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Originally Posted by Aegir
1) They really shouldn't have invaded Iraq. It was an enormous money drain and created an enemy US never actually needs.
Though yes, at least had they sent more troops in number according to the suggestion of the military experts US could've pacified the country sooner. But even that wouldn't have been good enough
2) Maybe, but the extent of economic devastation and social radicalization by a period of military violence that Iraq has suffered now could've been prevented. It's a plus.
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1) Yeah I also think invading Iraq was an ultimate waste of time for the US but that's arguing from the perspective of US interests, not Iraq. The number troops isn't the only reason counter-insurgency failed from the beggining (though it was a big one). There were also a lot of other reasons like the allowance of mass looting, and abuse from the US military both in pirsons and in operations, and operating from bases isolated from the general populace as well as policies that enflamed sectarianism such as debaathification and the support of Shi'ites who were linked with death squads as well as not doing anything about those God damn death squads...Personally I think if they avoided all that then it would've worked.
2) Economic devastation? Would another 10 years of crippling sanctions made it any better (Genuinly asking: This is the first I've heard of such an argument)? Whilst they have suffered a lot, I always thought their economy now is slightly better. The fact that there is even an emo culture in Baghdad in the first place is something in itself. Besides, I think the military violence could've been the same anyway. The problem with the US approach to Iraq in the first three years was that they weren't able to do much for Iraq besides removing Saddam Hussein. If the Shi'ites managed to remove Saddam then we probably would've seen the same debaathification and the resulting inflmmation of sectarianism. It all depends on whether the Sunni's would've helped as well and we can't say for sure.
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Originally Posted by Vexx
The US invaded Iraq under false pretenses - there's really no disputing that whether it was malicious or just incompetency. The US *invented* other reasons later (nation building, blah blah) but that was mission creep of the highest order. And then finally the US got trapped there because one should try to pick up a mess one made... and the US couldn't even handle that well.
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Yeah I know. It's just that the problem to me seems that America tries to do good things despite the blatant insincerity behind it, which inevitable turns those good things into rotten ones. Instead of saying that they shouldn't try to do those good things, I think we should say that if they're going to do them then they ought to do it with sincerity. But I guess that may not be in America's best interest since there's not really anything in it for them...