Afghanistan and Iraq: a retrospective (for JTT)

JTT:
I didn't want to derail your anti-Pearl Harbor Day rant of a thread by going into detail about my feelings on these subjects [no, no, need to thank me ] but, since you've brought them up, I thought I'd answer you more fully by starting this new thread.

The "reasons" we invaded Iraq were never honestly vocalized, I totally agree with you. What the public was fed was pure and unadulturated bullshit. Anyone with even just one functioning brain cell knew that Saddam Hussein had had no hand whatever in the Sept. 11 attacks. The very idea is ludicrous that alQaeda or binLaden would have had anything whatever to do with the sybaritic and purely secular-minded Hussein. I doubt that more than one or two percent of all Americans ever believed this "reason" for the invasion. Much the same is true of the claim made by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. This was marginally more believable but still a very, very doubtful proposition. Most of us didn't buy it.

I, personally, had very ambivalent feelings about this. I was largely opposed to the operation because I thought it was coming way too late, historically. It was Bush pere who screwed up big-time by not going on to Baghdad during Operation Desert Storm. That's when we should have gone in and taken out Hussein. I remember being shocked when we didn't. What, withdraw our troops just because we drove the Iraqis outof Kuwait? To me that was kind of like pulling that D-Day invasion in Normandy, fighting the Battle of the Bulge and then pulling back because -- what the hell! -- the Wahrmacht had withdrawn to behind German borders. No seed to go after Hitler. What for? That's how this silly end of Desert Storm seemed to me. Hussein needed to be deposed because he was ...Hussein. One of the most sociopathic dictators in that part of the world. And, yes, yes, we had helped him stay in power when he was waging war against Iran, but that, too, is irrelevant.

What was happening was that, in the wake of 9/11, Bush fils thought he saw an opportunity to rectify the mistake made by Bush pere and depose Hussein. So we went into Iraq where we had no business being. What do I think of it now? I think it's a damned good thing that Saddam Hussein is dead; it simplifies certain things in the Near East. I wish it could have been accomplished with less loss of lives, both Iraqi and American, but it needed to be done.

As for Afghanistan, I never had the least problem with going in there; I was just afraid that the job might be too beig even the U.S. armed forces. Historically, the only two warriors who ever defeated and subjugated Afghanistan were Alexander (the Great) of Macedon and Ghengiz Khan of Mongolia. Queen Victoria's British colonial troos failed miserably in the 19th Century as did the Soviet Union in the 20th. But I certainly had no moral qualms about the desirability of ousting the megalomaniacal sociopaths who call themselves the Taliban or in hunting down binLaden and the alQuaida troops that the Taliban was giving sanctuary to. And, in this case, the reasons that the US government gave for the invasion were quite valid. There was never any doubt as to who was behind the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon. The Taliban's refusal to surrender the terrorists/murderers to any authority quite legitimaely sealed their fate. I had no problem at all with it and I doubt that most Afghans living in fortunate exile did either.

If your contention (on the other thread) that the U.S. goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor is at all valid, then it's equally valid to say that the Taliban -- and, by extension, the Afghans -- goaded the US into launching the invasion.

[I addressed this thread to JTT because it was JTT's vitriol that prompted me to post it. But, as always, you are all welcome to comment.]