometimes take a couple generations to stick.

 

[JakeStarkey]

The dominos kept falling for a time. The lives of friend and foe were wasted. Those who defend the Indochina idiocy rank right there with the neo-imperialists who still want us in Iraq. BullKurtzUSMC lives in a world of his own.

 

[deltex1]

Will has never understood Iraq....that's okay, he doesn't know much about baseball either. ABC threw him out because he's like Peggy Noonan wearing a bow tie...self-absorbed and boring. Few leftists will ever get over Iraq which is weird because none of them had the guts to go there, right or wrong. Same as our era dirtbags...they wanted Vietnam lost to prove everybody else wrong. It's what they were taught by fellow travelers in the public schools....if we ever intend this Nation to be anything but a sodomite sewer again, the schools must be closed, boarded up, every teacher and admin fired...have a national debate about what we want future children taught and by whom before those schools reopen the doors.

we are of the same generation, 58,000 americans died in viet nam for NOTHING. When will we learn that lesson?

For nothing? If you're a Viet Vet I feel sorry for you for saying that. If not, STFU. What could have been accomplished will never be known because we weren't allowed to chase Nathan home after Tet when we could have. I believe Thailand was saved. I believe the dominoes stopped falling thanks to us....I believe we learned that conscripting citizens wouldn't work anymore. I believe we got better at fighting asymmetrical warfare there from what we first learned fighting the japs in the Pacific. I believe we set the stage for the chinese and Viets to hate each other's guts for another century. I believe we groomed an officer corps that went on to win Desert Storm while the russians wathced their client state disassembled without a peep out of them. I believe that our time there influenced the Viets toward our culture...they're great gamblers and love to have their own businesses, Maybe we did win the Vietnam War.....like everything in the orient....things sometimes take a couple generations to stick.

Great post!

 

[deltex1]

The dominos kept falling for a time. The lives of friend and foe were wasted. Those who defend the Indochina idiocy rank right there with the neo-imperialists who still want us in Iraq. BullKurtzUSMC lives in a world of his own.

A world without weak kneed fags sech as yersef.

 

[ninja007]

well, its looks like GWB won't be re-elected.

 

[ninja007]

Obamas watch on Afghanistan isn't pretty.

 

[ninja007]

Certainly a terrible decision, but I can think of a half dozen that must rank as much worse.

What are your top six and how do you rank them and Iraq March 2003.

Remember that the decision by Bush to invade Iraq sometime between March 10 2003 and the 17th was to start a conflict leading to US involvement in a major and decade long war that was not remotely necessary at the time of decision. There was a very powerful peaceful and diplomatic means clearly available to Bush that he chose to ignore and overrule. The invasion of Iraq was a war of US aggression that lacked having the weakest justification in terms of a threat to the regions security or our security. Bush's decision has to be viewed in terms of the actual lack if threat and terrorist alliance that Iraq posed at the time of the invasion.

so all those libs were wrong then, uh? Kerry, Clinton,Dean etc..?

 

[Mustang]

Didn't most conservatives at one time mercilessly mock anyone (and everyone) who expressed serious reservations about the wisdom of invading Iraq? And didn't they also seriously question the patriotism of the people who thought the invasion was a really bad idea which didn't even have a good enough reason to justify it in the first place?

 

[NotfooledbyW]

Look at the Congressional Resolution authorizing action. It lays out objectives. We achieved every one of them.

I listed the only two objectives from the Iraq AUMF. If you think there are others, you need to list them so I can explain to you why you are wrong.

The invasion surely did not achieve peace or security in the region. It certainly did not bring less bloodshed within Iraq's borders by the end of 2008 than was occurring in 2003 just before the invasion.

You continue to be confused and in denial that the level of violence in Iraq (by the start of Obama's presidency) was reduced from peak levels that were achieved in 2006. Claims of US victory that resolved Iraq's sectarian war by 2009 (based on lower levels of violence than the peak level of 2006) are false.

If the claim of victory by 2009 is that US troops would be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, that is much more honest.

The reality being ignored by the right is that Bush did not defeat enough of the terrorists that came into Iraq behind the US invasion or the local Sunnis that became terrorists after being deprived of their status when the Baathist regime went down. As Bush did in Afghanistan, Bush did not destroy those terrorist groups. He simply drove them outside of Iraq to fester and come back.

Your ideas about a Bush victory over the terrorist threat are highly exaggerated and 99% false.

 

[NotfooledbyW]

10168308

so all those libs were wron

No they were entirely correct in October and November 2002 and much of the world's leaders to support Bush going to the UN and getting 1441 passed because Saddam Hussein was in violation of international law. It was correct to confront SH on the threat that he posed. But in December the threat of Saddam with WMD began to fade away. By March 2003 the threat potential was reduced to non-existent.

That is when Bush decided to start the war. No one you mentioned decided that with him. Bush is alone in his error.

He was proud to be called the decider you should recall.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Bush is the prime operator for making Iraq happen.

The history books will always make that quite clear to the readers.

 

[Mac1958]

The last 11 years have been filled with hard learning. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history, coincided with mission creep (“nation building”) in Afghanistan.

George Will A Republican rethinking of foreign policy New Hampshire Columns

He ends this rebuke of Bush 43 with this "Obama is right that there is much to rethink."

The Obama haters on the USMB would be well advised to learn how to think.

Is Rand Paul really gong to replace McCain and Graham as the GOP's new face of foreign and military policy that veers closer to the isolationist policy of his father?

Many events (U.S. military misadventures since 2001, the Syrian civil war, the rise of the Islamic State, the spinning centrifuges of Iran’s nuclear weapons program) and one senator (Rand Paul) have reopened a Republican debate that essentially closed when Dwight Eisenhower won the 1952 Republican presidential nomination. One reason he sought it was to block Ohio’s Sen. Robert Taft..

This is more indication that it was not a failure or mistake to abide by the terms of the 2008 Bush Maliki SOFA when Obama presided over the end of the war that truly was the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history.

Agreed.

What fucking waste.

.

 

[LogikAndReazon]

The unfinished business in iraq still confuses witless progressives...

 

[JakeStarkey]

There has never been unfinished business in Iraq is the point that confuses the neo-imperialists.

The American people will not allow major American ground combat units to return to Iraq.