Because that other thread is fucked up beyond repair, and because I actually wanted to talk about this -- here is the post I was semi-interested in from there. The short version is that I think the "doctrine of preemption" was a failure the moment it was concocted, and there was
never a good reason to invade Iraq. There
never was. So here's my quickly written post on the topic with the short chain of discussion leading to it:
How can one argue that the entire endeavor wasn't a mistake? There was absolutely no reason for this war in the first place... that in itself is all the fuck-up you need.
Viewed through the lens of 2003-era knowledge, the war was justified. We had good reason to believe that Saddam either had or was working on nukes, and we have good reason to believe that the stabilization of post-war Iraq was feasible. In hindsight, given that the people in charge would fuck it up so badly, yes, it was a mistake. But the people who are saying this was all so very obvious from the outset are being myopic at best, disingenuous at worst.
The doctrine of preemption was theoretically garbage from jump, and this war serves to prove exactly why. Besides the fact that change comes from within yadda yadda yadda, you can't simply decide which country you feel like "revolutionizing," then come up with some suddenly invented litmus for invasion candidates (which actually covers a huge number of countries around the globe) then only selectively apply it to one (which happens to have a ton of oil).
Look -- I understand the justification of the war as a long-term strategic maneuver to help secure US interest in the Middle East. It's imperialistic, but that justification at least seems like -- okay -- we were at least acting in the US' best long term interest. Nobody in the DoD will ever fess up to that, though, because it's too cynical and imperialistic for the average person to swallow.
The idea that we preemptively removed Hussein or whatever because of weapons or creating stability or planing the seeds of democracy or whatever else Bush sold to people, that was bullshit then, and it's been irrefutably proven bullshit now. The reason it failed isn't simply because we dropped the ball, it's because pulling off an operation like this is logistically impossible, which is what critics were saying in the first place. Our expectations were unrealistic from the beginning. We can't simply cynically invade another nation-state under the cloak of "spreading democracy." Spin it all you want, it was a cynically imperialistic move, and it's embarrassing that we were really so arrogant to think that we would be able to do what countless other nations had proven untenable (occupy and "civilize" a foreign state) simply by throwing some new buzz-words on it.
Posts
Preemption is attacking an enemy about to attack you. Short timeframes involved, immediate threat. This was not Iraq. This is actually fairly rare, and it isn't really a "doctrine" so much as it is something people do sometimes.
Invading Iraq was based on a doctrine of prevention. Invade now, when it is easier than invading later, and some conflict is viewed as inevitable. It was technically a "preventative" war, not a "preemptive" one, since Iraq was not on the verge of attacking the United States. It was just a potential threat, somewhere down the road, apparently.
Preemptive is punching a guy who is about to punch you. Preventive is shooting that in the parking lot before you two have even started drinking, because you know he's a mean drunk and you don't want him to take a swing at you later.
Ok, well with that line of thinking, why not prevent NK from making nuclear weapons by simply nuking them or attacking them?
Instead we offer them a fuckton of fuel so they "stop making nukes".
I think everything we've heard in terms of reasoning so far is total bullshit.
N.Korea isn't as high value of a target. They're not sitting on some of the world's largest oil fields.
The Us doesn't appease the axis of evil. thats crazy talk......
So, you just work a deal out in the south to mow their ass down, annexe the place and make Korea 1 big and mighty democratic society that like to make weird video games and MMOs.
That'd make a lot more sense then, hey, let's attack Iraq again like my dad did and forget about this 9/11 business.
Moreover, you don't really establish why removing a despot and replacing him with something more closely resembling a democracy (even if it's an imperfect democracy) is "logistically impossible". I find it hard to believe that many people even believe that, given that the number of people who have been calling for immediate withdrawal has been historically small. Most people were just bitching that we needed more troops, or that our tactics sucked. If so many of you armchair generals really thought that it was completely impossible for us to ever succeed in Iraq, you would have been calling for complete withdrawal from day one. Unless you're masochists who like hanging around to be asspounded in the pursuit of a futile endeavor, but I don't much buy that.
Or if you'd like a non-retarded answer, NK has millions of artillery units point at SK, and would turn it into a massive smoking crater if we fucked with them.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/05/asia/web-0305korea.php
Here it is.
Still, I'd prefer employing other strategies if the real goal is "planting the seeds of democracy".
t Meis: what are you even trying to get at? That because the U.S. didn't wage the same preventitive war against N. Korea as it did Iraq, the very concept of "preventitive war" doesn't exist? If thats the case, that's some pretty dumb thinking on your part.
Yes, the invasion or Iraq seems reasonable based on 2003-era intelligence reports regarding Saddam's WMD programs. Of course, those reports were full of shit and there were plenty of reasonable people (not just batshit-loco conspiracy theorists) saying they were full of shit back in 2003.
As for feasibility of stabilization...well, the idea that it could be stabilized in general was iffy at best, and some of our own top brass was telling us that stabilization given the force we were willing to commit to the problem wasn't going to work out.
It's not like the Iraq war was some kind of no-brainer back in 2003. It was popular, but there was plenty of information and reasoning out there for why it wasn't a good idea. A lot of people chose to listen to the wrong side, and now that it has proven to be the catastrofuck the other side always said it would be they're trying to re-write history so that going to war back in 2003 was a good idea. It wasn't.
Now, perhaps he's right in that it wasn't quite as obviously and objectively bad as some now try to make it sound. But to me his argument (he's made this one a few times IIRC) seems like a cop-out so that he doesn't have to admit he was wrong. As if it was just a "good idea at the time" that went bad. It may not have been "obvious" that it was a bad idea, but it wasn't exactly some kind of secret either.
Without the support of the international community the plan was virtually impossible. We never planned to send enough troops.
Also you're mixed rhetorics here. the "planting seeds of democracy in the mideast" one was only make the primary reasoning after the WMD reason AND remvoing a supporter of terrorism reasons fell through. when we wnet to war it was to stop someone who was bound to attack us with a WMD evenetualy fi we didn't. Don't mix the other ones in there when talking about the buildup to the war they didn't come till after it had already began.
If I had to make the decision today, I would obviously choose to have not invaded. But given what I knew back then, I still think I made a very defensible decision. The biggest sticking point, I think, was in not listening to the generals who were saying we weren't committing enough troops. That's the biggest failing, I think. Had we committed enough troops, and had we been able to stabilize Iraq, I don't think many people would even be complaining too hard about the WMD thing. It's just kinda hard to say, "Well, yes, we got rid of a horrible, murderous dictator, and we dramatically improved the lives of millions of people, and yes, Saddam was almost certainly going to be amassing WMDs at some point down the road anyway, but you know, faulty intelligence." It would have been a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
As it is, it's doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, and so it's very easy to demonize those who were ever supportive of the war.
One thing that's been said before, which is fairly interesting, is that we may well have achieved military victory too quickly. By going in and just stomping the fuck out of Saddam in a week, there was really no sense amongst those we were fighting - not the civilians, but the army, the first batches of insurgents - that we'd pounded them. It was over too quickly for a disheartening loss of morale to set in amongst our opponents. Had we taken a couple months to plow through there and fuck shit up, the reality of the situation would've had more time to set in, which may have increased the sensation that we'd conquered the nation, thus discouraging people from continually attacked us.
See this is, and always has been, complete bullshit. When the administration first announced the intention to go to war, they listed, like, five reasons why we should do it. Immediately, critics decried the justification as just throwing a bunch of shit at the wall to see what sticks, and complained that there were too many reasons given. And so Bush picked the one that seemed a no-brainer: WMDs. When that fell through, he tried to remind people that there had been other reasons, but now those same critics accused him of backpedaling and trying to rejustify the war effort out of desperation.
I fucking hate this accusation, because it's so goddamned dishonest.
You knew he wasn't amassing WMDs. The Nigeria Yellowcake thing was already thoroughly debunked. Powell had made that embarassing speech at the UN accusing Saddam of having impossible truck-mounted WMD labs rolling around the desert. UN inspectors were in Iraq examining the areas the US had tagged as most likely WMD labs and finding nothing.
You knew Saddam had no ties to Al Qaeda. It was a well-known fact that Saddam and Bin Laden hated each other, and that the famous meeting between Saddam and a high-ranking Al Qaeda official was a complete fabrication. It was well-known that Bin Laden and most 9/11 hijackers were from Saoudi Arabia, not Iraq.
You knew that you wouldn't be greeted as liberators. You knew that anti-American sentiment had been growing since the last Gulf War. You knew sectarian violence was strong and only held down by Saddam's brutal rule. And you should have known that people who just watched their home be bombed down and their family killed don't normally welcome the bombers with open arms.
You knew Saddam had no way of attacking the USA. He had no weapon capable of getting accross the Atlantic. And more importantly, he didn't care. He only wanted to rule his home land, not yours, nor the entire world. He was no threat to America. So taking him down wasn't going to make you safer.
You knew you hadn't committed enough troops to secure the country. You knew you didn't have the support of other major countries, aside from England. You knew the anti-American sentiment in neighbouring countries would spill into this war, making it even harder for you to win.
So really, I have to know, Jeffe. What was it that you knew in 2003 that made this war seem like a good idea?
EDIT: Yeah, democracy. You knew that wouldn't work either. No democracy has ever been established through a foreign invasion and violent war/occupation. The very concept is the anti-thesis of democracy.
If a reply to that is "because we're America and we've got more weapons than them" then you're a fool.
Also, yes I know i've slightly strawmanned here but it's a valid point none the less, and i'm not attacking anyone in here i'm just stating an opinion and not fighting anyone else's.
Exactly. They have a very large hostage.
I've never been clear as to why that was a bad reason. If you have several available targets, is it really that evil to pick the one that has legal justification and seems the easiest to muster public support for?
One can have moral reasons for removing a despot. The same reason that there should be intervention in a genocide applies to why we should try and remove or fix problems like North Korea or Saudi Arabia.
WMD and threat of their use: a good, legal, justification. Falls flat without evidence.
Support for terrorism: close to legal excuse for war. Not nearly as good as Afghanistan but a lot of countries could get behing it if it weren't also pretty much fictitious.
Plant Seeds of Democracy: Nice idea, but not going to get much support in the case of Iraq.
In this case it would have:
1. Forced him to admit other arab nations which are supposedly our allies are just as responsible for terrorism
2. Forced him to admit that there was little to no specific intelligence pointing the finger at Iraq.
You see the most justifable reason for the war uncuts his more effective scare tactics for mustering support.
Because the US is a democracy in which we freely elect leaders who have term limits, anyway.
Oh, that's right, I forgot that Iraq had elections, too. I recall it being a tight one, too. Saddam almost didn't get 100% of the vote.
However, there are also objective criteria for when that would be reasonable and when it wouldn't.
I tend to view democracy as atool for cultures that are ready for it. Cliche'd by now, but many people and cultures are fully willing to give their freedoms and elected government to whomever controls their traditions or religion or tribe.
I think cultural reform, or something analogous, should be the initial goal. It's a broad and probably unfeasible plan, but at least it's coherent. "Democracy" just doesn't work a lot of the time.
It would take time, but as far as standard war goes, if it were only us versus North Korea (that is China not butting their head in like the last time we were there), it would be far simpler than the occupation of Iraq. Ground war is something the armed forces have down to a complete science; insurgencies with road side bombs - not so much.
edit: I'd like to mention we already have standing plans for invasion; simply a proactive measure, but we've already plotted the fastest and easiest way to plow over their country.
"We have to invade Iraq because they have nukes. Mushroom cloud olol 9/11 nevar forget!"
"They don't have nukes."
"Why are you so caught up with the nuke thing anyway? It's only a minor point. The real reason is that we need to spread democracy."
"You can't spread democracy through violent occupation."
"Democracy was never our goal! We have to make America safer! Don't you know Iraq has nukes? Mushroom cloud olol 9/11 nevar forget!"
"They don't have nukes."
"Why are you so caught up with the nuke thing anyway? It's only a minor point. The real reason is that we need to spread democracy."
repeat for four years
Again, massive artillery barrage on Seoul.
Hey, I actually think that Saddam should have been offed ages ago, and that the US should have just said they were going in to kill him because he was an election fixing murderous twatfuck who's country lived in fear of. Thing is, I think it should have just been a straight out; find saddam, kill him, sort out another party to take over that is more liked by the people and doesn't murder the population for fun, then leave.
Instead they called it a preemptive strike as Iraq was making WMD's, went in, bombed cities, found and got Saddam killed, took over oil deposits, got themselves a cushie deal with the iragi government, then stayed to try and police the country their way.
I'm not saying that wouldn't happen, I'm saying we would still clean their clocks regardless.
If we wanted to take out saddam and install democracy we should have tried to find a way to do it when we had 400,000 allied troops at our backs.
And while I have no doubt the US would ultimately be victorious in a ground war against North Korea, you have once again failed to make any kind of plan for the post-war period. If you think occupying a country like Iraq where the people hated the leader you deposed is hard, try occupying a country where the people think the leader you deposed is a god.
Whether it could be done without millions of friendly casualties is.
Also, North Korea has the largest special forces branch in the world - you would definately be looking at insurgent tactics - roadside bombs, probably even suicide bombs - behind friendly lines.
They can...but it would be in no one's best interests to do so. So they do not. That is pretty much all there is to it.
On the black screen