Hypothetical discussion about Iraq

[Parliament 14131]

So imagine of the people with the authority to do so in 2003 said, "We aren't going to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power. Instead, we're gonna do...something. We're gonna do something else."

 

Two questions:

1) What should we have done?

2) What would Iraq be like today?

 

I'll go first.

1) We shoulda continued to treat Hussein as the pariah he was. Containment was working (barely) well enough.

2) Iraq would be a failed state today. Hussein would not have lasted until 2018. He woulda either been taken out by his own people, or just died of old age. Uday/Qusay would not have lasted long, if at all. Sunni's and Shiite's woulda gone to war and maybe even ISIS woulda come to power. Iraq wouldn't be much different than it is now. But we'd have the two trillion dollars and 3000 American servicemembers we lost over there.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

Hard to say how a Sadaam/Iraq would have handled the Arab Spring.  Would it have gone like Libya or Syria?  I’d lean towards Syria.  

It’s pretty clear there wasn’t anything close to an organizational structure powerful enough to overthrow the Hussein Regime. 

While I think our adventure into Iraq was a colossal mistake, our fallen troops didn’t die in vain, at least not yet.  Their sacrifice played a role in giving the Iraqi people a way out of the tyranny and oppression of the Hussein Regime.  While some might not see that as something of significant value, I can think of no better cause to fight for than giving people the freedom to determine their own destiny.  

However, a containment strategy would have been the better approach to Iraq circa 2003.

Edited December 30, 2018 by Hugo Stiglitz

[ADHD 28]

We should have been honest about 911.

[RomaVicta 29775]

America would be better off. That's all that matters to me.