US-Iraq/war/invasion

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the President
he's got his war
folks don't know
just what it's for
no one gives us
rhyme or reason
you have one doubt
they call it treason
- Roberta Flack, 1969
"Compared to What"

Overview

This page is about the United States invasion of Iraq, which took place during George W. Bush's presidential administration.

The invasion got rid of Saddam (which very much needed to happen) but has resulted in a very expensive quagmire and greatly harmed the United States:

Furthermore, the Bush administration has used the invasion, and the war on terror of which it supposedly is an essential part, as an excuse to dramatically ramp up security and secrecy and as justification for suppressing dissent and removing or suspending the civil rights of US citizens. This is a repeat of history, e.g. the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts passed during an undeclared war with France which is now seen historically (as well as by some contemporaries) to be a thinly-disguised and unconstitutional effort to stifle criticism of the administration.

There should probably be a separate article about the US occupation of Iraq.

Nicknames: Messopotamia, The Iraqi Horror Picture Show (although this latter might better describe the Abu Ghraib abuses or the use of torture during GWB administration in general)

Reference

Related Pages

Alternatives

...as opposed to "staying the course" without clear goals, much less a plan.

Effects

news of effects

The Republicans largely continue to stand behind the war effort, a position which is now in stark disagreement with their 2000 Party Platform:

The 2000 US Republican Party Platform says:

When presidents fail to make hard choices, those who serve must make them instead. Soldiers must choose whether to stay with their families or to stay in the armed forces at all. Sending our military on vague, aimless, and endless missions rapidly saps morale. Even the highest morale is eventually undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, inadequate training, and rapidly declining readiness.

from The New Yorker:

Ron Suskind, in his book The One Percent Doctrine, claims that analysts at the C.I.A. watched a similar video, released in 2004, and concluded that "bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reëlection." Bin Laden shrewdly created an implicit association between Al Qaeda and the Democratic Party, for he had come to feel that Bush’s strategy in the war on terror was sustaining his own global importance.

News Articles

Reports

Analysis

  • 2007-07-27 What Are the Democratic Candidates Really Saying about Iraq? by Ira Chernus: how to decipher the doublespeak (related: 2008 US presidential race)
  • 2007-07-03 Winds of War by Joshua Muravchik (American Enterprise Institute): "Islamist radicals in the Middle East increasingly see the United States and Israel as weak, retreating powers. Twentieth-century history tells us that wars often erupt when the enemies of democratic nations view those nations as soft and passive. Consequently, the United States and Israel are perhaps as close as they have ever been to full-scale war with the likes of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah."
  • 2007-07-02
    • Orderly Humiliation by Thomas Donnelly (American Enterprise Institute): "Operation Phantom Thunder, the first real effect of the Iraq troop surge of the past six months, is improving the battlefield situation in Baghdad and the surrounding towns. But in Washington, those who believe the war is already lost--call it the Clinton-Lugar axis--are mounting a surge of their own. Ground won in Iraq becomes ground lost at home." Discusses the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), which is apparently the dems' answer to the neocon Project for a New American Century.
    • The New Strategy in Iraq by Frederick W. Kagan, Kimberly Kagan (American Enterprise Institute): "The new strategy for Iraq has entered its second phase. Now that all of the additional combat forces have arrived in theater, Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno have begun Operation Phantom Thunder, a vast and complex effort to disrupt al Qaeda and Shiite militia bases all around Baghdad in advance of the major clear-and-hold operations that will follow. The deployment of forces and preparations for this operation have gone better than expected..."

Other Opinions

  • found 2007-07-02 The Anti-War Media Assholes "They say that we're simply losing too many soldiers and that we cannot sustain these losses. In short, they'll say it's 'not worth it'. Never mind that our soldiers are killing terrorist scumbags at a ratio of more than 100 terrorists to each man that we lose. Never mind that the 100:1 ratio is much preferable to that of 19 terrorists to 3500 New Yorkers. It will never be worth it to the left wing of this country. No ratio is good enough... EVEN WHEN IT CAN BE CLEARLY SHOWN THAT OUR SOLDIERS ARE SAFER THAN OUR CITIZENS BACK HOME."
  • 2007-05-31 A spreading terror by Georgie Anne Geyer
  • 2007-05-04 Bush-Congress bickering limits options in Iraq by Leonard Pitts, Jr.: "In a way, it all comes down to a question of which imperative you want to betray. It is, after all, imperative that we supply our soldiers while they stand in harm's way. It is also imperative that we not keep them uselessly in harm's way. It is imperative that we not sacrifice our troops to an open-ended, ill-defined mission. It is also imperative that we not leave Iraq a lawless incubator for terrorist strikes."
  • 2007-05 A failure in generalship by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling: comparison with Vietnam; analysis of the situation
  • 2007-03-07 Beyond Quagmire: A panel of experts convened by Rolling Stone agree that the war in Iraq is lost. The only question now is: How bad will the coming explosion be? (Experts: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Clarke, Nir Rosen, Gen. Tony McPeak (retired), Bob Graham, Chas Freeman, Paul Pillar, Michael Scheuer, Juan Cole)
  • 2007-02-16 The Single Darkest Day in the History of the US: strongly anti-withdrawal blog entry. Seems to make some strange equivalences, but perhaps this could be useful in understanding the pro-Bush mindset?
  • 2007-01-22 "The Iraq War and the Sicilian Campaign" by Brent T. Ranalli, Part I and Part II: a history lesson from 415 BC, in which Athens, a "superpower" of the day, was ultimately destroyed by over-investment in an ill-considered war
  • 2006-12-03 How Our Civilization Can Fall by Orson Scott Card: offers a reasonable-sounding argument for the US to remain in Iraq, based on historical civilization-wide crashes. The difference between this and other arguments against leaving Iraq is that it suggests a possible model for what the US should be doing there, with historical data to back it up.
  • 2006-11-23 Roads, good intentions, etcetera by Charlie Stross (blog entry, with comments)
  • 2006-11-16 Iraq: The War of the Imagination by Mark Danner
  • 2006-10-30 The Only Issue This Election Day by Orson Scott Card explains why we are nation building in Iraq, and why it is the only worthy path.
  • 2006-08-13 Lies and Catastrophes by Orson Scott Card in defense of the Iraq war and Bush; synopsis:
    • A Democratic congressman recently used the word "catastrophic" in reference to Iraq, "but catastrophe is a word that requires there be widespread sudden damage" so the congressman must mean something else (first 12 paragraphs)
    • This is because "he was selling something", i.e. "He was trying to persuade the American people that the Iraq War was a dire mistake, a disaster" which can only (and must) be ended "by withdrawing our troops by the end of the year." (2 short paragraphs)
    • Withdrawing our troops in that manner, however, would be a catastrophe because:
      • "all the people who have taken bold action for democracy in Iraq would be left high and dry in the tribal and religious war that would certainly ensue. The citizens of Iraq would be slaughtered by local enemies who think nothing of blowing up each other's mosques, weddings, and funerals."
      • "all our enemies would be greatly emboldened by such a proof of our irresolution." Our enemies would learn that "If you kill American citizens and soldiers long enough, they give you everything you want. Since they were killing Americans before we liberated Iraq, it is hard to imagine that they would stop."
    • People who favor withdrawal from Iraq only do so because "they think we are somehow the cause of the war. We were bad, and so they hate us; if we become good, then they will be nice to us." (straw man argument –Woozle) This is not at all true; they hate us because we are prosperous.
    • The rest seems to be devoted to exploring the meaning of "lying" with regard to Bill Clinton vs. George W. Bush; further fisking needed.
  • 2006-08-10 The Guns Of August by Richard Holbrooke
  • 2006-07-23 In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam: also makes some comparisons with the Balkans
  • 2006-07-17 Iraq's Reconstruction a Boondoggle by Design by Joshua Holland, AlterNet
  • 2006-07-12 Exchanges with Mr. Bailey, a high school student (who may or may not have been actually a meme spammer)
  • 2005-12-01 Lying about the War: "truth became the first casualty in their campaign to whip up support."
  • 2005-08-30 Just one question for opponents of the war by Dennis Prager
  • 2003-01-21 One of the More Nauseating Images by Harold Pinter
  • 2003-01-19 Saddam will not be deposed by sweet reason or sanctions: pre-invasion opinions from a number of prominent Britons
  • 2002-08-26 MoveOn petition against invading Iraq

David Brin

From http://www.davidbrin.com/neocons.html :

  • Over a thousand Americans lost, with more dying almost daily and no end in sight.
  • Uncounted (and secret) numbers of Iraqi civilian deaths.
  • Scandals; poorly supervised thugs ruining our reputation for decent behavior.
  • A Western Alliance in shambles.
  • Relentless lies; intervention justified by fabricated evidence reminiscent of Tonkin Gulf.
  • Plummeting readiness levels — our military is being used-up.
  • Utterly divisive of American public (possibly a desired goal), repeating the social effects of Vietnam (Editor's note: further enhancing Bush's existing divisiveness)
  • Clever incarceration tricks overused as bludgeons, wrecking credibility and undermining due process.
  • Incompetent preparation and handling of the aftermath, featuring rapid deterioration of political, economic and social life in Iraq
  • Worldwide acceptance of US moral leadership plummeting.
  • And the fundamental strategic outcome — provoking a radicalized Islam, further stirred by Saudi-funded Al Jazeera Network and Saudi-funded religious schools, from Morocco to Mindanao, threatening a pan-Islamic coalescence into Jihad mentality for the first time in a thousand years.

Humor

  • 2007-05-17 I Drew This: some people warned the Bush supporters that invading Iraq would be a bad idea. The Bush supporters did it anyway, and then declared victory when there had hardly been enough time to see how things were going to shape up. Then, when the situation finally blew up in their faces, the Bush supporters blamed the nay-sayers for being defeatist.
  • Apple Presents the iRack from MadTV
  • We Want Iraq (originally written for the 1992 Gulf War)

Quotes

  • "I thought they were out of their minds, once I realised that they weren't kidding. The most inappropriate, the most counterproductive thing we could've done would've been to invade Iraq and I rather thought that was self-evident." – Richard A. Clarke, former US Counter-Terrorism Advisor [2]

Trivia

  • "Drat Saddam, a mad dastard!" is a palindrome.
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