My point is that "strong post-war policies/exit strategy" has not existed prior to hostilites. It didn't exist for WW2, nor has it more recently.

I do agree somewhat that planing could have been better, given that projections of force requirements appeart to have been optimisticly low.

Ah. I see it now. I was being dense. It happens. Fair point and correct.

Though there appears to be a two major differences between this military campaign and all prior campaigns.

First, we chose exactly when to go to war. There was nothing really forcing our hand here. There was no Pearl Harbor, no "imminent" fall of Vietnam to the Commies, no invasion of Kuwait. We basically sat back, debated the issue for a while, and then went ahead. Was this the US's first pre-emptive strike war?

Second, we appeared to have infinitely more intelligence about what we were facing in the terms of opposition.

Also, so we never had an "exit strategy" prior to any military action, that doesn't necessarily mean such a pre-war strategy wasn't necessary or should not have been explored in this instance. Learning from one's mistakes (Vietnam, for example) is a good thing.

Okay, I buy your argument on Iraqi turnout levels and legitimacy. Overall turnout of anything over 40% of eligible voters (not necessarily registered) in a state that does not require citizens to vote by law seems pretty reasonable to me. (Though the case can certainly be argued that if any region of that state has pretty low turnout <25%, then that region has not bought into the system, calling the system's legitimacy into question, especially in weak states.)

The problem with the country comparison actually is with using the US data--there have been so many changes in voting laws during the period, the resulting US turnout data is of questionable use. If you were to do a comparison, Flere might be right in using a state like India where the data period has full suffrage throughout...

I have seen no evidence that the US had a plan to rebuild Germany and Japan right after Pearl Harbor (when the US entered). The plan was changed numerous times as the war wound down until what we know of the Marshall plan today.

Had the US defeated Hitler and Japan with the same efficiency that the US defeated Saddam, I expect a similar amount of initial chaos would have taken place until the US had time to really look at what they had left. The fact that WWII involved a slow defeat of Germany throughout Europe in a piece by piece manner allowed the reconstruction more time to get planned.

I think this is certainly a "more fair" way to look at the situation. The number one priority in any war is to win the miltary battles. So, obviously you have to do everything with that sole goal until you win (if you try to plan post-victory too early you could end up with what happened to Russia in afghanistan).

That said, I do think it's fair to criticize the administration for not moving quick enough on certain things once the main fighting was over. Still, it's hard to plan for a 2-month military victory and its even harder to start rebuilding when half your enemy fled the battlefield and hid back in different communities.

From a historical perspective, there's been no precident for the level of success that US has had in Iraq. To go from a tyrannical regime to a national election for a new form of government in less than two years is unheard of. What's amazing to me is that the US could have done an even better job had they made better decisions at certain point. Still, the efficiency and progress made from a historical context is something that rarely gets looked into - which is very surprising to me.

Hopefully, from a historical perspective, people will all sit back, look at the Iraq war, and marvel at it for unprecedented level of success that the US had. I really hope they do. I hope we can do it in the not-too-distant future.

It's just hard to start slappin' each other on the back for a "job well" done while dozens upon dozens of Iraqi citizens the very same people we freed from a tyrannical regime (not to mention small handfuls of US troops) are getting blowed up on a daily basis. Once that violence starts to fade, then we can begin examing the efficiency and progress made in a Iraq from a historical context.

It was also brought up to refute your claim of 90% bad news in Iraq, but I guess we've already moved past that.

The whole offensive had been less than two years - counting the military aspect. And, yes, we should be jumping for joy. For the first time in decades the Iraqi people actually have the ability to generate revenue from their own resources and create the semblance of a real economy. Something that was impossible under Saddam.

It is mind-boggling how it is simply impossible for you to give the US even a sliver of credit for helping to restore a major economic resource to the people of that country and aiding them in creating their own economy. These people are actually able to better their lives now using this oil revenue that was previously untouchable and held by Saddam.

How many have died in the past decade because Saddam deemed it more worthy to build palaces instead of provide sanitary water and useable roads to his people? You guys need to get off this "tropical paradise" Iraq was before the US came in. There were serious problems with disease, poorly sanitized water and chemical poisoning well before the US even sniffed its borders. Once again, this has gotten significantly better than it ever was under Saddam. So, a better question is how many would children and elderly would have been dead from poor sanitation over the upcoming few years had the US not come in?

You are finally starting to get it (I think). Iraq is no longer under the leadership of a tyrant and now all citizens have access to quality schools and health care. Hence, the country is much better off and actually has a bright future where things can continue to improve for all citizens not in the Baathist regime. But, again, I guess this is "no biggie" in your mind.

I don't see anyone asking for wild celebration, I'm simply asking that some of these items get coverage in the media so that I don't have to hunt through a million blogs and US Soldier accounts to hear about them. I'd be willing to bet a vast number of FOFC readers (some of the more affluent web and news readers there are) had no idea that some of the above was happening. That's unfortunate as people are basing their opinions on Iraq based on only a small piece of the puzzle.

You know, I may be supportive of the administration but I am certainly able to look at the system and admit certain faults that have occurred from a training and logistics standpoint in their efforts (esp under Bremer). You, on the other hand, are unable to give any credit to the US and must poo-poo all 6 listed aspects of an improved Iraq that I stated. How are you any better than what you perceive me to be?

Has anyone ever hated to say "I told you so?"

Arles - The bottom line is that there is no country in the world (even Israel) that is suffering from as much terrorism and insurgency at the moment as Iraq. Thus it should be no surprise that this news is the what dominates what we hear out of Iraq.

Is it this topic that deserves 90% of the coverage? At the moment, yes. The continuing security concerns and terrorist attacks undermines any "good" happening in the country, and it shows no signs of abating. While it is certainly good that there is a new government, and that utilities are being restored, these things must be placed in the greater context of continuing violence.

In this instance, yes. I hate to say "I told you so" because this means my prediction of significant U.S. and Iraqi civilian casualties was correct. It means my prediction of sectarian violence was correct. It means my prediction of a theocracy in a few years is on its way. It means my argument that Iraq would become a haven for international terrorists has been borne out.

I believe Sudan is suffering

Good timing for them! I've never seen so many American conservatives so concerned with the welfare of people in 3rd world countries. I had always thought they didn't give a shit about those people. How wrong I was. Sudan is lucky, they should be getting 150k U.S. troops to keep the peace any day now. Because Republicans want them to have schools and democracy and feminism and hospitals and electricty and Will and Grace. And they're willing to go to war for that. Because that's just the kind of standup people they are. Go America!

It just dumbfounds me to read babbling crap like this.

I thought we already got to "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!"?

I don't know what military battles we're fighting. Looks like it's just a big clusterf*** over there to me. Is it even possible to "win" (i.e. defeat who we're fighting)?

Great example of exactly what I'm talking about with regard to who is really doing the misleading. ;)

I'd be interested in hearing one other major offensive in world history that removed an oppressive regime and was more successful than the Iraq war to this point.

Operation Barbarosa 1941, The Ukraine. The communist government of what is now known as as the single country 'The Ukraine' was removed. Of course Moscow and the whole shebang never fell. But after two years most of the Ukraine was still in German hands, and it was much larger front and against a much stronger adversary.

You don't hear about many because you usually don't see successful regime change via external military force. Think about the major regime changes of the 20th century--Fall of the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact, colonial wars for independence, etc. Pretty much every one of those arose from internal movements. Regime change that results in democracy in particular seems to arise from indigenous popular movements. Outside goverments wishing to induce change typically did it through economic or covert means (supporting terrorist and guerilla operations, coup stagings, etc.), and not via direct military involvement. Military invasions usually fail to meet their political objectives.

The one major success of course is the fall of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan after WWII. But this was the result of 6 years of multilateral military cooperation, and it is unlikely that one nation would have defeated Germany and Japan without multilateral support.

As for invasions where one nation successfully removed opressive regimes, I can think of maybe a couple. A French invasion removed the self-proclaimed Emperor Bokassa of the CAE in the 1970s. The US invasion of Panama in 1989 was a similar event. However the installation of less repressive government was not really an objective in either case, they installed people more aligned with French and American wishes--France and the US did what they did to discipline misbehaving client states than to engage in socio-political engineering.

I think someone called me a Conservative. Does that mean I get to join the club? :D

Sorry to take so long to reply, and I hope this may still be relevant to the conversation. I'm in Europe right now dependent on odd library hours so my responses aren't always timely.

Anyhow, I'll respond with some of my own thoughts and you can decide if I scratched your itch or not.

I think at the highest levels, there was probably a genuine belief this war was well planned. Lots of people seemed to be telling Bush & Co. that we'd be welcomed with open arms as liberators. Whomever those people were, they clearly were not well versed in Arab culture and politics. But that's another issue for another post on another day.

I think the very biggest mistake we made was breaking up the Iraqi Army. Gen Franks maintains in his book that this was never the plan, in fact he claims they intended all along to bring former Iraqi military (not Republican Guard mind you) into the fold, but says the military simply "vanished". They all went home after the invasion was clearly over and never came back. I don't know if this is totally true or not. But I do know that one of the great moves we made with the Marshall Plan after WWII was to bring certain Germans into the fold. For whatever reason you choose to believe, this wasn't done in Iraq and we're paying the price for that.

Gen Franks also brought up a real interesting point in his book. He claims to have laid out a lot of things he needed from other governmental agencies outside the military for a post-invasion recovery and even talks about courting these agencies and getting their blessing and committment for $$ and personnel to do these things, but when push came to shove and the time was nigh to put their money where their mouth was, these agencies bailed. SImply put, they told the Gen what he wanted to hear but never actually budgeted any of the resources they promised. It was beauracratic BS at its finest. I suspect the Gen is more than a little naive on these types of things and was severely taken advantage of by more politically savvy operators.

There are also some folks who maintain we had verbals from a lot more countries to partake in the post invasion recovery than actually showed. I suspect what happened was certain leaders said yeah, we'll help, and really meant it, but didn't count on the level of sustained opposition to the war from within their own countries and simply couldn't bring resources to bare when the time came for fear of losing their constituencies.

So in the end we may have made some leaps and assumptions based on political dealings that for whatever reasons fell through. I think Bush & Co. were told all the bases were covered and had no reason to doubt it, but their staff failed to come up with a solid backup plan when things started falling through the cracks.

As for the military part of this, I think the invasion was bold, innovative, and probably a bit risky. In the end it came off better than the planners at CENTCOM even dreamed it would. It is a plan that will be discussed at military academies for the next 50-100 years because it erased an awful lot of preconceived notions about ground warfare.

But ours is an Army of movement, not occupation. We are very good takers, not so good at being policemen and holding ground. I think the primary plan was to rely on an Iraqi Army that dissappeared and foreign help that failed to materialize. On paper the idea probably looked pretty good, but in reality there wasn't a sufficient back-up plan to account for political failings and other uncertainties. We've never been very good as an Army of occupation and we are learning some painful lessons in the process. It's not something you can easily train or prepare for, and if you could, it would take you years to learn how. We didn't have years to learn, we're stuck doing it on the fly.

Thanks for the comments, Leonidas. This makes a lot of sense and certainly points out some of the many areas that need to be looked at for the future.

Very interesting comments, Leonidas. Interesting points regarding post WWII Germany too. We had no choice but to reintegrate former Nazis into the bureaucratic machinery of the West German government--not the top officials of course, but the country couldn't function without the former Nazis since all of the mid-level government workers probably had to be party members.

I wonder why the same thing didn't happen in Iraq--I wouldn't doubt that most of the mid-level Baath bureaucrats didn't really buy into Saddam but joined the party for career purposes. Did we want to keep the mid-level Baathists, and it was a case of them somehow disappearing like the Iraqi army? Or was there an effort to cut out all people with Baath ties?

The case could be made that the Baath people were primarily members of an Iraqi minority group, but for practical purposes they did know the infrastructure and could help administer...

I agree here, but we had waited decades for such a movement and the world (US and UN) bailed on the Iraqis when there was such a chance in the early 90s. So, expecting such a movement in Iraq did not seem very likely. Iran, however, may be a different situation altogether and hopefully will mimic many of these examples you have cited.

That's the point I was after. You look at all the major military events in the past 70 years (WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Russia and afghanistan, first Iraq, Somalia, ...) and they have all been either extremely difficult or never achieved a regime change.

What US did from a military standpoint is really unprecedented. To add in the rapid change in rebuilding the infrastructure and the speed in setting up a new government structure, and this whole effort is of historic proportion. It took decades to get Germany and Japan rebuild and focused after a war that took many years.

But neither of these events involved the scope of Iraq. The panama invasion to remove Noriega was essentially done in the dead of night involving a small number of troops (less than 1000). Plus, Noriega was almost an outcast in his own country and the same government was continued with Endara and some current vice presidents basically sworn in the next day.

Again, the Iraq effort (troubles and all) still is closer to the "best case" scenerio most would have thought before the war began. The reconstruction has introduced many things that were not properly planned for or anticipated (as Leonidas explained). Still, the fact that the US has removed an entire regime with military force, rebuilt much of the infrustructure and already witnessed election for the new government less than two years since the initial invasion is quite remarkable.

Now, this doesn't mean everything is perfect in Iraq. But when you look at the normal pitfalls of major military efforts in a historical backdrop, this has to be looked on as a success to this point. The future will determine how well the overall effort changes (or doesn't change) the nature of Iraq to the world, but I have a hard time saying this mission has been a poor one to this point.

I shudder to think of how we would have handled WWI, WWII or even Korea had the current level of media scrutiny been prevalent during those times. I would not be surprised to see all of Europe speaking German had that been the case as I do not see the US people having the stomach to deal with the bloody battles in Europe on a 24-hour basis with video and the level of criticism that would have accompanied it.

Decades after WWII Germany and Japan were preeminent world economic powers. Let me know when Iraq is there. Until then, comparing the rebuilding of Iraq to the rebuilding of the Axis powers is facile.


Closer to the best-case scenario than what? Predictions? The worst-case scenario? Go back and read what the Administration said about Iraq before the invasion. They predicted the best-case scenario.


I thought pulling the election off, on its own, was very impressive. The Iraqi election authority, and all who helped them, should be proud, as should the U.S. military for providing enough security to have the election go off relatively peacefully.

I'm less impressed by the "rebuilding" efforts. I think they're about on-target for $18 billion.


And this is the problem. From a greater geopolitical standpoint, the invasion of Iraq caused problems that will continue to have ramifications for decades. Increased power for regional fundamentalists. Easier recruiting for terrorist groups. Lawlessness in Iraq spilling over into neighboring countries. Potential decades-long sectarian violence, spilling over into neighboring countries. Potential geopolitical destabilization in the region due to the desire for an independent Kurdistan. The list goes on.

I'm not saying that the U.S. military, the U.S. contractors, and the Iraqis haven't accomplished a fair amount in getting Iraq back on its feet. What I'm saying is that this progress, though good, is immaterial given the security situation and the overall trends, both in Iraq and in the region, that the invasion and occupation caused. If the security problems and the sectarian violence can't be solved, then we'll have more-or-less ended up trading one dictator for another. On top of that we will have not helped our own cause in the Middle East.


Mentions of WWII are so trite. It's as if you are saying "Gosh, if it was up to you, Hitler would still be alive today!"

WWI: This war shouldn't have happened. Maybe it would have been a good thing if we knew and saw how many men died in trenches for no reason. Maybe it would have been a good thing if the public were aware how soldiers were shot by their officers for retreating. Maybe if all of this happened public opinion would have made the powers that be get to the bargaining table a lot faster. Let's not forget that this was a war where Armistice was delayed by a number of ours, causing countless deaths, so that it could end at 11:11 on 11/11.

WWII: An extremely poor comparison, especially after 1941, when the U.S. knew the final intentions of the Axis powers. I very seriously doubt Americans would be anti-war in the majority against an enemy who planned to conquer them.

Korea: Public opinion, and eventually sane military opinion, eventually did decide that scores of American lives were not worth paltry territory gains in a regional conflict. It's a pity the lesson was not learned for Vietnam.

I'm not so sure, there were several anti-Saddam terrorist/revolutionary groups we could have sponsored. If we were to help stage a coup there, there were a number of people we could have installed. I think that a movement was unlikely because we didn't invest in one, in terms of money, intelligence, logistics and serious policy planning. The US has been stung by failed covert ops before, but we've had successes too--so I'm not sure why more was invested in incubating an internal movement. If regime change was what we were after, these would be more cost-effective methods to me. Which leads me to my overall point...


This always mystified me about the decision to invade Iraq. It makes very little sense from a realpolitik vantage point. The invasion cost a lot in American treasure, in service of a policy tool that doesn't have much of track record in achieving the radical political end we were after. If it was truly just regime-change we were after, then there were more cost-effective ways to go about it. The decision to invade certainly had little to do with oil--Russian oil production and Chinese consumption have more of an impact on petroleum market stability than events in the Middle-east these days. I really don't see it being about Islamic terrorism or WMD's--Saddam was a secularist who was afraid of the influence of Islam, I doubt that he would allow groups to operate in his state that could potentially undermine his political authority.

In the end, I really am not sure this invasion served the interests of American security in a traditional realpolitik sense since we are risking American economy strength and military capacity somewhat in order to effect policy change in a country that never really had much capacity to do much damage to us. I do think that idealism on the part of the civilian policy planners has more to do with the path we chose regarding Iraq. I think these guys were thinking about security, but only in an indirect sense. Much has been said that these guys are very idealistic in their beliefs on how the spreading American values can change the world for the better, and I tend to agree with that assessment of our civilian policy planners. I really do believe them when they say they want to spread liberal democracy abroad. I'm not sure that is the right way to run foreign policy, but Iraq is an experiment and we shall see if values really do have a place when thinking about security matters...

The fact remains that everybody (USA/UN/Arab League) was sure that Saddam Hussein had WMD that he was hiding from inspectors.

The UN placed massive sanctions on Iraq because of this (among other issue encapsulated in the 17 UN Resolutions the Baath Party rejected). The WMD question was a very large concern primarily for American and Israeli security.

We assume now that they were all destroyed because of the invasion. If we are confident enough to proclaim that his stockpiles were in fact destroyed and not moved.

But since the invasion we have learned that Iraq was prepared to re-institute it's nuclear program the second UN Sanctions ended.

The regime simply had to go.

And we could have left after that, it's not like we are hanging around now to try and get popular opinion on the side of the USA. That's not going to happen. But it does seem possible that we are trying to leave something positive for the Iraqi people to work with. If democracy does take hold in Iraq, it will be a positive thing. Being free is very infectious.

Remember the jeolous Syrian men in Damascus when the exiled Iraqi Women went to vote. That's a beautiful thing. And should serve the purpose of international security much better than a Saddam infested middle east would ever allow.

But my main point was that the US invasion is inconsistent with utilitarian geo-politics. If the conclusion was that regime change was necessary, there were other more cost-effective ways to promote regime change.

If removing Iraq's WMDs were truly the over-riding concern, and if an Iraqi capacity for developing and producing them truly did exist, the use of air power to destroy suspected Iraqi WMD development sites and targeted assassination of key scientific personnel could have neutralized that threat. This would have required more of an investment in intelligence, but would still cost less than a ground invasion.

Thus, to me, the conclusion had to be that the United States chose it’s policy in Iraq primarily for ideological reasons as an investment in greater security down the road. I don't really buy its feasibility overall and I have my doubts as to whether it will work in Iraq, but it is an interesting theory and I have to hand it to the neocons for being grand theoreticians. But as is the case with many deep thinkers, the actual practicalities of implementation may not have been as well thought out...

Any solution that would have left Saddam in power would have simply delayed the inevitable as we know he was prepared to restart even more aggressive nuclear programs once the sanctions were lifted. And I just don't see any realistic way to remove Saddam and get a new regime into Iraq that did not involve serious military force.

Do we know that? It's possible we do. Not saying you're lying, I just don't recall hearing about that.

Is that really true? Regime change has been successfully implemented with a lot less...

The Duelfer report said he had plans on reinstituting his WMD plans once the sanctions were lifted:

http://washingtontimes.com/world/200...5116-2225r.htm

Plus, three of the scientists interviewed mentioned that Saddam's main interest once he did reinstitute these programs was in nuclear technology. One of them even shared this quote from Saddam:

"Keep nuclear scientists together at IAEC in order to pool their skills and have them available when needed"

Unless Saddam was removed from power, he would have atleast attempted to restart these programs once the sanctions were lifted.

The problem was that (unlike Panama or other instances) there was no alternative waiting in the wings that had any kind of popular support. Plus, Saddam's regime (including his sons) would have easily continued as is had the US simply removed Saddam. I'd certainly be interested to hear other ideas, but I don't see how anything short of a complete removal of Saddam, his republican guard and most of the Baathists would have resulted in any kind of regime change.

Augusto Pinochet. The Soviet Union. Red China. Ho Chi Minh.

Easy solution: Don't lift the sanctions. After all, the sanctions worked: we still haven't found any WMD, right? ;)

Those were completely different situations and many took decades to come to fruition. I'd rather not wait until 2020 for enough resistance to build up in Iraq to remove Hussain.


And I thought you were the one worried about the Iraqi people dying because of the initial assault by the US. What do you think another decade of sanctions would have done to them?

Of course not, because you'd rather spend countless lives, destabilize the region, provide a training ground for terrorists, give rise to a potential fundamentalist theocracy and weaken the position of many moderate groups throughout the Middle East for the goal of removing Saddam Hussein.

Look, if you wanted to remove evil dictators, Robert Mugabe and the leaders of the Sudan would have been far easier.


Prove to me that more would have died under sanctions than have died and will die given the situation now and in the future. You can't, of course, and I can't prove the converse. While I would definitely be interested in a U.S. foreign policy that practiced intervention for humanitarian purposes, such a policy isn't going to happen. Is removing Saddam Hussein in the manner we did of overall benefit? Well, it certainly is for those he oppressed. But given the manner in which we did it, how many of those will now suffer years of problems from terrorism and sectarian violence? Have we removed one problem only to give them another?

So we have to remove every leader we view as a "brutal dictator" huh? Wonder why we didn't start with more a threat?

I'd say yes we have only removed one problem(Saddam's oppressive regime), and substituted another(a General Lack of Security). I'd say the biggest difference between the two problems is that now there is hope, where before there was none.

From the interviews read/heard with typical Iraqis most are very happy to have Saddam out of power, most are very happy with their newfound democracy, most are very disatisfied with the security situation, most/many are fundamentally dissatisfied with the presence of US troops, but most are also aware that those troops are needed to stave of Chaos for the time being.

The Jan. 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly had two of the best articles I've read to date on Iraq. The first is Kenneth Pollack's Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong, a story about how so many people were wrong on the WMD's. Pollack, as you may recall, wrote a book earlier, advocating invasion, called The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. Pollack offered a detailed account what happened with Saddam's weapons programs since the first Gulf War. His conclusions are similar to what are suggested in Duelfer's report: that Saddam had fully dismantled his weapons programs and was lying low with the hope that he could get sanctions lifted and start anew. This leads to two equally interesting conclusions: a) Saddam still hoped to restore his weapons program, and b) despite flaws and corruption, the sanctions were amazingly effective.

The other great article in that issue was by James Fallows, the cover story: Blind Into Baghdad. Fallows details all of the reports and investigations prepared by the government prior to invading Iraq. He finds that a surprising amount of effort was invested. The CIA, the State Department, the army, and others had all prepared in-depth reports of what they expected from an occupation of Iraq. None of them talked about being greeted with flowers. In fact, they fairly accurately predicted most of the difficulties that followed - the looting, the insurgency, various problems with the civil infrastructure, etc. These reports were unfortunately ignored (and sometimes discredited) by the higher-ups in the administration. The general inference here was that they didn't want these reports to be featured in the public discourse because they would tend to discourage enthusiasm for war. Of the many mistakes and crimes of which the administration is sometimes accused, this, to me, is the most damning.

Yes. You have hit it on the head! Right on the Head. The problem is the left is too busy touting the Halliburton tripe, or the "manipulation of the media" garbage to actually bring up the meaningful points.

I didn't agree with the premise that Saddam needed to be removed, the sanctions really did cripple his ability to do anything of consequence to us. The sanctions and no-fly zones did succeed in containing him. The whole idea of the sanctions being lifted is moot-the US has veto power in the UN Security Council, they would never allow sanctions to be lifted.

The democratic process currently taking place is not going to necessarily result in a pro-American government in Baghdad, in fact it is just as likely to result in a government more sympathetic to Tehran. The smartest move in my opinion was to keep Saddam weak but stable enough so Iran could not take advantage of any instability. If you cared that much about WMDs, then you could still have neutralized any supposed WMD development centers via airstrike or covert action and assassinated his scientists.

But since the decision to remove him was made, I am arguing that it could have been done at much less cost and would serve American interests better. As the elections show, multiple currents of opposition did exist (Shiite islamists, Kurds, marsh Arabs, various Sunni secularists) . The US just did not invest the time and cost in identifying and supporting these groups. The US could have taken on one or more of the militant groups and other potential opposition figures as clients and funded an insurgency in order to destabilize, intimidate, and ultimately overthrow the Iraqi regime. Do you think Saddam really could have done a thing if we decided to channel large amounts of money and armaments into Iraq? If the strategy is successful (a big if, I admit), the resultant Iraqi government composed of our clients would be more loyal to us and our security concerns than the government arising from the present day chaos would, and at lower cost than a ground invasion.

Maintaining sanctions wasn't easy. Our pilots were shot at on an almost daily basis for years. Thousands of soldiers have endured constant family seperations. High military ops tempo is required by US/UK/Aus forces to maintain the UN sanctions.

The regime change was a means to an end. Not a way to keep the status quo. Not when our presence in the region was brewing such animosity from terror groups.

Saddam simply had to go.

Thank god none of that is happening anymore.

Or that.

The option was to continue to keep sanctions until the world (and US) willpower eventually slipped. Pictures were already shown of kids starving in Iraq and the sanctions paying pretty big toll on the Iraqi people. How many potential Usama Bin Laden's do you think that created from 95-2000 when all people in Iraq heard everyday was how the evil US was keeping them from food and supplies by using sanctions? That's probably one of the big miscalculations of this war in underestimating the negative feel many Iraqis had for the US and UN because of the sanctions.

At some point, though, they would have been removed (my guess is some reuters reporter would take a picture of a starving child) and we would be back to the early 90s.

To me, this whole thing was like having a scorpion trapped on the ground in plastic cup and the options are to go to work and leave the plastic cup hoping he never leaves - or to remove the cup and squash the scorpion.

NoMyths,

I understand what you are saying. I think we simply disagree on how the Iraq situation would conclude.

Everyone has been in agreement that our soldiers should not maintain a police action in Iraq. The question in the late 90's was how to end it without allowing Iraq to simply disregard direct UN orders (resolutions).

Our government (Clinton Administration) came to the conclusion that regime change was the only "safe" way. I am convinced that had 9/11 not happened and Al Gore was president, we still would be right where we are today. Because this was the philosophy since Operation Desert Fox when Clinton finally realized there was nothing we could do to Saddam Hussein and his gang of thugs.

And the middle east in general. Trust me. They all hated the UN sanctions.

Were any of those planes ever shot down?

Thousands? Now we have HUNDREDS of thousands.

High military ops...what do you call this?

C'mon!

The planes that Iraq agreed to let fly over Iraq that they were shooting at daily? No, but they were getting closer. They used to do some pretty interesting tactics to try and shoot an allied plane down. I remember one instance where they turned on a SAM site (we always knew when they turned them on as we could detect them) and we sent in a helicopter to destroy it, but after the helicopter passed a certain waypoint, they turned a 2nd one on and attempted to shoot down the ambushed helicopter. Fortunately we were flying air cover for the helicopter that the Iraqi's didn't know about (F-16s) and blew the 2nd SAM sight up before it could attack the helicopter. And then the helicopter blew up the first. 2 for 1! (Edit: I just re-read that and it almost sounds like I was involved...I was not, I'm a comm troop.)

This is surge operations. Obviously. It takes a lot of people to fight a war.

As for the post-military state, I will say this. It's much more difficult in the middle east to set up a democracy, than say--post war Europe in the late 40's. I do worry about that. I am concerned that failure will completely embarrass the USA. In Germany and Japan, after WWII, those people were highly regarded by their rulers, they had national pride, they wanted to work, and they wanted to rebuild after the war. In Iraq, Saddam treated almost everybody except the small minority of Sunni's as either serfs or enemies. And now, the rest of the middle east power players (such as the Islamic terrorists) are disgusted by this Iraqi sense of self-worth (instead of serving them for Allah). Most rulers in the middle east assume that all people work through their leaders for Allah, not for themselves. Civil Rights is completey foreign. It is an import. So, it's easy to recruit terrorists to go blow themselves up in a Democratic Iraq. Because they have not experienced democracy.

But again, the Syrian men who looked disdainfully at the exiled Iraqi women voting for their ruler was profound. They aren't animals, they will remember that sight for the rest of their lives. Freedom is a powerful lure.

There is no way in hell the US would have allowed sanctions to be lifted. You underestimate American willpower. Anti-Israeli declarations are passed by the general assembly with clockwork regularity. The US votes against those every time. So if the US can hold its ground on somthing as frivolous as a stupid "Zionism is racism" declaration, why wouldn't they do so in the security council for something as serious as extending sanctions?

Why the impatience in getting rid of Saddam if he wasn't going to do a damn thing to us while he was sanctioned? Yeah we could have removed the regime in time, but why not take the time to get our ducks in a row and made sure we identified and established relationships with Iraqi partners on the ground first?

I disagree with you in your insinuation that Iraqis have no pride for their country. That is part of the reason why many of them are so opposed to the occupation, while most certainly appreciate the removal of Saddam, many still consider the invasion as an affront to Iraqi sovereignty.

Also, I think that the government-religion connection is way overstated. I would venture to guess that the majority of middle eastern leaders pay mere lip-service to their faith in Islam. Actually, most (especially the secularists like Saddam) are deathly afraid of the influence of fundamentalist Islam on their populace--thus their impulse is to repress it or "pay the religious people off", and that makes their problems worse.

Finally, perhaps we should be careful what we wish for when it comes to democracy. Again, it is not clear what the will of the people will end up being after we leave. If the Shiite Islamist religious movement continues to play the leading role in shaping Iraqi opinion, the resulting governments may not be so aligned with American political interest. Iran has many features of a democracy, there is universal suffrage and voters do have input in the makeup of their governments, yet personal freedoms are not guaranteed--and the reality is that this is the result of popular will whether we chose to admit this or not...