Trump: World Would Be Better If We Still Had Saddam and Kadhafi
The world would be a better place if dictators such as Saddam Hussein and Moamer Kadhafi were still in power, top Republican US presidential hopeful Donald Trump said in comments aired Sunday.
The billionaire real estate tycoon also told CNN’s “State of the Union” talk show that the Middle East “blew up” around US President Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, his biggest Democratic rival in the race for the White House.
“100 percent,” Trump said when asked if the world would be better off with Saddam and Kadhafi still at the helm in Iraq and Libya.
I think he’s right.
A lot of dead americans and muslims would still be alive.
beni (b20cdf) — 10/25/2015 @ 11:09 pmQaddafi was contained and was not threatening reprisals or a bloodbath in the civil war. The rebels had been driven back into Benghazi, five other sizable cities had already been retaken by the regime and there were no reprisals against civilians there. The threat was rebel propaganda; the French panicked because they thought the oil terminals would be destroyed and it’s a major source for them. So, yeah, bad idea.
Saddam was out of control, was in serial violation of the ceasefire agreement from the Gulf War. Bush gave seven major reasons to invade in his UN speech, WMD stockpiling was only one of those, and “yellowcake” just a supporting point for that one.
By 2011, the surge had succeeded and Iraq was stable. All Obama had to do was negotiate a SOFA to keep troops there, but refused to push it. The notion the Iraqis refused immunity is silly – they had the same position before the last one, but wanted troops and would have conceded the point again, it was purely for domestic politics. The failure of Iraq is 100% on Obama’s weak policy.
Estragon (ada867) — 10/25/2015 @ 11:14 pmThe question is a stupidly impossible one, but if we’re going to speculate, then I choose to speculate based on historical patterns. Based on that, I speculate that but for the American response after 9/11, including the Iraq War, both dictators would have used their oil wealth to do that which they had both done — without any doubt — for the previous decades, that being:
As soon as they thought they could, they’d get WMDs. That they hadn’t before we toppled their respective governments reflects their lack of opportunity, not their lack of means or motive.
To the limited extent that the question is valid, Trump got both parts wrong.
And the ability to criticize ones forebears says nothing about one’s ability to do better, or even remotely as well, which brings me back to Trump. With respect to whom, again, if I’m to speculate, I choose to speculate along lines consistent with history, in which case:
He’s bankrupted every significant business he’s ever run, four times. He lies 1.8 times in every sentence, which isn’t quite Clintonian but is still respectable. His word is worthless; he brags about breaking it and getting away with it. He’s a con man.
Beldar (fa637a) — 10/25/2015 @ 11:38 pmBeldar – Con man like Paul Ryan? or just a liar like Paul Ryan?
mg (31009b) — 10/26/2015 @ 12:16 amCruz/West
The world would be an even better place without Trump in it.
nk (dbc370) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:10 amThe world would be better with no democrats.
mg (31009b) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:59 amat this point a president what understands that failmerica is a failed superpower with no business fecklessly prancing its soldiers around the middle east to the tune of billions and billions of borrowed dollars is probably a net plus
happyfeet (831175) — 10/26/2015 @ 3:07 amI suspect he’s making the point, if only inadvertently, that authoritarians are better
Richard Aubrey (472a6f) — 10/26/2015 @ 4:25 amfor ther rest of us than what takes their place. During the Cold War, it was commies who
were expanionist. Dictators just stay home and steal stuff. Now, it’s Islamists. Still,
as has been said, we don’t know what the Big Two would have done without serious examples
as when Gadaffy saw his Islamic bro hauled out of a hole. What it would have taken as an
example to make Saddaam knock it off? The mind reels, and the question of to whom to do
what to convince Saddaam to be a good guy is a poser.
OTOH, had I known–I guess I should have–that we’d elect a dem whose platform was to piss
away that for which brave men died, I might not have supported the Iraq thing.
He almost certainly is right but the point he makes is actually a subtle one (which of course no one expects from Trump) that goes over most people’s heads.
Had the two murderous tyrants been removed AND U.S. policy ran by someone with common sense the world would be better off.
Its kind of like mixing ingredients to make a cake and then not baking it. Doesn’t turn out well.
mark johnson (e5b36b) — 10/26/2015 @ 5:41 amWhat Estragon, Beldar, and Richard said.
The guy in Libya was not a threat because of what was done in Iraq.
As I have said before, there were legitimate reasons against going into Iraq, which are never discussed because lies and propaganda rule the day instead.
If past behavior is a marker for future behavior,
Saddam would have started more wars with more dangerous weapons.
I still think Iran and Syria could have been intimidated into better behavior as Libya was if not for the treachery of the Dems playing politics,
MD in Philly (not in Philly, and out and about) (457d84) — 10/26/2015 @ 5:48 amAnd Rove letting them.
What mark said too.
MD in Philly (not in Philly, and out and about) (457d84) — 10/26/2015 @ 5:49 amKadhafi had long since ceased to even be an opponent of the US when Obama/Clinton deposed him. He had allowed the masterminds behind Lockerbie to be tried outside Libya years earlier and ended his nuke program during the Bush admin after seeing what happened to Hussein. I don’t think he was in any way involved in terrorism in his later years.
It’s hard to say about Hussein because you would have to be able to rewind history and see what would have happened had he still be in power. He supported terrorism and was determined to get nukes. Criticizing Obama for letting Iran get nukes while saying it’s fine if there was a nuclear armed Iraq regime controlled by an enemy of the US doesn’t make much sense.
Gerald A (5dca03) — 10/26/2015 @ 5:59 amTruly hypothetical question. Neither should have remained in power, but look at what has filled the vacuum.
What I do know is that the world would be a better place minus the idiot carnival barking antics of Donald Trump.
Colonel Haiku (436b69) — 10/26/2015 @ 6:14 amQadaffi was no longer a threat, because of the threat that Iraq illustrated. Mubarak was An ally along with Ben ali, they all had to be taken down.
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/26/2015 @ 6:19 amAnd most of this was provoked by team assange lets not forget this.
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/26/2015 @ 6:41 amTrump is dead wrong on this issue. Look at the quisling Dems and their special relations ships to creating horrific power vacuums.
Remember Vietnam and the rise of Pot Pol and the “killing fields.
mike191 (b4a717) — 10/26/2015 @ 7:40 amRemember the joy of the blue finger and the smiles of Iraq women and men voting to be replaced by a strain of vicious barbarism unrestrained by President44 and his cabal.
Qadaffi was removed by President44 and the idea of “you broke it you own it” is not an operating function of Democrats.
To paraphrase Thomas Sowell: ” those who do not protect civilization will have to accept barbarism.”
Don’t let almost president Al Gore off the hook. His global warming fraud inspired Bush to corn ethanol abuse of the American public, which led to food riots in Egypt, which toppled Mubarak.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 10/26/2015 @ 7:44 amMr Johnson said:
What, you’ve never enjoyed licking the bowl?
The wryly amused Dana (f6a568) — 10/26/2015 @ 8:20 am“100 percent,” Trump said when asked if the world would be better off with Saddam and Kadhafi still at the helm in Iraq and Libya.
I take Beldar and mark johnson’s points above and merely add a sad, and somewhat devalued, two pence.
Quite apart from the personal ambitions that seem to have distinguished the two men above from the usual despots of that part of the world, given the predictably violent reaction of Arab national-socialist regimes to even the most anodyne forms of political disagreement, it is charitable to assume that any new cruelties inflicted upon the citizens of those two countries by their overlords would stay within those borders (and I am allowing for the prospect that the forces unleashed by the Arab Spring movements do not unfold in this purported timeline).
Or, put another way, think of Bashar Assad as merely a warm-up man.
One also has to accept the premise that Saddam and Ghadaffi would still be around absent U.S./Western intervention. Among other things, Ghaddafi was not a well man, and however ruthless both men were in removing political opponents, the question of political succession in Libya and Iraq was, to say the least, complicated.
JP (317243) — 10/26/2015 @ 8:48 amI think he’s right about Qadafi and Saddam, but only because Obama squandered the efforts we made in Iraq. If Obama weren’t such a foreign policy traitor/fool, then Iraq and the world would be better off without Saddam.
DRJ (15874d) — 10/26/2015 @ 8:54 amI think he is trying to appeal to Democrats who are not enthusiastic about Hillary.
He is validating their Bush hatred but offering a less corrupt governance model. Democrats like rich people like FDR who they think will extract less graft.
Mike K (90dfdc) — 10/26/2015 @ 9:00 amThis Trump-bashing is starting to irritate me. The Des Moines Register poll found Carson in the lead because he’s viewed as honest, but Trump is the candidate who is overwhelmingly viewed as the candidate who can’t be bought and is most likely to make real change.
People want real change, even if it takes a larger-than-life outsider to make it happen. Hate Trump all you want but it makes you look like you hate the dissatisfied voters, too. I think that’s a big mistake and the path to the kind of disunity that will cost the GOP this election.
DRJ (15874d) — 10/26/2015 @ 9:02 am“Don’t let almost president Al Gore off the hook. His global warming fraud inspired Bush to corn ethanol abuse of the American public, which led to food riots in Egypt, which toppled Mubarak.”
– paper tiger
Hahahaha… lets not let Kevin Bacon off the hook, either.
Leviticus (f9a067) — 10/26/2015 @ 9:12 amAl Gore got over 50 million votes for President so I think it’s fair to assume he has more influence than most people (including Kevin Bacon).
DRJ (15874d) — 10/26/2015 @ 9:29 amThen I suggest you get off social media ASAP. ‘Cause, get this, it’s filled with all sorts of dissenting viewpoints.
Gee, who would’ve ever thought a guy who inherited a massive fortune can’t be bought?
Which is why people shouldn’t support a lifelong Democrat like Trump.
In the Right’s frustration with the current leadership (who they condemn as ineffectual RINOs), they’re willing to back a guy who has a history of backing liberal candidates and positions, who openly supports single payer, who was the only one in the room to oppose cutting off Planned Parenthood, who never offers concrete details (only offering up “I can do better”), who hides behind personal insults, who whines on social media about being criticized, and who saves his most vicious criticism for those to his Right instead of those to his Left.
I don’t hate dissatisfied voters, but I sure do think they’re stupid to embrace someone like that.
Feel free to take that up with the Trump supporters who accuse anyone of criticizing the guy of being a RINO.
tops116 (d094f8) — 10/26/2015 @ 9:58 amGiven that one of the most accurate and widely accepted criticisms of Mrs. Clinton–including one that many if not most people who are planning to hold their noses while voting for her–is that she is a political weathervane, I’m not sure why any sensible voters who want to stop her would want to nominate someone who makes her look like Barry Goldwater as far as devotion to any particular political principles goes.
Ultimately, the person who wins the Republican nomination will be the one who wins the nomination, and if that ends up being someone who is appalling to a great portion of would-be Republican voters, they will have to decide whether they are willing to tolerate four to eight years of President Her XXNess as the price tag of expressing their distaste. But let’s not kid ourselves here–Trump is a horror as a potential nominee, and if he manages to snag the nomination it will be a historical slap across the face to the Republican Party and their ability to put up credible candidates for the presidency, regardless of whether Mr. Trump manages to beat the also historically pathetic nominee that Mrs. Clinton would be for the Democrats.
M. Scott Eiland (1edade) — 10/26/2015 @ 10:19 amAlso the largest super hurricane ever recorded in the history of the world just hit Manzanilla, Mexico dead on. Here’s video of the aftermath.
Deck chairs all akimbo. One guys shrubbery was uprooted. Street signage took particularly harsh punishment. Some coconut palms were downed. Another guys fruit stand got wet. A chain link road fence was bent over.
No undue influence by Al Gore at all in the reportage, right?
papertiger (c2d6da) — 10/26/2015 @ 10:36 amSorry missed the close tag.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 10/26/2015 @ 10:37 amhahaha Dupliticus
papertiger (c2d6da) — 10/26/2015 @ 10:38 amtops 118,
I don’t do social media. I do Patterico.com.
Reading your comment, I see Trump is exactly like Boehner and McConnell, except when it comes to immigration and foreign policy.
DRJ (15874d) — 10/26/2015 @ 10:42 amWho do you support, tops?
DRJ (15874d) — 10/26/2015 @ 10:48 amDRJ – This Trump-bashing is starting to irritate me.
Trump-bashing is fine. This is not:
Patterico – The narrative that his supporters are a giant mass of small-conservative folks who are fed up with the GOP’s support for big government…
Are you hallucinating? No one who pays even a little attention argues that the Trump wave is a small-govt movement. He is popular because he is an immigration hard-liner, and he relentlessly groin-kicks the establishment.
GOP voters have figured out the party wants their votes and donations while delivering only lies in return. Middle and lower class workers have suffered a stagnant economy for over a decade. Ordinary conservatives naturally get angry when they observe a united political class (including Cruz) bent on importing millions of new voters and workers. In this environment, “smite my enemy, and leave me in possession of my country” resonates.
Patterico – His supporters don’t care about policy.
If Trump abandoned The Wall, his campaign would disintegrate. I understand you want to set a record for most posts analyzing Trump without writing the word “immigration,” but at some point you start to make yourself ridiculous.
scrutineer (b7d257) — 10/26/2015 @ 11:00 amThis may seem off-topic, but: DRJ, are you familiar at all with Houston-based real estate developer Gerald D. Hines?
Beldar (fa637a) — 10/26/2015 @ 11:49 amImmigration was the first stone, but there has been more than that.
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/26/2015 @ 11:59 amYes. If we are going to go to war against a toxic culture, then we have to stay and forcibly change that culture, like we did in Japan and Germany, or it will regenerate in an even worse form, like ISIS. Nobody at high levels wants to admit that. We can just bomb away and topple the bad guy, and the newly “free” will establish a Jeffersonian democracy all on their own.
Iraq was thus IMO misguided; the presidential skedaddle later was malevolent. And Libya was the absolute worst: We deposed Gadaffi because we COULD. Totally dishonorable and cynical. He had surrendered to Bush, and so he couldn’t fight back. What did we gain? Nothing!
And the whole world learned a lesson there.
Patricia (5fc097) — 10/26/2015 @ 1:28 pmAs soon as they thought they could, they’d get WMDs. That they hadn’t before we toppled their respective governments reflects their lack of opportunity, not their lack of means or motive.
Or their fear of America, which would have been utterly lost had we taken the Gandhi Option.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 10/26/2015 @ 1:49 pmThe “Should have left them in power” meme compares reality with the best of all possible alternate universes. Actual events versus supposition. I can’t imagine a bigger pile of BS than that discussion.
The ONLY thing to discuss is whether each action taken was reasonable, or rational, at the time it was taken, and if the actual motives were good or bad. The rest of the “what if” discussion ought to embarrass anyone involved. Especially if it includes Trump who provides as much backup to his assertions as Perry, a very similar troll.
—-
Bush had EVERYONE telling him that 1) Saddam HAD WMDs; 2) had used them against his own people; and 3) the strongman regimes were not a good way to defeat radical Islam.
His choice was rational, his reasons were good, although the follow-through was mediocre. Bush’s great fault was in judging people.
ONCE ELECTED, Obama had this tentative victory to hold on to, and chose to let it go. It is almost as if he wanted Iraq to be a defeat and chose to make it so. He did this despite all advice so it was not reasonable or rational. He did it to appease his left wing, so it was not good, either.
Then he attacked Ghaddfi for reasons that are not yet clear.
——
But “What might have been” is just wank, and Mr Trump would be a clown for bringing this up, were he not already one.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:03 pmWhenever Hugh Hewitt is interviewing someone — anyone, but especially political candidates — and he’s about to ask them about terrorism-related subjects, he almost always first asks whether they’ve read Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” (2006).
From Hewitt’s radio interview with Trump, way back on February 25, 2015, well before the second GOP debate, but after Hewitt had been announced as one of the questioners (ellipsis in original):
The reason Hewitt asks this question is because he thinks it’s the touchstone for demonstrating a serious interest in figuring out who attacked us on 9/11 and why.
Beldar (fa637a) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:04 pmscrutineer is correct about Trump and his support, although he ignores the nationalism and protectionism part of Trump’s policy* message. It’s not just about illegals, and it’s not just about the wall. A lot of white carpenters are upset that they can’t get work and see lots of brown people on the job.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:10 pmIt’s a false choice, between doing what was actually done and doing nothing. Qaddafi was deposed without a ten-year American occupation and so could Saddam Hussein have been.
In Afghanistan there wasn’t any one person to depose, but we decided on an 14-years-and-counting occupation anyway.
Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:15 pm*policy should be more than bumper-stickers
Kevin M (25bbee) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:15 pmYeah, and Libya is a far worse place because we broke it and didn’t fix it. In Iraq we broke it and were on a path to fixing it — the patient was stable but required more surgery — when Obama up and left.
Bush always said the task would take several administrations. He never counted on a fool becoming president.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:18 pm@ Gabriel Hanna (#40), who wrote: “Qaddafi was deposed without a ten-year American occupation and so could Saddam Hussein have been.”
Maybe. I do agree that it’s crucial to distinguish between wars, on the one hand, and resulting occupations, on the other.
I disagree that Hussein could have been deposed by means short of war. In the Gulf War, there were a number of reasons why George H.W. Bush rejected the pleas of those who wanted to push on to Baghdad after liberating Kuwait. Chief among them was that the coalition led by the U.S. had no mandate beyond that, and would indeed not only shatter but quite possibly flip. But a secondary reason was that we didn’t need to push on to Baghdad, that we had “Saddam contained in his box.”
Tell that to his citizens whom he killed with helicopter-spread nerve gas despite our no-fly zone. Tell that to the U.S. and other coalition (but mostly, yeah, U.S.) pilots whom Iraq did its very best to shoot down and kill on a daily basis as they enforced that no-fly zone.
If there’s one thing the extended run-up to the Iraq War did demonstrate in spades, it was that George W. Bush — via the U.N. and otherwise — did everything he could to give Saddam a way out and a way to save face. Until the very end he could probably have held onto power, and even the night before the war started, he was publicly offered a last chance to flee into a safe exile (which other Arab leaders still sympathetic to him were offering to facilitate), where he could enjoy his plundered billions.
Beldar (fa637a) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:32 pmRegarding long post-war occupations: We kept American boots on the ground in the Philippines from the end of the Spanish-American war through what, the mid-1970s or early 1980s? We’ve had tens of thousand of American boots on the ground in Germany and Japan continuously since 1945, in South Korea since 1953, and in the Balkins since the last Clinton was POTUS.
And America’s a relative novice at post-war occupations. The British, who know something about Afghanistan and its history, might find quite charming the idea that 14 years is a long time in Afghanistan.
Beldar (fa637a) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:39 pmCan’t argue the benefits of something being recreated without contemplating the negatives of it existing. Looney tunes thinking.
Point being is “maybe” but no so sure I’d be declarative. And how can you argue his point? Pure spec.
Rodney King's Spirit (ab8c0d) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:52 pmOr: I may have mis-read you, and perhaps you agree Hussein couldn’t have been deposed by means short of war. If you were merely observing that we could have simply abandoned Iraq and/or Afghanistan more quickly than Obama abandoned Iraq, then: Yes, we could have, I suppose, if we didn’t care what happened after we left. And I’m sorry for inferring otherwise.
Beldar (fa637a) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:54 pmI’m not criticizing the tactics used. It’s just that in each of those examples, the Philippines, Germany, Japan, Korea, the antagonists had spilled over their borders to menace their neighbors. Our troops weren’t stationed to subdue the population, but rather to avoid the shattered foe from being gobbled up by nominative allies, or undefeated belligerents.
None of those cases apply to Iraq and Libya. We went in because we didn’t like their leadership, because we didn’t like the way they conducted their internal affairs.
I don’t like Trudeau. Shall we invade Canada?
papertiger (c2d6da) — 10/26/2015 @ 3:17 pm@Beldar:I may have mis-read you
You did. Deposing Saddam short of war would have required his being reasonable and our being credible, so I think war certainly was necessary for deposing him.
If you were merely observing that we could have simply abandoned Iraq and/or Afghanistan more quickly than Obama abandoned Iraq, then: Yes, we could have
Could have and should have.
Regarding long post-war occupations:
None of your examples qualify. Yes, we have troops stationed in those places, but they do not “occupy” those nations any more than they “occupy” the US states where we have troops stationed.
The three nations you mentioned govern themselves. An “occupation” is when our soldiers police their populace.
The British, who know something about Afghanistan and its history, might find quite charming the idea that 14 years is a long time in Afghanistan.
They never attempted anything like what we have in Afghanistan.
Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1) — 10/26/2015 @ 3:22 pm@papertiger:Shall we invade Canada?
US is 0/2 on invasions of Canada. Best leave them be. 🙂
Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1) — 10/26/2015 @ 3:26 pmAhhh, but that was before we had The Great Leader to direct the troops, Gabriel Hanna.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie™ (f4eb27) — 10/26/2015 @ 3:31 pmBeldar, I think Patterico is merely saying that while Bush made the world a better place by ousing Hussein and taming Gadaffi, 0bama has not only undone all that good but made the world a worse place than it was when Bush started.
Milhouse (e5ca2a) — 10/26/2015 @ 3:44 pmPapertiger, we went into Iraq because they invaded Kuwait, and were menacing all of their neighbors. That war was still in effect in 2003; as soon as Hussein violated the ceasefire, that was all the justification we needed to resume hostilities. And Hussein was still menacing us and the whole world, by sponsoring terrorist attacks, by shooting at our planes, and by developing weapons that by the terms of the ceasefire he had no right to. And the sanctions regime that was supposed to contain him had failed; all it was doing was giving him an excuse to kill thousands of Ira
The same was true of Gadaffi, until we caught Hussein and he gave up. What he turned over to us was frightening; as much as we may have overestimated the state of Hussein’s weapons program, we underestimated Gadaffi’s.
Milhouse (e5ca2a) — 10/26/2015 @ 3:51 pmOops:
And the sanctions regime that was supposed to contain him had failed; all it was doing was giving him an excuse to kill thousands of Iraqi babies and blame us.
Milhouse (e5ca2a) — 10/26/2015 @ 3:52 pmWell now we are in the place on the timeline that we have to stay in Afghanistan because of the advent of a nuclear Iran on the horizon.
Danube River Guide (76b104) — 10/26/2015 @ 3:52 pmYou’ve got a very bad habit of waxing Obamaesque and generalizing about the “bitter clingers.”
Steve57 (a0050a) — 10/26/2015 @ 3:59 pmThe reason Hewitt asks this question is because he thinks it’s the touchstone for demonstrating a serious interest in figuring out who attacked us on 9/11 and why.
Yes and it is one reason why I liked his show until the idiots that run the radio station in LA replaced him with Mark Levin who irritates the hell out of me. Hewitt was the best interviewer on radio. Levin is a screamer.
They have Hewitt on none live on at a late hour when no one is listening.
Mike K (90dfdc) — 10/26/2015 @ 4:28 pmWell now we are in the place on the timeline that we have to stay in Afghanistan because of the advent of a nuclear Iran on the horizon.
No, it’s hopeless. Read Belmont Club for the very bad news about Pakistan.
Obama hosts Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the White House on Thursday amid speculation that their nations are in talks to limit the scope of Pakistan’s nuclear arms program in return for greater access to technology and fuel for civilian purposes, similar to a U.S. deal with its arch-rival India. Obama also wants Pakistan’s commitment to curb Islamic militants operating within its borders and to play a role in brokering an accord with the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. …
Satellite images indicate Pakistan started up its fourth reactor earlier this year, making it capable of more than doubling the amount of weapons-grade plutonium it produces, according to the Institute for Science and International Security.
Obama will be about as “successful” with the Paks as he was with Iran. You may not be interested in nuclear war but nuclear war is interested in you.
Mike K (90dfdc) — 10/26/2015 @ 4:30 pmRegarding long post-war occupations:
None of your examples qualify. Yes, we have troops stationed in those places, but they do not “occupy” those nations any more than they “occupy” the US states where we have troops stationed.
Has the level of discourse declined the past few days ? Do you really think that we did not “occupy” Germany and Japan for years before their status was similar to “the US states where we have troops stationed.?”
Mike K (90dfdc) — 10/26/2015 @ 4:32 pmIf your troops go armed in the country and leave their bases to fight indigenous belligerents, it’s an occupation. Iraq before the bugout, and Afghanistan now, are occupations. Maybe halfassed, halfhearted, understrength occupations but still occupations.
nk (dbc370) — 10/26/2015 @ 4:40 pmLegally, occupations end when sovereignty is restored.
Practically, not so much.
We could, and should, have kept troops in the stable Iraq that Dubya handed over to Obama in 2009. They would have been there not as “occupiers” in a legal sense, but pursuant to a status of forces agreement, with the consent of the Iraqi government.
As a practical matter, their continued presence would’ve served both to deter attacks like that now being leveled by ISIS as well as propping up the legal government (such as it was) until eventually (like all of the countries I mentioned) it could stand on its own. Thereafter, the US troops primarily served to deter outside enemies; but don’t think that German politicians and South Korean politicians are not aware, to this good day, of the importance of the American troops on their soil and the American nuclear umbrella under which they are still (in theory, if doubtfully so under a pathetic POTUS like Obama) sheltering.
Beldar (fa637a) — 10/26/2015 @ 4:42 pmit’s a loaded term, to redolent of marxist analysis, for half the time we were in Iraq, there was a Parliament and a Prime Minister,
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/26/2015 @ 4:43 pmMike K
Ya, I saw that. Missile defense–that’s about all I’ve got in answer. Of course Obama cancelled the land based ones…
It may be they are rethinking that.
Danube River Guide (76b104) — 10/26/2015 @ 4:48 pmWhich is an excellent argument against coalition warfare. First, because the need to maintain the coalition then trumped United States national interest. In fact, so boresighted on maintaining the coalition was Bush 1, his administration had completely lost sight of any national interest.
Second, because you described the purpose of the coalition perfectly. We didn’t actually need them to defeat Iraq. We would have been far better off without them as large coalitions just add to problems of communication and coordination. So why did the coalition exist? From the perspective of our coalition “partners” to prevent the US from pursuing its national interests. Had driving on to Baghdad been in our national interest, and I believe it was, then we had assembled a coalition that might have actually flipped, as you say. In other words, we had assembled a coalition that had one purpose; to tie our hands.
I believe that driving on to Baghdad at the time, destroying Iraqi military power as we went, and either deposing Saddam or forcing him into a humiliating and unconditional surrender was in our national interests. Assuming we were serious when we said that preventing Iraq from getting WMDs, supporting terrorism, and threatening its neighbors was in our national interest.
Clearly we were not serious, as the subsequent incoherent policy toward Iraq showed. We seemed to just stumble into it, with nobody giving any thought to it.
1. Bush unilaterally called a ceasefire, reportedly after he saw the carnage on the highway of death, because we had fulfilled our limited mandate.
2. Thus allowing the majority of Saddam’s armed forces to escape.
3. We then encouraged Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south to rebel, refused to support them, and these rebellions were then crushed by the army we let to.
4. On a parallel track, we signed a ceasefire agreement with a laundry list of demands that went far beyond our limited mandate. So which was it; we had a broad mandate that allowed us to place wide ranging conditions on Iraq in order to put a halt to hostilities, or had we already accomplished everything we legally could? We were apparently confused at the highest levels of government.
5. We immediately demonstrated there was nothing among those ceasefire conditions we thought was worth fighting over as the Iraqis defied, frustrated, and violated just about every one of those conditions.
6. Yet we continued to send aircraft over Iraq so they could shoot at us, and we at them.
7. And we’d occasionally lob cruise missiles at buildings, while publicly stating that we weren’t ever going to cause the kind of damage it would ever to take to get the Iraqis to comply.
8. And we stayed for over a decade maintaining nothing more than a farce, our very presence in Saudi Arabia making us a terrorist target.
That’s how I spent the 1990s. All in all between Bush1, Clinton, and Bush2, I have to say Bush2 was the smart one out of the bunch.
Steve57 (a0050a) — 10/26/2015 @ 4:52 pmyes, but the dead and maimed weren’t on the news 24/7, back in that interregnum, it all depends Afghanistan, has become a faraway place, like Barsoom, in the nightly newscasts, as the casualties have spiked in this feckless interval by World Controller Obama, on the Malabar Front
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/26/2015 @ 4:58 pm(I blended Burroughs, Huxley and Orwell, what a cocktail,)
honestly Mike K, is there anything happening now, that doesn’t merit the full Howard Beale,
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/26/2015 @ 4:59 pmI’ve read the Looming Tower, the lesson there is we should have gone after Bin Laden, instead of sidetrips to Haiti, and Kosovo, after the December ’98 PDB.
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/26/2015 @ 5:15 pmSteve, another problem Bush’s coalition created: In order to maintain his coalition he had to keep Israel out of the war. So when Hussein attacked Israel, and Israelis were cowering in shelters, he had to put heavy pressure on Shamir not to retaliate. In return, Bush promised Shamir loan guarantees that could be used to build housing in Judea and Samaria for Russian immigrants, thus both solving Israel’s housing crisis and entrenching its hold on those areas. (Bush then reneged on this promise, and conditioned the guarantees on no immigrants being housed past the ’67 armistice line.) Shamir agreed, and as a direct result he lost the election the next year, because voters saw him as a wimp who couldn’t protect them, while Yitzchak Rabin campaigned as “Mr Security”, the military man who would have stood up to Bush and taught Hussein a lesson. What nobody (including Rabin) knew was that his party had already begun secret and illegal negotiations with the PLO, which would end in the disastrous and deadly Oslo accord that has brought so much death and destruction to Israel. All thanks to Bush’s political need for a coalition to act against Iraq.
Milhouse (e5ca2a) — 10/26/2015 @ 5:30 pmyes, that was Jim Baker’s doing, the whole Gulf War, feels to me in retrospect, like the Mexican War, which in turn set the stage for the Civil War.
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/26/2015 @ 5:34 pmThe world would be better with no democrats.
mg (31009b) — 10/26/2015 @ 2:59 am
^ I’d say that’s the most salient comment in this thread (and I’m being only somewhat flippant).
Mark (f713e4) — 10/26/2015 @ 6:25 pmA lot of white carpenters are upset that they can’t get work and see lots of brown people on the job.
I said that because it is true. My brother is one such. There are very few non-immigrants in construction in Southern California, except those in union jobs working government projects.
This is part of the problem that Trump is addressing — that ALL of the job gains with the bottom fell out in 2008 have gone to immigrants. You don’t have to be a racist to notice that. (The flip side of this is the observation that immigrants work, rather than sit and wait for the dole check to arrive).
Sorry that my shorthand hit a nerve.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 10/26/2015 @ 6:33 pmI definitely agree with a hands-off, quasi-isolationist policy when it comes to Syria, which is why it’s odd to me that, for example, certain liberals in France have been so against that approach.
By contrast, I have mixed emotions about Iraq and Hussein but can accept a “we should have left them alone” mindset only if it’s based on the idea it created a power vacuum or upended a balance of power that actually served our interests better.
However, I don’t like the amorality of tut-tutting the ruthless, bloody deeds of Hussein, such as his feeding humans through plastic shredders. But what I absolutely can’t stand are the leftists in America (or elsewhere) who say we shouldn’t have entered Iraq because we’re an imperialistic and capitalistic force that is no better than diabolical figures like Saddam Hussein.
Mark (f713e4) — 10/26/2015 @ 6:35 pm
Kevin M (25bbee) — 10/26/2015 @ 6:35 pmwithsinceBeldar 33,
I do not know Mr. Hines but I believe my mother’s family did.
DRJ (15874d) — 10/26/2015 @ 7:28 pmMany stereotypes are based upon a grain of truth. Yours are not. Immigrants, if you recall from the thread where you acknowledged they are often uneducated and unlettered, bot work and wait for the dole check to arrive. Or, these days, their EBT card to get recharged. Immigrants are more likely to access than the native born to take advantage of food and cash assistance.
So, no, they are hardly the paragon of some work ethic that native born Americans have lost.
What all types of our hyper immigration have done is help kill the middle class by driving down wages.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/goodbye-middle-class-51-percent-of-all-american-workers-make-less-than-30000-dollars-a-year.html
Steve57 (a0050a) — 10/26/2015 @ 10:21 pmMilhouse @67, I was speaking about the downsides of coalition warfare in general. I didn’t want to get into the problems of the Bush Gulf War coalition in particular.
1. The goal of keeping the coalition together becomes the main objective, rather than achieving whatever military outcome that was formerly the original objective.
2. Not every participant has the same goal, and often some of the participants have an ulterior motive to actual derail the campaign.
I suppose the coalition GEN MacArthur put together for the invasion of Japan is a prime example of these weaknesses. MacArthur wanted it to be an exclusively Australian, New Zealand, and US operation. These nations’ armed forces had worked together throughout the Pacific war, and worked together as a well oiled machine. If I recall correctly he reluctantly agreed to Canadian participation when the Canadians agreed to train to US standards using US equipment. But he drew the line at the British getting involved. The British hadn’t been a large factor in the Pacific war, they had not operated with US forces, and the issues of communication and coordination would be too great to include them at this late date.
He flat out refused to let the Soviets take part at all when they offered what they said would be their help. In addition to posing all of the same problems as working with the British plus a language barrier they clearly had ulterior motives and would be working more against us than with us.
Had the coalition gotten too large, holding it together would have been the main task, not fighting the Japanese. That would even have been true had they kept the back-stabbing Soviets out.
To use a non-US example, these issues also plagued most but not all of the Crusades. Regardless of your opinion of the Crusades, the ones that failed generally did so in whole or in part because of the difficulties of forming and holding multi-national coalitions together.
Steve57 (a0050a) — 10/26/2015 @ 10:59 pmThe democrats are starting to take Mr. Cruz seriously. Will the Trump lovers get their poop grouped and give Mr. Cruz the presidency.
mg (31009b) — 10/27/2015 @ 2:44 amCome on people, get it together.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cruzs-secret-fundraising-strength-a-network-of-wealthy-donors/2015/10/26/d170532e-7c0b-11e5-beba-927fd8634498_story.html