On this Memorial Day everybody says thanks to the veterans who served and sacrificed for us. It is not unusual for people who pass soldiers at airports to stop and say thanks for serving. Sometimes we even pick up a check for a military person at a restaurant. But I am thinking that to really honor the sacrifices of the military, we need to be sure that in the future, they are deployed for the right causes. Afghanistan yes, Iraq no for example.
Jeb Bush took several tries in answering the question of whether he would have gone to Iraq as his brother did. That is a question that should have been anticipated. Yet Bush took several tries before finally saying that he would not. In one "answer", he actually said that to ask the question was disrespecting those who served. I think sending them to Iraq under false pretenses was way more disrespectful. Maybe Jeb has really learn the lesson. But apparently Rubio and Walker have not. They are advocating more military action in the Middle East now and maybe boots on the ground. I think they also should be asked about Iraq. On the Democratic side, Clinton voted to authorize the Iraq war so she should be asked the question as well.
Monday, May 25, 2015
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I agree what you said about deploying for the right causes. You never want to send our troops in harms way for false reasons. I respect the military and those who serve. But to be honest, this is their job. They know what they are getting into when they sign up. I could never do it. It's a hard job and the benefits and support after service is poor. Sometimes I think we treat our military vets like second hand citizens. But like I said, they know what they are getting into when they sign up. The bad thing is, lives were probably lost due to going into places like Iraq for the wrong reasons.
ReplyDeleteYou and I agreed from the beginning that there was no reason to invade Iraq except for oil. I think we were both skeptical about the WMDs and all the "intelligence" that we were given. Do you think it was all made up? Do you think that GW Bush knew about it? If not, who duped the powers to be?
So, I don't fault anybody for thinking at the time, that we should go into Iraq. It's always easier in hindsight. So who knows what would have happened had we not gone to Iraq. Would ISIS still be operating? I don't know.
What I do know is that politicians will lie about Iraq anyway. So, it's amusing to me to see what they say now. I would rather have someone tell me that they were wrong because they were fed the wrong information than to tell me something else. So, I agree that the question should be asked. However, I don't have faith that we will get a truthful answer.
-LBOAYM
When we were going into Iraq some of my conservative friends asked me what I was thinking. I said that I was probably on the opposite side of them since I am against it. They all said that they had doubts about going into Iraq also. So even conservatives that I know had mixed feeling about the Iraq war. I told them even if Hussein had WMDs for sure, I still would not have attacked Iraq.
ReplyDeleteActually I thought there was a good chance that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. I mean they had them in the 1980s and they used them against Iran. We knew at that time and we condoned it because Iran was our enemy. The old saying: the enemy of my enemy is my friend, applies here. So they also had these weapons probably before the first Gulf War. They did not use them at that time because if they did, the first Bush would have gone into Baghdad and killed Hussein. So why is he a threat after 9/11? Hussein was a bad dictator but he wanted to stay alive. He had nothing to do with 9/11 and he would not have dared to use WMDs against us even if he had them. So to me whether he had WMDs was a mute point.
To me if you attack Hussein who is not a threat and had nothing to do with 9/11 then you are just helping the bad guys recruit. I said at the time that there will be more people who turn against the U.S. as a result of the invasion of Iraq. There will be Sunnis in say, Saudi Arabia, who may not be sure about bin Laden but now may think that the U.S. is out to destroy Sunnis.
I also said that the job in Afghanistan is not finished and Taliban is not destroyed. So by going into Iraq we lost valuable time and resources so that the Afghan war took much longer than needed and we are still not sure what will become of that country.
I think if we had finished the job of getting rid of the Taliban and have a stable Afghanistan then ISIS would not have materialized. Sure we may still have a bad guy name Hussein in charge and the Shiites in that country would still be miserable. But Hussein in reality was a secular dictator. He was strong enough to prevent the religious zealots from taking over. He would be a buffer against Iran, which now has more influence than ever in the Middle East.
Of course hindsight is 20/20. I am not saying I foresaw all of these. But to me some of these things are obvious and so I think most politicians really had very little understanding of the Middle East and how human beings respond to threats, perceived or real. It is easy to send the greatest military in the world to fight an enemy. The question is what are the consequences of those actions? There was no critical thinking when sending troops to Iraq and I am afraid that with the wrong leader after Obama leaves office, the same errors are going to be made.