Yes, they are. How many more countries can we continue to afford to send troops to for 60 years or more? We already have tr?oops posted all over the world.
U.S. land, air, and sea forces must be based somewhere. There is no obvious advantage to basing them all in or near the U.S., and many advantages to basing them near parts of the world where U.S. interests are most likely to be threatened.
Moreover, in 1950 we were dealing with an American public fresh from victory in WWII. In 2011, we had a public that still remembered the defeat in Vietnam. No one wanted to repeat that, and yet we did.
Iraq had been largely stabilized by the end of 2007--in fact President Pinocchio tried to steal the credit for that achievement. It was exactly to prevent a defeat that his military experts told him a substantial U.S. force should remain behind. But in order to pimp for votes, he ignored them and paved the way for the catastrophe we are seeing.
What we heard was how the war would be over in a matter of weeks or months at the most.
You should speak for yourself. I never imagined a war on that scale would be quick. It was clear it would not take long to defeat Iraq's forces, and it did not. But only a fool would have imagined that a stable democracy would spring up the moment Hussein's regime had been ousted.
No one said that chaos would result if and when the troop withdrawals negotiated in 2007 were carried out, either. If it had been acknowledged, the wn the withdrawal schedule should have been quite different.
What prompted military experts to advise that the U.S. leave a substantial force in Iraq, if not concern that otherwise, chaos would result? The person who failed to acknowledge that would very likely happen was the Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Barack Obama.
and if that weak foolish president had reneged on the troop withdrawal agreement, he would have been lambasted for keeping the war going by his detractors. There was no right decision to be made at that time.
Not only is Mr. Obama weak and foolish, he is also a damned liar who resents the very country whose interests he swore to uphold. He is a disgrace to the United States, as more and more Americans, however late in the game, seem finally to be realizing.
The only right decision would have been to have stayed out of Iraq to begin with.
Really? And what secret information do you have that shows Saddam Hussein had nothing but peaceful intentions toward the U.S.? After the 1991 war, international inspections had proven that his regime had not only produced mustard, phosgene, sarin, and other chemical agents, but had also learned how to prepare anthrax as a weapon. They presided over and documented the destruction of those materials.
By 2002, though, it had been four years since Hussein had kicked out the last of those inspectors. Did you think his benevolent and honest nature assured that he had done nothing to rebuild those capabilities, even though he'd had plenty of time and money to do it? What did you know in 2002, that all those fools and idiots in the intelligence services of every major nation did not? And why did every last prominent Democrat, having seen the very same intelligence as President Bush, agree that Iraq once again had those capabilities? Were they lying, or did they just lack your secret information?
Sure, we could have, maybe should have, kept troops in Iraq indefinitely despite the political attacks that would have followed.
There is no maybe about it, and no U.S. President should have cared two hoots in hell whether this or that Iraqi liked it. Too damn bad, if they didn't. International relations are not a popularity contest, and every President has the solemn duty to put the security interests of this country first.
So, next time we decide to go and invade a country we don't like
The claim that Mr. Bush or any other American wanted to send U.S. servicemen to war out of nothing but personal animosity toward Iraq or Saddam Hussein is a disgusting slander. Maybe you have some preternatural wisdom that would have made you certain the anthrax attacks that followed soon after 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq, despite the fact it had reneged on the agreements it had made after being routed in the Gulf War, and despite the open belligerence it had continued to show toward this country, time and again, during the following decade.
