by Indy » Mon Nov 16, 2015 12:13 pm
Ok, so we destroyed Iraq's military in a few weeks. In the end, so what? How did that help us?
And it was after that few weeks that we managed to lose 4,400 American soldiers, with tens of thousands wounded or maimed for life. It violated a 101 rule of an invasion: have an exit strategy. The only strategy we did have was as you just noted: here's how we destroy their military.
ISIS does indeed have that objective but as we know now a secondary one of mass killing around the planet. ISIS is absolutely blowback from Iraq because they sprang literally from ex-Iraqi Sunni military and AQ in Iraq. Point being, if Iraq were still under Saddam, none of this would have happened.
Boo, boo, he's a bad dictator etc. we all get that--but not our problem. Removing him did nothing to advance the U.S. cause. In fact, the total opposite.
And I haven't gone into how you just removed the one counterbalance to the Iranians/Shiites in the region, another totally unintended but totally predictable consequence.