If You Don't Do It Right The First Time, You Always Have To Do It Over

[Aus22]

The west was in Iraq for a decade and achieved little. How would staying longer help. No country wants another country to rebuild it,or interfere.

 

[GBFan]

The west was in Iraq for a decade and achieved little. How would staying longer help. No country wants another country to rebuild it,or interfere.

Clearly, you haven't had the opportunity to actually see what was accomplished in Iraq. Frankly, I'm a little amazed you even ask the question. Let's see if we can determine what we achieved ...

322 schools built
84 hospitals built
36 electric plants constructed
171 water distribution systems built
Estimated 2.7 million Iraqis provided medical services
70,000 Iraqis placed annually in jobs by US-led JOBS program
3 generations of Iraqis got to vote for the first time in their lives
Allowed Iraqis to have an input in their government for the first time in 1000 years, maybe ever
Uncounted number of lives saved by bombing interdiction missions
Desconstructed terrorist training sites and WMD production facilities
Removed a dictator from power - one who is estimated to have killed about 3 million countrymen, used WMDs on Kurds and Iranians, and stole approximately $30 billion from the food for refugees programs
Supported a working consensus government established by the Iraqis
Allowed government to develop their own Constitution

As for staying longer .... I would guess all you have to do is count the number of dead since the US left in order to determine what staying longer would have meant. Clearly, ISIS would have stayed underground because they would have been fighting the US. The government would have had sufficient time to develop the bureaucratic infrastructure necessary to manage a country. The government would have been able to stabilize its military structure under civilian control. The people would have had time, and security, to modify their government to meet their needs, and eliminate the thieves.

Instead, because of domestic politics - and an incredibly stupid foreign policy decision by the current regime - we pulled out the stabilizing effort provided by the US military, created the environment in which crooked politicians were able to integrate their cronies, left an Iraqi military without the command structure and control systems necessary to protect their country, one out of every nine Iraqis have been driven from their homes, an estimated 78,000 civilians have died since January 2014, 17,000 Iraqi military have been killed, and we invigorated and emboldened the Islam extremists to the point that they have destroyed two countries, and made significant strides toward coalescing the fragmented Islamic terrorist groups into a single entity.

Yeah, other than that ... we should never have been there, and we did the right thing to leave.

 

[Aus22]

If All this achievements are destroyed in the civil war, what lasting gains are there?

 

[Texas_tea]

If All this achievements are destroyed in the civil war, what lasting gains are there?

Let them kill each other ......

As long as they are doing that they are not targeting innocent Countries ....

Granted. that will not last long but, let these animals kill each others before we have to kill them .....

Reality check!

 

[GBFan]

If All this achievements are destroyed in the civil war, what lasting gains are there?

1) You must be kidding, right? You take NO responsibility for what is happening over there today?

2) What lasting gains are there? Why don't you ask all the babies inoculated, all the displaced persons returned to their homes, all the people who got a taste of real freedom? Why don't you ask those who had never seen an electric light bulb before, or what impact running water can have on a whole village? Why don't you ask those boys and girls who can now read and write?

3) It is the fault of you, and those like you, that the government of Iraq is collapsing. It is the fault of you, and those like you, that we now have a base of terrorist operations where Islamic terrorism can be exported, not only without worrying about the government, but actually with government sanction. It is the fault of you, and those like you, that over 17,000 Iraqis and 9,000 Syrians have died at the hands of a low level, piss ant, nobody who jumped into a vacuum created by you, and those like you. Let me guess ... it doesn't even keep you up at nights, does it? You don't even see the blood on your hands, do you?

4) When the Sydney Opera House lies burning, destroyed by Indonesian Islamic terrorists with bombs made in the Islam State, you'll just get all upset and blame the government because they listened to you, won't you? When Tel Aviv lies in rubble after a 3 kiloton nuclear bomb goes off in the town center, you will just shake your head at the fact those terrorists bought that bomb from Moscow with money provided by the Islam State, won't you?

You truly don't understand what you have done, do you?

 

[Aus22]

I am not saying that some good was not done in helping Iraq by the Allies. The Australians did all these things in their sector. What I am askin is that we do not interfere so that one side or other claims that these things were done by the west to help that side against the other. That would lead to their destruction.

 

[GBFan]

I am not saying that some good was not done in helping Iraq by the Allies. The Australians did all these things in their sector. What I am askin is that we do not interfere so that one side or other claims that these things were done by the west to help that side against the other. That would lead to their destruction.

Surely, you realize that isolationism is a fallacy ... we cannot afford to protect our (or your) national interests, given this international globalism.

 

[Texas_tea]

Surely, you realize that isolationism is a fallacy ... we cannot afford to protect our (or your) national interests, given this international globalism.

Can we say "passivist" ....