[baxtr]

I am old enough. Iraq is not perfect today but so much better than it was. Go talk to Iraqis and see for yourself.

It costs us some time, money and lives to get to this point. But Saddam (a tyrant who killed his own kind in masses with gas and started wars with neighbors) staying in power would have been way worse for the wider region.

[AlecSchueler]

I think the point being made is that there's wider fallout than just what's directly affected. If you go to Syria and ask Syrians how they feel about the affects on the wider region they might not so readily agree. Or even ask Iraqis in the border region who lived through ISIS rule.

[baxtr]

I got the point.

I’m challenging the causal chain. I don’t think anyone would agree that the crusades in the Middle Ages caused the current state of the Middle East.

There is no way you can prove one or the other side. We can’t do controlled experiments with other worlds.

So it’s all guesswork. That’s why I’m challenging. I think that things are much less causally connected as people want to believe.

[bonsai_spool]

> I don’t think anyone would agree that the crusades in the Middle Ages caused the current state of the Middle East.

I think the Crusades have not yet ended…

And it is not clear that fewer people died following the US interventions than would have had Iraq been left to its own.

[padjo]

Hegseth certainly doesn't given his book title

[627467]

Why go back 100s of years for explanations when 2003 is just over 20 years ago?

[baxtr]

You see that’s exactly my point.

If you can go back 20 years, you can do that 5 times and end up at 100.

[inglor_cz]

Iraqi path to democracy isn't really that different from everyone else's.

People tend to forget that various extant democracies, including European ones, mostly didn't precipitate out of thin air by everyone deciding to just be nice to one another. Many now-democratic countries had to fight a war of independence or a civil war, often with involvement of third parties, to get there.

France took about 80 years of violent upheavals from 1789 to 1871 to actually become a democratic republic for good. Germany was even worse. Unification of Italy was a long bloody mess. Poland barely survived the 20th century. Even Swiss direct democracy is an aftermath of a civil war, though in their case, it was a small one.

Democracy isn't an application that people just install and it starts working. It usually takes decades for it to take roots, as people have to slowly abandon the idea that it is just easier to massacre their opponents.

Even the US came to be after a war of independence with a major external factor on their side (the French) and only ended slavery through a nasty civil war.

Iraq isn't really an outlier in that context and Iran wouldn't probably be either.

[baxtr]

Exactly this.

But then people look at it after 5 years and say: but it didn’t work!!!

Not acknowledging that all things ever achieved in life by humans were achieved over time by constant trial and error and not giving up.

[regularization]

> a tyrant who killed his own kind in masses with gas and started wars with neighbors

The US sent Saddam the Bell helicopters to gas the Kurds. US military aid increased after that happened.

The war with a neighbor was with Iran - the country the US just attacked, and which the US encouraged Iraq to fight. That's why Rumsfwld was over there shaking Saddam's hand.

[seydor]

So what about libya, syria, yemen, afghanistan, even venezuela

plus you can't know how Iraq would be today without the invasions

[tylerflick]

Iraq was ruled by a sociopath that used chemical weapons against his own citizens. I didn’t agree with the invasion, but there is no doubt Iraq is better off today than it would have been without U.S. involvement.

[padjo]

That's an absurd statement. No doubt? Saddam would be pushing 90 now, odds are he would be dead anyway and who knows how that chain of events would have gone.

[righthand]

And you frequently fly over to Iraq and explain that to the people there right? They nod in agreement with you. “We had to bomb and occupy your country and kill your citizens just like Saddam did remember? Now you’re better off after our failed occupation left your country. We’ll bomb you anytime; sure it costs us money is and the reason neither of our countries have healthcare but who needs healthcare when you have bombs and propaganda. You’re welcome.”

[pydry]

I went there and asked people about it. It was pretty clear they felt theyd gone through hell.

They were also complaining bitterly about things that got worse thanks to there being a war like corruption and a lack of jobs.

I have no idea who OP talked to nor why they thought the war was so great but it matched nothing of what I saw.

[righthand]

Isn’t it a bit wild you had to confirm with Iraqis that war was bad for their country?

[pydry]

shrug i developed a hobby of visiting countries that are in the news a lot and meeting the locals and talking about their day to day lives. Iraq, Israel/Palestine, North Korea, Venezuela, Saudi, Russia, etc.

I didnt exactly ask Iraqis that question directly and war certainly wasnt the only bad thing in their lives. e.g. a lot of guys would moan that they want to get married but "cant afford it".

but anyways OP's comment set my bullshit-o-meter spinning so fast i got vertigo.

[FeloniousHam]

I agree. The military component was a resounding success. The "de-Baathification" was a disaster and gets lumped into the decapitation of Sadaam's regime.

We'll never know the counterfactual, but it seems likely that the banning from public life everyone with ties to the current government was a large contributor to the collapse of the country and rise of the terrorist groups.

[righthand]

Always convenient to drop bombs and say “it would have been worse”. With absolutely no proof of that. It’s the stupidest American talking point and I despise other Americans who use that propaganda.

[golden-face]

It's not guaranteed to be the same outcome in Iran, we're just rolling the dice again and hoping it is.

[beloch]

Iraq is a fantastic lesson to heed today.

In the first gulf war, Bush Sr. refused to occupy the country. He viewed it as too difficult and too expensive. In the second gulf war, Bush Jr. declared victory from the deck of an aircraft carrier, occupied the country, hunted and executed its leader, and then opened the U.S. treasury to deal with the aftermath. Thousands of Americans died. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's died. The occupation was long and difficult, but its end was still premature and left a power vacuum that ISIS raged into, causing even more destruction. Perhaps Iraqi's can say they're better off today than under Hussein, but a terrible cost was paid. Most of the blood was Iraqi, but most of the treasure was American.

The financial drain on the U.S. was extreme enough to expose the world's preeminent superpower as being unable to bring the occupation of a somewhat backwards and minor dictatorship to a successful conclusion. Iraq is not a big country, in either population or area, but it was still too much for the U.S. to control, even with willing allies. This failure made the world realize there were severe limits to what the U.S. can do. Sure, it might defeat the military of a middle or even major power, but occupy and control it? Fat chance!

In the days ahead, the U.S. military is going to bomb anything that moves and looks like it might shoot back, as well as a lot of infrastructure and probably a decent number of civilian targets by mistake (or design). Trump has framed this invasion as being directed towards eliminating Iran's nuclear program, so expect a lot of facilities in close proximity to civilians (and many of those civilians) to be vaporized.

If Trump is listening to his generals even slightly, he will not try to occupy the country. He'll declare victory and move on to whatever outrage is next to maintain his "Flood the zone" strategy and keep the Epstein heat from finally catching up with him. If that's all he does, this will be another war like Bush Sr.'s. Expensive, but not ruinously so. U.S. deaths will be in the hundreds and not the thousands. Iran will most likely fall into the hands of another mullah or descend into chaos, becoming a long-term security quagmire that will probably continue to bleed the U.S. for decades to come. Even if democracy does take root in Iran, it likely won't be a democracy that's friendly to the U.S..

If Trump isn't listening to his generals (who reportedly advised against the invasion to begin with), he might try to occupy Iran. Iran has double the population and four times the land area as Iraq. Unlike Bush Jr., Trump has not even tried to stitch together a coalition to share the costs. It's unlikely that many countries would be dumb enough to sign on now. There's no NATO article 5 pretext to drag in other NATO countries. There isn't even a falsified pretext like WMD's to quiet the howling in the UN. Israel isn't the kind of help the U.S. needs because the U.S. pays most of Israel's military bills to begin with. In short, if Iraq strained the U.S.'s finances close to the breaking point, Iran will ruin them completely. There's absolutely no way the U.S. can afford to occupy Iran.

Even if Trump cuts and runs, this war will ensure American's can't afford socialized medicine for another generation.

[pydry]

>There isn't even a falsified pretext like WMD's to quiet the howling in the UN.

30,000 dead protestors.

The source for both was "the state department bribed a guy in the Iraqi/Iranian government and you'll NEVER guess what he told us...."

[steve-atx-7600]

W didn’t remember Vietnam because he didn’t go and probably never studied history

[bonsai_spool]

> There isn't even a falsified pretext like WMD's

I don’t think anyone believes it, but I’ve heard media reports that ‘unnamed officials’ thought the regime was weeks away from a nuclear weapon.

I think an Article 5 invocation would be a cynical way to destroy NATO with some deniability

[nerdyadventurer]

So only US selected few countries can have nukes, what about France, UK, India etc?

[adrian_b]

Not a long time ago, the previous time when USA had bombed Iran, Trump claimed to have destroyed completely anything that Iran could use to make nuclear weapons.

It would be weird (or not?) to contradict himself now by claiming that they were able to make nuclear weapons.

[bonsai_spool]

I avoid listening to the current POTUS as it’s hard to make sense of his illogic, but his video said, “ they attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas and could soon reach the American homeland.”

But this is supposedly false per reports.