What did we win in Iraq?

[Armati]

Really, that's it. What did we win after spending so much blood and treasure on this war?

By my reckoning Iran has been the big winner in this war.

And, where is all of that 'free' oil we were suppose to get from the "war that will pay for it's self"?

[VooDoo6Actual]

Geo-Political motivated Oil contracts, the World's best Wheat Seed Banks (for Monsanto & GMO's), Summerian ancient archeological artifacts et al. LOTS of money made for contracts for political players, et alia etc...

ETA: DARPA/Research, Testing & Development for the "MIC" that will eventually attempt to rule the world through Global Banking Cartel since they actually run our GOV. All the new toys get justifiably field tested etc.

[Iraq Ninja]

Let me preface my statement by saying I spent a long time over there.

I don't think we won anything, but we didn't loose either. In terms of blood, compare the loss of life to previous wars. This was not a "lost generation". We have loss more folks in one day in prior wars than we lost in Iraq.

In terms of the oil, I know for a fact that that many Western countries are getting good deals on the oil, partly because the Iraqis are incapable of getting it out to the ground like we can.

I don't know the answers, but I don't worry about it either. I will leave that to the armchair historians.

We are still at war against Islamic extremists and it is not going to end anytime soon. All I know is that we kicked some big time ass over there and lost some good folks.

[ALCOAR]

A few bad men got rich, some great men lost their lives, and America helped boost it's imperialistic title.

What blows my mind is that there are still people in this country who try and justify the war in the first place. One thing we should all agree on is that is was a huge mistake to ever go in there in the first place.

I imagine the same simpletons who still support Bush and his controllers are the same simpletons who still try and justify the War in the first place. Bush and the Iraq war stained America pretty good, and that's in my eyes, not some foreigners who I don't give a damn about.

JM2CW:)

[Moose-Knuckle]

Globalist agendas and objectives were acheived.


The regime of Saddam Hussein must be toppled immediately, by U.S. force if necessary. And the entire Middle East must be reordered according to an American plan.PNAC, Rebuilding America’s Defenses (1997), p.51

[Just a Jarhead]

It blows my mind the short memory people have.

They forget the mindset of everyone just after 911. They forget that every intelligence agency in the world stated Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he used mustard gas & nerve gas sarin against his own people the kurds so we knew he had those. Saddam himself repeatedly claimed to have had weapons of mass destruction apparently a blustery tactic to ward off the Iranians. Often times when you lie it comes back to bite you!

Saddam invaded Kuwait and the belief was if he annexed Kuwiat without oppostion he was then on to Saudi Arabia.

Saddam diverted money from food for oil program to fund Palestinian terrorist paying familes $25,000 each to sacrifice their sons & daughters to be suicide bombers in Israel destabaling an already destabled area even further. He was a major threat to stability in the middle east. And yes it's often about oil. Get over it, the world runs on oil. Until the liberal enviromental wacko tree-hugging panty waist in this country stop fighting drilling in our own country we have no choice.

In hindsight, W has many warts but he wisely heeded Thatcher's advice not to go all wobbly IMHO.

[montanadave]

My memory's just fine, thanks.

It was ****ed up from jump street.

I said it back when and everything that has come to pass simply reinforces that original assessment.

And what blows my mind is how some folks won't say "shit" when they have a mouthful.

[Just a Jarhead]

My memory's just fine, thanks.

It was ****ed up from jump street.

I said it back when and everything that has come to pass simply reinforces that original assessment.

And what blows my mind is how some folks won't say "shit" when they have a mouthful.

In your case it's just piss poor bad judgement & total lack of wisdom all the way around from what I have seen.

[munch520]

It was ****ed up from jump street.

Disagree.

I think we can all agree Saddam was using chemical agents against his people (Kurds specifically). The 17 March 1988 attack is an example of this. I agree with taking Saddam out of power. I don't agree with some of the platforms that we moved on from that initial goal.

Practicing appeasement politics and using sanctions, as Chamberlin did with Hitler, do nothing to stop a dictator of their caliber. I often draw parallels between the two (Saddam/Hitler). Both practiced genocide and scapegoated minorities in their countries, they invaded neighboring counties, ignored sanctions/embargos/treaties, etc. Clinton tried repeatedly to slow Saddam down, so did the UN with their inspectors, whom Saddam repeatedly turned away. Appeasement just doesn't work. "those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it" -Winston Churchill

Call it being an armchair historian, but my lowly knowledge as a civilian that attempts to educate himself would lead me to believe that we did right by getting rid of Saddam. I apologize that I lack the firsthand knowledge some mil here have, and that I undoubtedly don't have all the facts. But that's my stance with the aforementioned limited educated that I have on the matter. Merry Christmas.

[Army Chief]

This one appears to be about to go off of the rails, and while I'm not persuaded that there is any one non-controversial answer to the questions posed in the opening post, I think we can do better than going after each other with inflammatory rhetoric. If you're feeling the urge to blow someone's face off here, please stay out of the thread altogether.

On a personal level, I was abroad when the September 11th attacks came, and watched the road to war from a foreign land where well-intentioned friends and neighbors often asked me to help make some sense of what they were seeing in the news. Admittedly, it didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time (or, more accurately, it seemed like a pretty disproportional response based upon what we could glean from public sources), but my standard reply was that I believed that our government "knew some things that I/we did not" about what was happening in that part of the world, and that was about as much as I really needed to know, as my part in the equation was to follow orders -- not to debate the political merits of the cause.

Looking back after having spent no little time in the region myself, I still believe that what we thought we knew provides a relevant context for understanding how we got there. There was plenty of reason to suspect that Mr. Hussein's government possessed, or was in active pursuit of, the weapons in question. Some of them had actually been used, and the evidence was clear that there was strong official interest in others. We now know that many of the actual details were fabricated to keep the Iranians in check, but for our part, I'm not sure that the price of being wrong and intervening anyway wasn't preferable to the price of being right and doing nothing. Call it an intelligence failure if you like, but even that strikes me as an over-simplification, and I'm not comfortable with one-size-fits-all criticisms of our national resolve that come well after-the-fact. We thought we knew what we we getting into, and it was serious enough to take action. We may not have been entirely right, but neither were we entirely wrong. In either case, a despot with visions of a powerful new Caliphate was laid low, and we gave Jihadists a regional focal point for engagement that didn't involve further attacks on our mainland. Did we gain in other ways? Sure. Did we lose in other ways? Sure. War is rarely the neat, tidy thing that we all envision it to be from our history classes or books. To suggest otherwise is to broadcast a rather startling naivety.

I read some very good analysis from the founder of the private intelligence company Stratfor* a year or two ago that really put all of this into sharp relief: America did not need to "win" in Iraq (or Afghanistan) in the traditional military sense in order to score a decisive victory. Our involvement in these campaigns has totally de-stabilized the efforts of those extremists and/or political opportunists seeking to unify the Islamic world against the West. As cold as it might sound, as long as the Arab/Islamic world remains in a state of relative disarray (i.e. factional infighting with no consolidation of power under any one ruler/dictator/Imam/Ayatollah), they are consigned to irrelevance and we win. There are other metrics by which one might seek to evaluate these wars, of course, but in the final analysis, our blood and treasure defused a pretty significant time bomb.

Me? I'm far more interested in where things appear to be headed with North Korea. Or, to take a longer-term view, with Mexico.

AC

* Source: The Next 100 Years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_100_Years) by George Friedman. I highly recommend adding this title to your holiday reading list.

[munch520]

* Source: The Next 100 Years by George Friedman. I highly recommend adding this title to your holiday reading list.

Thanks for the post, and sounds like a great book. I'll have to pick it up.

[GermanSynergy]

Let me preface my statement by saying I spent a long time over there.

I don't think we won anything, but we didn't loose either. In terms of blood, compare the loss of life to previous wars. This was not a "lost generation". We have loss more folks in one day in prior wars than we lost in Iraq.

In terms of the oil, I know for a fact that that many Western countries are getting good deals on the oil, partly because the Iraqis are incapable of getting it out to the ground like we can.

I don't know the answers, but I don't worry about it either. I will leave that to the armchair historians.

We are still at war against Islamic extremists and it is not going to end anytime soon. All I know is that we kicked some big time ass over there and lost some good folks.

Well said, IN. I've noticed the most opinionated folks back home about the Iraq War have never spent a single day there, but proceeded to lecture and postulate about our involvement there like the foreign policy experts that they are.

[munch520]

Well said, IN. I've noticed the most opinionated folks back home about the Iraq War have never spent a single day there, but proceeded to lecture and postulate about our involvement there like the foreign policy experts that they are.

Not intending to be argumentative, but how can the rest of us civilians have a stance on foreign policy? Are you saying we shouldn't have one at all? Just remain quiet and have no opinion? Many of those that make FP decisions in DC don't have a military background.

[Army Chief]

I believe the overriding point is simply that the loudest criticisms often seem to come from those with the least actually invested. Guys who have left blood and sweat -- or comrades -- on a field of conflict tend to have a pretty substantive basis from which to air strong opinions, whether they ultimately happen to be right or wrong. Those who have not made this same kind of investment are expressing a largely academic viewpoint that is best stated in those terms (i.e. without all of the charged rhetoric or overt expressions of indignance).

AC

[munch520]

Got it

[Mauser KAR98K]

Going after Saddam, and taking the fight to the jihadist (over in Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia) was, in mind, a discussion. The rebuilding policy afterwards, and the misconception of open arms of the Iraqis was just plain bad. A better strategy, and one that wasn't laden with PC crap to appease the left and the liberal world would have been a great tool in winning more than just dead terrorists; an actual stable Government that I don't have to count on folding in possibly six months.

We left to early in my opinion, and doing so for political expedience. Consider the MSM hasn't covered Iraq like they did during Bush's time in office, but Afghanistan is always on the tube, is telling. The surged worked, though the idiot in charge didn't vote for it.

Another thing to observe: Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and scores of other high liberals before the invasion, and some prior to Bush's inauguration, said Saddam was a big threat and needed to be taken out. Yet, now it is a bad war we shouldn't have done. Guess because it wasn't "their" war.

[Armati]

Like the Chief said, please don't jump the shark with this thread. I just want to know what people think we actually gained from our war in Iraq.

I was in the First Gulf War and when we left then I had a sinking feeling that our work was not done and we would be back. As we draw down in Iraq this time, I am left with the same feeling.

I was at a funeral at Arlington where one of America's best was being lowered in the ground. His mother was so grief stricken that she needed two ushers to help her stand and walk off the field. It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. What exactly would you tell her? Why did her son die? What did he die for? What cause were we fighting for in Iraq that was so just, righteous and important that her son should die for it?

[wahoo95]

We won the prize for allowing ourselves to fall into the same trap as the USSR and are headed downhill on a path to financial self destruction just like they did.

Saddest part is we have lost A LOT of good people in the process....

[SeriousStudent]

....

AC

* Source: The Next 100 Years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_100_Years) by George Friedman. I highly recommend adding this title to your holiday reading list.

Off-topic note: A very interesting book, especially his analysis of our links to the Eastern European states. I agree with his thoughts regarding our long-term prospects with Mexico as well.

On-topic: I think it's always a good idea to respect those who went. I'm not calling anyone out here. I think all the M4C members have a great deal of respect, or they do not experience a long stay here.

I keep all those warriors in my prayers.

[SteyrAUG]

We helped escort large numbers of Jihadists off the planet, that is always a good thing.

[RogerinTPA]

I was in the 1st Gulf war as well. My dad said after we got back, that in the next 10-20 years, I or my son, would be back finishing what we failed to do, win it. He was right, having had the same thoughts after the 100 hour war was declared "Over".

This time around, sure we did regime change and pacify the country to an extent (or did we???), but did we really win anything? Did we really change things for the good of that country and ours? Or just postpone the inevitable...the unleashing of Pandora's Box (Sectarian Violence)? I think the latter.

I've often discussed this war over the years, with a bunch of retired guys from 1SGs, CSMs, LTCs and above, that I call friends. Despite the "cooking" of Intel to wage that war... to the man, we supported the troops after we were committed, but not one of us felt the war was worth prosecuting from the get go.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

We left to early in my opinion, and doing so for political expedience. Consider the MSM hasn't covered Iraq like they did during Bush's time in office, but Afghanistan is always on the tube, is telling. The surged worked, though the idiot in charge didn't vote for it.

Another thing to observe: Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and scores of other high liberals before the invasion, and some prior to Bush's inauguration, said Saddam was a big threat and needed to be taken out. Yet, now it is a bad war we shouldn't have done. Guess because it wasn't "their" war.

I saw some graph where they had the public's positive suport for the war in Iraq. The data points were almost every week, at least twice a month, until 2008 November. Only 3-4 data points since then. So much for the MSM keeping it in the public light.

So a large percentage of the Iraqis are shitheads? Any big surprise here? Can any middle eastern country run itself with any kind of moderninity? It's like we just fought the Indian wars again and thought that we could westernize them. Still waiting. Heck, let's try casinos in Iraq.

I think what we have is the best case scenario in Iraq. Until the liberal muslims in the middle east decide that enough is enough and erradicate for once and all the tribalistic reactionaries in their midst, this is about the best you can get.

I don't think you'll be able to say definatively one way or the other on the Iraq war until the Arab spring has run its course. If you get radical Iranian style govt in those countries and a more stable democracy of some sort in Iraq- that is one outcome. If all of them are a crap sandwhich, the extra cost of Iraq doesn't change the outcome. You could say that with out Iraq there couldn't have been an Arab spring. Gaddafi gave up the terror game/nuclear ambitions after Iraq, arabs were allowed to vote in real elections, and long term dictators were seen as being able to be toppled.

[GermanSynergy]

We helped escort large numbers of Jihadists off the planet, that is always a good thing.

Agreed.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

One thing I hope our adversaries take away from the war is not how we left, but that in the darkest hour we doubled down and did the surge. This is very American way of waging war. When most other countries would negotiate a way out, Americans (in a not universally held ethos) will dig in and fight harder. Perhaps a throw back to the Spartans way of fighting, but definately a modern version of the Roman's response after Cannae.

[trinydex]

This one appears to be about to go off of the rails, and while I'm not persuaded that there is any one non-controversial answer to the questions posed in the opening post, I think we can do better than going after each other with inflammatory rhetoric. If you're feeling the urge to blow someone's face off here, please stay out of the thread altogether.

On a personal level, I was abroad when the September 11th attacks came, and watched the road to war from a foreign land where well-intentioned friends and neighbors often asked me to help make some sense of what they were seeing in the news. Admittedly, it didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time (or, more accurately, it seemed like a pretty disproportional response based upon what we could glean from public sources), but my standard reply was that I believed that our government "knew some things that I/we did not" about what was happening in that part of the world, and that was about as much as I really needed to know, as my part in the equation was to follow orders -- not to debate the political merits of the cause.

Looking back after having spent no little time in the region myself, I still believe that what we thought we knew provides a relevant context for understanding how we got there. There was plenty of reason to suspect that Mr. Hussein's government possessed, or was in active pursuit of, the weapons in question. Some of them had actually been used, and the evidence was clear that there was strong official interest in others. We now know that many of the actual details were fabricated to keep the Iranians in check, but for our part, I'm not sure that the price of being wrong and intervening anyway wasn't preferable to the price of being right and doing nothing. Call it an intelligence failure if you like, but even that strikes me as an over-simplification, and I'm not comfortable with one-size-fits-all criticisms of our national resolve that come well after-the-fact. We thought we knew what we we getting into, and it was serious enough to take action. We may not have been entirely right, but neither were we entirely wrong. In either case, a despot with visions of a powerful new Caliphate was laid low, and we gave Jihadists a regional focal point for engagement that didn't involve further attacks on our mainland. Did we gain in other ways? Sure. Did we lose in other ways? Sure. War is rarely the neat, tidy thing that we all envision it to be from our history classes or books. To suggest otherwise is to broadcast a rather startling naivety.

I read some very good analysis from the founder of the private intelligence company Stratfor* a year or two ago that really put all of this into sharp relief: America did not need to "win" in Iraq (or Afghanistan) in the traditional military sense in order to score a decisive victory. Our involvement in these campaigns has totally de-stabilized the efforts of those extremists and/or political opportunists seeking to unify the Islamic world against the West. As cold as it might sound, as long as the Arab/Islamic world remains in a state of relative disarray (i.e. factional infighting with no consolidation of power under any one ruler/dictator/Imam/Ayatollah), they are consigned to irrelevance and we win. There are other metrics by which one might seek to evaluate these wars, of course, but in the final analysis, our blood and treasure defused a pretty significant time bomb.

Me? I'm far more interested in where things appear to be headed with North Korea. Or, to take a longer-term view, with Mexico.

AC

* Source: The Next 100 Years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_100_Years) by George Friedman. I highly recommend adding this title to your holiday reading list.

i agree with this description of the past and the future evaluations of the wars we've engaged in.

what i wonder is if iraq or (to a lesser extent) afghanistan will ever achieve reconstruction status of japan or germany. it's not easy to imagine it being possible... but the world does surprise.

[trinydex]

I believe the overriding point is simply that the loudest criticisms often seem to come from those with the least actually invested. Guys who have left blood and sweat -- or comrades -- on a field of conflict tend to have a pretty substantive basis from which to air strong opinions, whether they ultimately happen to be right or wrong. Those who have not made this same kind of investment are expressing a largely academic viewpoint that is best stated in those terms (i.e. without all of the charged rhetoric or overt expressions of indignance).

AC

i would say my viewpoint is entirely academic. i would also say that people who are highly polarized or disparaging of one event or one person/group will typically not acknowledge the complexities of said subjects. we live in a vastly complex world that is bound by time, data, interdependent systems, diversity and innumerable other factors. to develop a staunch opinion without acknowledging the entirety of all the data is... disappointing to see.

in the end i wouldn't say iraq was a "good" choice. what is "good" anyway? but when evaluating the alternatives and looking forward, i don't see why we can't make the best of it.

[trinydex]

Or just postpone the inevitable...the unleashing of Pandora's Box (Sectarian Violence)? I think the latter.


what are the consequences of this in your opinion?

looking forward, if this was indeed a postponement of bad things we didn't want to happen. what happens when those bad things are realized?

[trinydex]

Like the Chief said, please don't jump the shark with this thread. I just want to know what people think we actually gained from our war in Iraq.

I was in the First Gulf War and when we left then I had a sinking feeling that our work was not done and we would be back. As we draw down in Iraq this time, I am left with the same feeling.

I was at a funeral at Arlington where one of America's best was being lowered in the ground. His mother was so grief stricken that she needed two ushers to help her stand and walk off the field. It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. What exactly would you tell her? Why did her son die? What did he die for? What cause were we fighting for in Iraq that was so just, righteous and important that her son should die for it?

i don't want to try to solidly quantify anything here, perhaps i should not have quoted this post with its sensitive contents...

i feel that some of the consequences of the recent wars, some of the things that could be construed as gain or accomplishment.

there is an argument to be made for preservation of life, although many lives were taken (i probably shouldn't have even said this because it is quite a sensitive topic that is totally subjective).

we've raised a generation that is more familiar with firearms.

there's a generation even, that is more conscientious about politics.

the wars have produced countless products for both civilian and military use that have trickled down and trickled up etc. (camelbacks, camouflage, firearms, armor systems, apparel, optics, vehicles, applications of technology on the battlefield and on the hiking trail, etc etc etc)

we've raised a generation that has seen battle and knows its positives and its negatives, these people will go on and lead in politics or their households or their work places, raise children, etc. and their perspectives on life will be an important one that's handed out.

we have changed the martial arts of modern warfare, made ergonomics and economy of motion the new discipline. we've trained a large population to be the pinnacle of combat readiness and effectiveness.

we've adapted to new types of warfare and developed astonishing ways to combat them. unmanned vehicles air land and sea, bomb sniffing dogs or bomb sniffing detectors, ordnance disposal, barricade construction, vehicle arresting devices etc etc etc.

there are many more things, but let me get to the other end of the spectrum. all this cost something. i don't really want to put too much weight on treasure, because honestly we as a nation have spent tons of money on other things like flying to the moon. what did we "gain" from that? was that not also a war? i think a lot of the gains from space programs can be likened to gains we have in wartime, but they're more scientifically direct (naturally). the list will be long with technological advances that trickle down and trickle up. the generations affected will be inspired or not by science advancement etc.

the big difference is blood. nasa could very well have left a few bodies on the moon... but they didn't. lucky them. there are very few endeavors that are riskless that are worth doing. i cannot possibly sit here and quantify whether or not anyone should feel that the blood was "worth" what was "gained." that would just be inane.

is a space program better to dump treasure on just because the loss of life will be less?

does the loss of life in pursuit make an endeavor more valuable or just more costly?

these are not questions i have concrete answers for but i'd like to hear what people have to say.

[Suwannee Tim]

Really, that's it. What did we win after spending so much blood and treasure on this war?

By my reckoning Iran has been the big winner in this war.....

We crushed Al-Qaeda in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world. By doing so there they were unable to engage us on the battlefield of their choice, here. That's a gigantic victory and one we should be pointing out every day. We may very well have handed this victory to Iran however.

[RogerinTPA]

what are the consequences of this in your opinion?

looking forward, if this was indeed a postponement of bad things we didn't want to happen. what happens when those bad things are realized?

Civil war. Only this time, there will be no despotic leader to hold the country together through brute force and terrorizing it's people. Maybe their current President will evolve into one, but there won't be any 1st world military force on the ground to keep the peace. Which plays into Iran's favor. It's up to the Iraqis and the support of neighboring countries which will determine their fate.

[ThirdWatcher]

Let me preface my statement by saying I spent a long time over there.

I don't think we won anything, but we didn't loose either. In terms of blood, compare the loss of life to previous wars. This was not a "lost generation". We have loss more folks in one day in prior wars than we lost in Iraq.

I believe that in many ways, you that have served since 9/11/01 reflect the values of "The Greatest Generation".

[Iraq Ninja]

We helped escort large numbers of Jihadists off the planet, that is always a good thing.

And made a lot of new ones too...

[Reagans Rascals]

I won't comment on what we have and haven't accomplished there.

I'll just say that we've learned a lot during the last decades events, about our country, those who run it, those who live here, and those who protect it.... and perhaps those lessons can help us in the future...

I can't say that those I know that did not return, did so in vain, on behalf of some hidden agenda, but I can say for absolute certainty, they were greater Americans in death, than most of those in this country will ever amount to in life.....

[SteyrAUG]

And made a lot of new ones too...

Would have likely been Jihadists anyways.

[toasterlocker]

I read some very good analysis from the founder of the private intelligence company Stratfor* a year or two ago that really put all of this into sharp relief: America did not need to "win" in Iraq (or Afghanistan) in the traditional military sense in order to score a decisive victory. Our involvement in these campaigns has totally de-stabilized the efforts of those extremists and/or political opportunists seeking to unify the Islamic world against the West. As cold as it might sound, as long as the Arab/Islamic world remains in a state of relative disarray (i.e. factional infighting with no consolidation of power under any one ruler/dictator/Imam/Ayatollah), they are consigned to irrelevance and we win. There are other metrics by which one might seek to evaluate these wars, of course, but in the final analysis, our blood and treasure defused a pretty significant time bomb.

Me? I'm far more interested in where things appear to be headed with North Korea. Or, to take a longer-term view, with Mexico.

AC

* Source: The Next 100 Years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Next_100_Years) by George Friedman. I highly recommend adding this title to your holiday reading list.

Haven't read that one, but I did read his book "The Next 10 Years" and it echoed that idea. On the surface, I would agree with the idea that the war looked like a waste, but Friedman does make a very compelling case without falling into any of the typical partisan BS you see from both sides on the news. Just straight up analysis of the facts and historical patterns without any political nonsense mucking it up.

For all the reasons Friedman uses, I can actually say I think the war made sense. All of the other reasons commonly spouted (for and against the war) are generally overly simplistic, emotional arguments aimed at a person's heart and feelings instead of their brain. But that should come as no surprise seeing as how that the same way most Americans vote.:rolleyes:

[Armati]

Would have likely been Jihadists anyways.

No, especially not under Saddam who kept the religious radicals well in check. And, despite what a lot of people may think, we ****ed up in Iraq everyday. We did kill a lot of innocent people, we rousted innocent people out of their beds and trashed their houses, we arrested innocent people and put them into detention centers were they were raped and otherwise abused. It is a fact. Now, we did kill a lot of "badguys" but a whole lot of times we got it wrong and when we did get it wrong we just made 10 new insurgents. We got played by various factions to settle old scores that could not be settled under Saddam. If one guy spoke English and some other guy did not, we believed the English speaking guy. Many an innocent man was snatched up by US forces because his English speaking neighbor said he was AQ.

[Moose-Knuckle]

I was at a funeral at Arlington where one of America's best was being lowered in the ground. His mother was so grief stricken that she needed two ushers to help her stand and walk off the field. It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. What exactly would you tell her? Why did her son die? What did he die for? What cause were we fighting for in Iraq that was so just, righteous and important that her son should die for it?

This is what angers me most.

Some how I don't think this mother would agree with. . .


Military men are “dumb, stupid animals to be used” as pawns for foreign policy. - Henry Kissinger, former National Security Advisor
This quote can be found in the book “Final Days,” by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.








As for your original question, two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler puts it all into perspective. . .


“War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”


“It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Merry Christmas gentlemen, thank you to all in this thread who have served. Please do not take my post as anti-military, I sincerely mean it to be quite the opposite in fact.

[Redmanfms]

This quote can be found in the book “Final Days,” by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Consider the source.

[Moose-Knuckle]

Consider the source.

I guess if Cooper or O'reilly didn't air it then it can't be true.

[Just a Jarhead]

As for your original question, two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler puts it all into perspective. . .
Quote:
“War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

“It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”


Yes, unfortunately, we'll always have a handful of John Murtha's and Wesley Clarks. The military is not immune from it's share of butt-holes as any of us who have served can attest to!

No one denies his heroic actions and he deserves great recognition for such. But General Smedley Butler was an extremely controversial person in his time (served 1898-1931) to say the least, and of the same form. Even more so.
http://rationalrevolution.net/war/major_general_smedley_butler_usm.htm

[VooDoo6Actual]

Here's some food for thought to throw into the fray....

Perhaps we are going to witness in our lifetimes' if the ends justifies the means.

Escorting/facilitating Jihadists off this realm is a good thing. Propagating/accelerating more Jihadists or escalating their gestation/reproductive term is not a good thing.

If there is a Thermonuclear War/Nuclear et al War, what does that say about our tactics before ? Fail ? or did we learn it was not efficacious ?
At what cost of life & good men... For freedom... when now that buzz phrase is looking relative to what ? Democracy ? Liberty ?

What's real ? by whom's standards ? whom's definitions ? whom's agenda ? whom's semantic word games ?

If the US Mil is offering citizenship in exchange for service then what's the point of the Consitution ? Clearly the citizenship is the prize as the newly US Citizenized cadre have got what they wanted & could care less about America's real meaning & history..... You have effectively nullified/voided it if the agenda is to get able bodies for another agenda...

Did the end result justify the losses to get there where we are trending to going anyways ?

If it ends up ultimately being a de-population issue what's the difference ....?

[Iraqgunz]

Hindsight is 20/20. Dynamics that were present this time around were not around in 1990/91.

Back then had we stomped the shit out of Saddam then the world would be much better.

But, would we have been able to build a "coalition" since the stated objectives were simply to oust him from Kuwait?

Had we taken care of him then we would not have had to deal with the Jihadist militants and religious zealots. During that time Al-Qaeda was in its' infancy and in fact OBL being spurned by the king of Saudi Arabia was a part of the driving force of his hatred towards America and the west which of course led to the beginning of terrorist attacks against the west. They were emboldened by their defeating the Soviet Union and reasoned that they could also take down America.

As for the real reasons why we went after Saddam. Who knows? The mindset was different immediately after 9/11 and we probably suspected the Saddam would do something stupid- either directly or indirectly.

[SteyrAUG]

No, especially not under Saddam who kept the religious radicals well in check. And, despite what a lot of people may think, we ****ed up in Iraq everyday. We did kill a lot of innocent people, we rousted innocent people out of their beds and trashed their houses, we arrested innocent people and put them into detention centers were they were raped and otherwise abused. It is a fact. Now, we did kill a lot of "badguys" but a whole lot of times we got it wrong and when we did get it wrong we just made 10 new insurgents. We got played by various factions to settle old scores that could not be settled under Saddam. If one guy spoke English and some other guy did not, we believed the English speaking guy. Many an innocent man was snatched up by US forces because his English speaking neighbor said he was AQ.

I meant the ones who went to Iraq from other countries.

Regarding Iraq itself, we kinda screwed that pooch with the first Persian Gulf War.

Sadly the innocent always suffer during war, I doubt that will ever change.

[TacMedic556]

All my contractor buddies paid their houses off and have a couple hundred thou in the bank.

Every advancement in the M4 platform and in gear.

Several trillion in debt.

Its hard to say what really was won there. Perhaps a better question is what did we lose there?

[ZGXtreme]

As far as the overall picture, that's above my paygrade and I simply haven't the slightest clue.

As for me, well some medals and an eight hour "present" when I got home from the invasion which really did make it all worth it!

Having been in the Sandbox, I will say that to this day I still support the idea of removing Saddam from office. I truly believe that was a just cause to pursue and for that I am proud to have been apart of it. Was the aftermath and the continued fight worth it? Harder to believe as each day passes. The only thing I can think of is that we went too fast in the first month and should have taken it step by step instead of pulling drive bys on the way to Baghdad which enabled the insurgents to regroup behind us and wait until the OIF II phase to start their fight.