The Iraq War: Mission Accomplished?
Most wars are preventable. We will be able to remember the Iraq War of 2003 just as the greatest strategic blunder in US history only if we are willing to learn the ample lessons that unfortunate and mismanaged leadership provided, and thus become able to avoid making even worse mistakes in the future.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made serious contributions to the Great Recession that America has been experiencing since 2007, draining considerable funds from the state and local economies as they struggled with its impact. $1.4 trillion has been spent on them to date, an average of $125 billion per year. Eventually, the cost will reach $4-$5 trillion once we factor in the 50-60 years of the enormous disability benefits paid to the veterans and the huge interest rates on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.
These costs will ultimately total more than World War II. The Afghan war would have cost only $4-5 Billion from Oct-Dec 2001, had the Bush administration seized the opportunity to capture al-Qaeda in December of 2001 and avoid the unnecessary Iraq war. The new book 'Iraq War 2003: What Happened Behind The Scenes' describes explicitly how our government let that happen.
But even that considerably smaller figure was still much less than it would have cost the Bush administration to simply pay attention to the flood of warnings pouring into Washington from foreign intelligence agencies, our own CIA, and from FBI field operatives, during the spring and summer that preceded the 9/11 attacks, and preventively order commercial airline cockpit doors to be locked in flight, just as the Israelis had been doing for the previous 30 years.
Small precautions like that, the Israelis had been doing for the previous 30 years, would have most probably saved the lives of the 3,000 victims killed by attacks, the consequence of which the Bush administration avoided facing by using billions of dollars in taxpayer money to persuade most of the 9/11 victim families not to file wrongful death lawsuits.
Was Bush's Mission really accomplished? Al-Qaeda's goal in carrying out its attacks on American soil was to force the US government to drain the country financially by forcing it into a war. In that, George W. Bush was more than happy to comply not only with the Afghan war but the Iraq war as well!
What was the result of all this over-the-top spending? It took 10 years and a Democratic administration to take care of bin Laden after the Bush administration blew the opportunity in Tora-Bora in December 2001. Iraq still has a strongman government; only now the current version is Shia instead of Sunni, and they are developing an alliance with Iran. Most of their oil is now sold to China instead.
All these non-accomplishments in both wars came at the price of nearly 7,000 US Service Personnel dead. In Iraq, there were somewhere between 120,000 to 1,000,000 dead and more than 3 million newly minted orphans since 2003.
By mistreating and torturing innocent Iraqi citizens, the Bush administration increased the number of terrorist, since Iraqi victims joined the insurgents after having lost unjustly what they held dear in life.
As Edward R. Murrow once observed, "The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer". Incredibly oblivious to the facts, there are still those that want to maintain Bush kept us safe from terrorism.
What planet have these seceded to - Delusionus?
As a result of the Iraq war 2003-2011 and its mismanagement, many benefited and got rich during the Bush administration years.
George W. Bush's Iraq War demonstrates much of what is wrong with aggressive neo-conservative foreign policies.
If we fail to learn from such mistakes, it is likely our $1.2 trillion/year military will become increasingly vulnerable to the asymmetric defenses of hegemons. China, our nearest military competitor with a $140 billion/year defense budget, chooses to put most of its money into developing its economy, and plans to deal with our aggressive $6 billion super carriers using relatively inexpensive anti-ship ballistic missiles.
If their case for massive federal answers to the world's problems continues to burden our nation's increasingly hollowed-out economy, it becomes ever more likely that another Iraq-of-2003-type war will spell the end of America as a superpower.
What can the Iraq War of 2003 teach us so we can prevent similar disasters in the future?
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made serious contributions to the Great Recession that America has been experiencing since 2007, draining considerable funds from the state and local economies as they struggled with its impact. $1.4 trillion has been spent on them to date, an average of $125 billion per year. Eventually, the cost will reach $4-$5 trillion once we factor in the 50-60 years of the enormous disability benefits paid to the veterans and the huge interest rates on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.
These costs will ultimately total more than World War II. The Afghan war would have cost only $4-5 Billion from Oct-Dec 2001, had the Bush administration seized the opportunity to capture al-Qaeda in December of 2001 and avoid the unnecessary Iraq war. The new book 'Iraq War 2003: What Happened Behind The Scenes' describes explicitly how our government let that happen.
But even that considerably smaller figure was still much less than it would have cost the Bush administration to simply pay attention to the flood of warnings pouring into Washington from foreign intelligence agencies, our own CIA, and from FBI field operatives, during the spring and summer that preceded the 9/11 attacks, and preventively order commercial airline cockpit doors to be locked in flight, just as the Israelis had been doing for the previous 30 years.
Small precautions like that, the Israelis had been doing for the previous 30 years, would have most probably saved the lives of the 3,000 victims killed by attacks, the consequence of which the Bush administration avoided facing by using billions of dollars in taxpayer money to persuade most of the 9/11 victim families not to file wrongful death lawsuits.
Was Bush's Mission really accomplished? Al-Qaeda's goal in carrying out its attacks on American soil was to force the US government to drain the country financially by forcing it into a war. In that, George W. Bush was more than happy to comply not only with the Afghan war but the Iraq war as well!
What was the result of all this over-the-top spending? It took 10 years and a Democratic administration to take care of bin Laden after the Bush administration blew the opportunity in Tora-Bora in December 2001. Iraq still has a strongman government; only now the current version is Shia instead of Sunni, and they are developing an alliance with Iran. Most of their oil is now sold to China instead.
All these non-accomplishments in both wars came at the price of nearly 7,000 US Service Personnel dead. In Iraq, there were somewhere between 120,000 to 1,000,000 dead and more than 3 million newly minted orphans since 2003.
By mistreating and torturing innocent Iraqi citizens, the Bush administration increased the number of terrorist, since Iraqi victims joined the insurgents after having lost unjustly what they held dear in life.
As Edward R. Murrow once observed, "The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer". Incredibly oblivious to the facts, there are still those that want to maintain Bush kept us safe from terrorism.
What planet have these seceded to - Delusionus?
As a result of the Iraq war 2003-2011 and its mismanagement, many benefited and got rich during the Bush administration years.
George W. Bush's Iraq War demonstrates much of what is wrong with aggressive neo-conservative foreign policies.
If we fail to learn from such mistakes, it is likely our $1.2 trillion/year military will become increasingly vulnerable to the asymmetric defenses of hegemons. China, our nearest military competitor with a $140 billion/year defense budget, chooses to put most of its money into developing its economy, and plans to deal with our aggressive $6 billion super carriers using relatively inexpensive anti-ship ballistic missiles.
If their case for massive federal answers to the world's problems continues to burden our nation's increasingly hollowed-out economy, it becomes ever more likely that another Iraq-of-2003-type war will spell the end of America as a superpower.
What can the Iraq War of 2003 teach us so we can prevent similar disasters in the future?
Source...