The worse foreign policy fuckup in American history

Started by AllPurposeAtheist, March 19, 2013, 04:02:16 PM

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AllPurposeAtheist

The Nation's Peter Van Buren lays out why the invasion of Iraq was the worse foreign blunder clusterfuck ever in US history.. Good read even if old news..
http://www.thenation.com/article/173246 ... an-history
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Gerard

Yes. Since that's not where Al Qaida was.... until they could get in afterwards.....

OK Saddam wasn't nice and he needed to go . So do many other heads of countries now and back then, but you wonder about the priorities that were considered back then by Bush and his advisers...

Gerard

Seabear

Quote from: "Gerard"Yes. Since that's not where Al Qaida was.... until they could get in afterwards.....

OK Saddam wasn't nice and he needed to go . So do many other heads of countries now and back then, but you wonder about the priorities that were considered back then by Bush and his advisers...

Gerard
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BarkAtTheMoon

Quote from: "Seabear"
Quote from: "Gerard"Yes. Since that's not where Al Qaida was.... until they could get in afterwards.....

OK Saddam wasn't nice and he needed to go . So do many other heads of countries now and back then, but you wonder about the priorities that were considered back then by Bush and his advisers...

Gerard
Son showing he could finish what daddy couldn't

For all the talk of war for oil profits or whatever other reasons, I think this^ had more to do with it than anything. He seemed to have that family fuck up striving for approval thing going on. His little brother Jeb was the golden boy of the family that was expected to make an eventual presidential run back in the 90's, not Dubya.
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Jmpty

???  ??

Colanth

Quote from: "Seabear"Son showing he could finish what daddy couldn't
That's all it ever was - a dick-measuring contest between Senior and Junior.
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stromboli

Saddam Hussein was probably the most surprised person of all in that war. He was suppressing the Shiites in Iraq and actually keeping things under control. Yes, he was an inhuman monster, but what we "accomplished" at the cost of billions was nothing. Should've come up with another plan.

Thumpalumpacus

Quote from: "Seabear"
Quote from: "Gerard"Yes. Since that's not where Al Qaida was.... until they could get in afterwards.....

OK Saddam wasn't nice and he needed to go . So do many other heads of countries now and back then, but you wonder about the priorities that were considered back then by Bush and his advisers...

Gerard
Son showing he could finish what daddy couldn't

His dad was wise to not go downtown.
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billhilly

The Iraq war sucked but the worst foriegn policy fuck up of all??  How about WW1, the War of 1812, Mexican American War, Spanish American War, Viet Nam, and Korea just to name a few?

Hydra009

Quote from: "billhilly"The Iraq war sucked but the worst foriegn policy fuck up of all??  How about WW1, the War of 1812, Mexican American War, Spanish American War, Viet Nam, and Korea just to name a few?
Definitely in the top 10, then.  Vietnam would be numero uno, imho, for the clear U.S. culpability in the war, the sheer number of casualties, the length of the war, controversial methods of prosecuting the war, and its terrible aftermath.  Iraq's no slouch in those areas, either - with added emphasis on alienated allies and PR nightmare with the rest of the world.  Top 5?

Brian37

Iraq was a clusterfuck?

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AllPurposeAtheist

The region is far more destabilized and foreign policy in shambles.. Vietnam at least had a purpose even though flawed.. It didn't destabilize all of Asia.
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EntirelyOfThisWorld

Kurt Vonnegut famously said that the Vietnam War was "about nothing more than the ammunition business".  That could be said of the Iraq invasion (Bush War II).  Haliburton went in, bought gasoline in Saudi Arabia for pennies a gallon and sold it back to the U.S. Military in Iraq for $6/.  They fed the troops there for $30/meal.

The invasion itself was not even necessary to topple Saddam.  Nobody seemed to remember that at the end of Bush War I in 1990, Iraqi conscripts were falling over themselves to surrender.  We could have marched to Baghdad and they would have handed us the keys to Saddam's palace.  George I didn't want to hassle with the mess of rebuilding Iraq, and had liberated the Kuwaiti oil terminals.

in 2003 we could have toppled Saddam by massing tanks on the border, dropping leaflets, not bombs, and left the infrastructure, physical and bureaucratic, intact and Iraq would resemble more a postwar Germany or Japan.
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Thumpalumpacus

Quote from: "billhilly"The Iraq war sucked but the worst foriegn policy fuck up of all??  How about WW1, the War of 1812, Mexican American War, Spanish American War, Viet Nam, and Korea just to name a few?

I think outranks all of those, for the simple reason that unlike those other wars, our Iraq invasion was unfunded, and added two trillion dollars of debt over the course of 9 years that saw the worst economic upheaval in 80 years.  It has ramifications that extend beyond the senseless loss of life, though  it's killed many people to no purpose, too.
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billhilly

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"
Quote from: "billhilly"The Iraq war sucked but the worst foriegn policy fuck up of all??  How about WW1, the War of 1812, Mexican American War, Spanish American War, , and Korea just to name a few?

I think outranks all of those, for the simple reason that unlike those other wars, our Iraq invasion was unfunded, and added two trillion dollars of debt over the course of 9 years that saw the worst economic upheaval in 80 years.  It has ramifications that extend beyond the senseless loss of life, though  it's killed many people to no purpose, too.


Are you out of your mind?  Unfunded?  Really?  Like we saved up for all the other wars first?  Damn.  The housing bubble and age demographics with our social programs had much more to do with the economic bust than what was spent on the war.
 
The war sucked and was a shitty piece of foreign policy and a waste of a lot of money but it isn't even close to being the stupidest thing the country's ever done.  How about getting involved in WW1? Redrawing the map of the old Ottoman empire into the fucked little countries that have been fighting ever since the ink dried was stupid and there wouldn't have been any Iraq to invade if Wilson hadn't inserted his know it all ass in on the deal.  Lawrence was right.  They should have let them work out their own politics.  Then there's the tipping the balance problem.  The heir to an empire headed by a tyrannical, hereditary monarch gets assassinated so Europe loses their collective minds and declares war on each other.  The damn thing was a stalemate until Wilson and others decided the US should get involved.  Without that tipping of the scales, there more than likely wouldn't have existed the conditions that led to the second world war.

Then there's Vietnam.  Do you think the war savings account finally ran dry in 1973?