20 Years Ago I Happily Cheered On the Iraq Invasion... that was stupid

[Destino]

On 3/22/2023 at 1:56 PM, PleaseBlitz said:

Does anyone else think that OBL "won"?  I do.  His goal was to cause as much damage to the US and the West as possible.  His plan not only killed 3,000 plus people directly, but he caused us to spend $3 trillion that could have been better used doing almost anything else, countless deaths of US service people, changed US domestic policy for decades and irreparably damaged the US' standing in the world.  Today, the Post's foreign policy columnist, David Ignatious, had the following exchange in a chat:

No.  I think OBL major blind spot was that his group benefitted from flying below the radar.  So long as he could show up to take credit for attacks and otherwise not deal with any scrutiny he could play the folk hero.  The more attention his radical views received and the more his group was forced to hide as they were chased round the globe, the worse he looked.  The worse they all looked.  It culminated in Iraq leading the effort to exterminate ISIS.  People underestimate, I think, how important that moment was because radical Islam was supposed to be the repudiation of the west.  Yet they themselves became the enemy to be hunted down like dogs to great celebration.

 

The were the members of the western press that carried his water though.  Too many framed terrorism as purely, or largely, a response to western murder and injustice, and not a reaction to increased liberal views in the region.  That was a major victory for OBL.  They helped paint psychotic terrorists that wanted to bring back slavery and treat women like objects, as sympathetic survivors of drone strikes gone wrong.  They ignored or rarely mentioned the violent history of terrorist leaders that usually started with violent hatred in their villages that had little to nothing to do with the west.  ISIS and Al Qaeda were never about liberation, never about righting wrongs, they were always and will always be religious extremist that hate any movement towards more open and free societies.  They’re witch hunters that gloried in public executions of heretics, and believed in restoring their warped vision of faith through brutality from the very beginning.  

[Renegade7]

On 3/22/2023 at 1:49 PM, PokerPacker said:

Honest question: How is Iraq today?  Nobody seems to talk about it.

 

Borderline proxy state for Iran now, very sobering Vice pieces about it.

 

I'll also admit I wishfully thought that a stable, western style democracy in the heart of the middle east would in the long run be worth it when I was a teenager.

 

 

It wasn't...regime change 101 is "you break it, you own it"...rouge nation building is borderline impossible, especially when you don't understand anything about the nation one is building (like the complex demographics that European Powers didn't care about either when they carved up the borders in that and other parts of the world).

Edited March 26, 2023 by Renegade7

[Larry]

1 hour ago, Renegade7 said:

I'll also admit I wishfully thought that a stable, western style democracy in the heart of the middle east would in the long run be worth it when I was a teenager.

 

Oh, I thought that if we could do it?  Totally worth it.  

 

Just figured that we really had no basis to think we could do it.  What we seem to be a lot better at, is installing dictators who are indebted to US corporations.