Was the war in Iraq worth it? I have a better question

After 5 years, 4000 dead, countless 10's of thousands of Iraqi's dead, some 25,000 wounded americans and the general view being that it was not worth it...I ask this

Could it have been?
No I dont mean had we found WMD, they where there or not, we cant change that. Facts are, they where not,

But had we sent in more troops, and really worked hard from the start to seal the borders, and had we pushed real security from the start so the insurgents never had a shot to regroup.....could it have worked ?
that is my question...

 

Hindsight is an amazing and convenient thing. We can sit back and criticize everything that has not gone well as if our brilliance after-the-fact would have allowed for a better outcome.

"could it have worked" Has time run out on some imaginary stopwatch? I was under the impression that there were still thousands of Americans in Iraq trying to make this work. I'll reserve judgment for when they are all back home and our direct involvement in this mess is closed. Of course it is an unpopular point of view but I will continue to remain optimistic until that time.

Oh and I'm no fan of quoting body count statistics. This is usually done to press political views which is, in my opinion, a disgrace to every man and woman that lost their lives in support of this country.

Were there mistakes made in the prosecution of this war? Absolutely. For me, this war ended when Saddam jumped down his hole in the ground. What has transpired since is considered war to some but I see it as political posturing and nation building. Either lay down the law and enforce it with overwhelming force or pull up the tents and let them choose their own destiny

 

Absolutely. There were two critical errors in my humble view.

First, we spent a year talking about how we were going to war, without going to war. We gave Saddam 12 months to hide all his garbage. We should have said we were going to war when we showed up and started marching across the boarder.

Second, we ignored the ethnic tension that was hiding in Iraq from years of Saddam's oppression. We thought as soon as he was removed, everyone would get together and sing songs. Instead, all of the class warfare was released from the lack of governmental control and we were caught with far too few men to do the job. Meanwhile our enemies seized the moment and started expanding in Iraq.

We should have known that would happen, and had overwhelming force from the start.

Was it worth it? No doubt. A dangerous enemy of the US is removed, and a nation of Arabs has been liberated. We can only hope they use the opportunity given to them for good.

 

Of course, many don't accept your assumption that it hasn't been worth it. People get killed in war? Who'da thunk it. Your's is static analysis and ignores what would have happened and how many would have died if we HADN'T taken him out.

You mean they WERE not? You can't prove that - such negative assertions are almost impossible to prove.

Not a chance.

 

Good question PFOS,

I would say yes, there were some very fundamental mistakes made by the Bush Administration. Firstly, I will say that there is little doubt in my mind the initial invasion and moving from Kuwait to taking over Baghdad was done beyond the realistic expectations of those involved. It went smoothly, and with unthinkable small casualties on the coalition side.

Where it went wrong is that there was never really a plan or outline for the occupation.

A troop force of 200k or more would have been better simply for the additional flexibility it would have allowed the US.
Also, allowing the Iraqi people to remain armed and then disolving the Baath Party and the armed forces was quite unwise. What basically happened was that half a million Iraqi Army members who had been defeated, but were well armed and trained, and instead of utilizing that expertise they sent them home shamed and without jobs.

Also, far to many of the non-military/intelligence agencies were left out of the humanitarian aide process. We cant expect the military to build countries, when its design and purpose is to bring them down.

I think there was a time when there was enough good will on the Iraqis part to have made this much more peaceful and successful. Unfortunately the political leaders in this country let down the troops and more importantly the Iraqis.

 

Umm the point is that Most people do believe it was not worth it. And I don't see a path at this point that takes us anyplace near what the said war goals where...if you have thousands of dead Americans, and you cant even get close to your goals...that is a waste. I still think Iraq could be saved...I just know its not going to be, Bush is to dumb and weak , and the Dem's already are seeing it at over and lets just get out.

And please move on, 1 there was no WMD...or 2 Saddam was the master at hiding them to the point that even today we have no idea where they are . Saddam was not that smart. Stop living in a fairytail. I thought there was some there, there was not. As bUsh started giving his evidence< I was less and less convinced we would find them. The more I looked into it, the more I found to suggest the program was in fact ended in 1998...but I still thought there was a good chance....I was wrong....one of the few things about this war I was wrong about from the start.

 

I agree, its one of the reasons why from the start while Attacked Bush because I knew he was lieing, I also knew that done right there was some potential to do this and have it work. To hope for some becoming of Democracy was asking a bit much , but something far less then Saddam was not. Sometime I wish I had been more against this war from the start, but I had this odd idea that the people on top knew at least as much as I did about what was likely to happen and had then set some form of plan for it...not the Run in and wing it display we saw after it started.

 

I don't believe so. If the Iraqis want a free Iraq then they have to be willing to fight for it themselves and if they can't muster enough support among their fellow Iraqis to do it alone, and they can't, then Iraq CLEARLY was/is not ready for unity and democracy. Iraq is going to turn out just like Afghanistan no matter how long we're there and no matter what we do. It's going to have a central government, corrupt to the core, and with little to no power/authority outside of the capital with large militias, each with it's own agenda, controlling everything else. That is, until those militias decide they're ready to overthrow the central government.
President Bush continues to shift the goal posts when it comes to what progress in Iraq really means and as long as he continues to do so our troops will be bogged down in an endless and pointless war. When entire battalions of Iraqi police, trained by us, are siding with sectarian leaders and acting as death squads with the aid and complicity of high level officials in the Iraqi government, it's CLEARLY not progress. Continuing to allow sectarian militias to form, control parts of Iraq, and massacre Iraqi civilians without consequence is CLEARLY not progress. We haven't made real progress in Iraq, we've only succeeded in delaying and/or minimizing the inevitable consequence of the absence of Saddam. I only wish that Bush would have been reminded of what Cheney said in 1993.

 

its is wrong to confuse will, with ability. You can have all the will you want, when a sociopath like Saddam has a huge modern army and has shown he would even use WMD on his own people to keep them down, and was killing his own at a rapid rate for anything he felt like....simple will will not win you over. They tried 2 times and where slaughtered liked lambs

 

I would recomend anyone who has an interest on the subject to watch the episode of FrontLine that first aired on PBS last night. Titled Bush's War. It more or less laid out the failures and successes of this conflict. I had always suspected that Powell was marginalized in favor of Cheney and Rummy. But didnt realise the extent. Rumsfeld blundered badly, in thinking it would be easier than it was. Bush blundered badly by minimizing the very cabinet member with the most experience on issues like this...Powell.

Its a shame really, when the two draft dodgers Cheney and Bush were stateside drinking beer and chasing girls, Powell was in Vietnam serving. Now with the lessons Powell learned and spoke about in preventing another Vietnam type situation, Cheney and Bush didnt want to listen to him.

I said in an earlier post that most of the military especially its leadership has done a good job. They have been handcuffed by thier inept and borderline criminally negligent(IMO) civilian leaders.

 

I disagree. I'm not saying that the Iraqis should have done it completely alone but THEY should have done the heavy lifting instead of goading the United States into doing all of the work for them. The Iraqis simply don't have the resolve to win this.

 

They did that 2 times already and the US said they would back them...we bailed last min on them and left them high and dry and they where slaughtered. Thank Bush 1 and Clinton for that....They had no reason to trust or believe us. Our 4000 dead pales next to the numbers of Dead on there side from those 2 uprisings I am sure.

 

We did back them.

 

no we said we would , then when they rose up, we got cold feet and left them to hang.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq#U.S._non-intervention

 

The Shia rebels were/are just puppets of Iran and never really carried out any organized resistance other than a few seemingly random assassination attempts. It's difficult to provide support to an uprising seeking to overthrow a dictator when said uprising is confined to a handful of locations with no organization or set plan and being carried out by agents of our enemy in the region. It's also difficult to help someone who doesn't tell you when, where, or how to help them but, in case you forgot, we did invade Iraq in 1990 and Clinton provided Northern Iraqi resistance groups with tens of millions of dollars in arms and equipment. Those groups chose to take the assistance and sit on their hands.