As Obama used to say, Iraq was a “stupid” war. After spending three trillion dollars, with thousands of American soldiers dead (more than the number of people who died in the 9/11 attacks), and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, just what did we accomplish? Well, we removed strongman Saddam Hussain from power. Of course, we helped keep him in power in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, especially during the Iraq/Iran war.
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That’s the American cycle. No doubt we’ll be back there in a couple decades trying to accomplish the same thing the pro-war people say we’ve accomplished already. We left all our military toys over there to save money, so I’m sure that will have some interesting consequences.
The majority of people seem to forget that we built the Middle East into what it is today (well, the Russians helped a bit, too…). Had we just left them alone, they’d be killing each other with sticks and stones instead of with assault rifles and RPGs. We kept them down socio-economically, took control of their government, tried to outsource their most valuable resource, and then tell them that we were helping them. It’s no wonder they don’t like us.
And of course, someone will come to power, and America will have to throw its two cents in about whether they are a democratic leader or a dictator. Then, we’ll either support them until they become a dictator or we’ll move in and help to overthrow them and the process will begin all over again. We create our own worst enemies.
Jeff,not while Obama is President. Hopefully we will have another five years of him keeping us safe in our home territory. He is working on protecting us from the terrorists from the middle east and the home grown white supremacists. He has a pretty admiral record in the last three years.