Dubya "Very Pleased" with Iraq outcome.

[a_unique_person]

http://www.theage.com.au/world/bush-very-pleased-with-iraq-war-outcome-report-20081123-6eqo.html

US President George W Bush believes the Iraq war has been successful and is "very pleased" with what is happening there, he said in a pre-recorded interview broadcast on a Japanese television network.
"I think the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was right," Bush told the Sunday Project program of the private Asahi network.
Saddam was an enemy of the United States and a lot of people thought he had weapons of mass destruction, Bush said, adding "remarkable" progress had been made in Iraq since the late dictator was toppled in 2003.
"People have been able to take their troops out of Iraq because Iraq is becoming successful. I'm very pleased with what is taking place there now," he said, adding there still is "a lot of work" to be done.

I guess that, as a politician, he has to say that.

 

[Darth Rotor]

http://www.theage.com.au/world/bush-very-pleased-with-iraq-war-outcome-report-20081123-6eqo.html

"I think the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was right," Bush told the Sunday Project program of the private Asahi network.​

I guess that, as a politician, he has to say that.

Yes, he does. If he is pleased, I guess he isn't hard to please. His team, and thus he, made a series of awful policy decisions in pursuit of that war.

As far as I am concerned, removing Saddam wasn't that bad of an idea. It was the gross failure to look at Bosnia, learn the political lessons there, and apply the understanding of what it takes to remake a country that fractures (Iraq fractured internally when Saddam was taken out) that created a strategic win for Iran, the real problem for US policy in the Persian Gulf. Bush tried to do it on the cheap. As I've said before, if you can't afford a Cadillac, don't try to buy one at Yugo prices.

Most people, including most people I discuss such matters with on this forum, refuse to think strategically, and won't look beyond the short term. One of the ways to look at the decision to break Iraq down to parade rest is to look at Yugoslavia, and watch what an internal fracture does to a nation cobbled together badly. Tito went down, then the wall went down, and internal corrosion finally broke Yugoslavia. (Yugoslavia and Iraq were both cobbled together by The Powers after The Great War.)

If you look mid to long term in 2002, Saddam had held the place together. It does not take a rocket scientist to foresee that if and when he falls out of the picture (for the moment assuming no intervention nor invasion) that Iraq will likely fall apart as Yugoslavia did, possibly more dramatically, thanks to the slightly different power balance.

Then what? Civil war. Something like Rwanda plays out in Iraq. Heck, there was (is??) a civil war of varying intensity for five years even with the presence of the US and its allies trying, albeit with little success, to prevent one. Nobody in the region wants that, it disrupts their regional balance. It creates mass refugee flows out of Iraq. Hmm. Guess what? That happened anyway.

There are times that I wonder if the decision to go into Iraq wasn't underwritten by the strategic idea of trying to control the change of Iraq when Saddam fell, because he was going to leave office eventually, and not willingly. That framework was certainly not how the war was marketed. The political problem is to take a strategic concern, like the one I sketch out above, and package it as rational to act on a preventative basis. The idea is similar to preventative maintenance being done on a car: fix it before it breaks down. That, while possibly a rational idea, was not marketable. Or, if it was, the wrong sales team was trying to sell the product. The only organ that probably has the capacity to act in such a way is the UN, maybe, if the entire UNSC can be lead in a particular direction and agree on "x" as a sound policy, and then put the resources to that policy.

For the time and place, and likely for the foreseeable future, the UN was not the team to do it either.

DR

 

[Darat]

I agree with your assessment and musings Darth Rotor, especially with what could have happened to Iraq when Saddam was out of power whether because of death, (natural or assassination) or early-retirement to Switzerland.

 

[Tricky]

I essentially agree with Darth too, though my "strategic" vocabulary is not as rich.
But there were essentially two points in conflict.

1. Saddam was a very bad man who had no reservations about killing his enemies.
2. Saddam was a stabilizing influence in the region in that he kept one of the fractious sects in power, even if brutally so.

That's why I was in favor of continuing the UN sanctions and diplomatic pressure. It had reduced his ability to do actual harm, (as shown by his total lack of any WMDs, though he had had them earlier) while keeping him on as the Biggest Badass of the region, effectively stabilizing it. Hopefully this would have continued until a more moderate leader, one who could work to remove the sanctions, arose in his place. No, there's no guarantee this would happen, but there was a lot better chance of success in this path than in the invasion. Better for the US too, because by starting this wildly unpopular war, we incurred the wrath of the whole world, not just the Mideast.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Yes, he does. If he is pleased, I guess he isn't hard to please. His team, and thus he, made a series of awful policy decisions in pursuit of that war.

As far as I am concerned, removing Saddam wasn't that bad of an idea. It was the gross failure to look at Bosnia, learn the political lessons there, and apply the understanding of what it takes to remake a country that fractures (Iraq fractured internally when Saddam was taken out) that created a strategic win for Iran, the real problem for US policy in the Persian Gulf. Bush tried to do it on the cheap. As I've said before, if you can't afford a Cadillac, don't try to buy one at Yugo prices.

Most people, including most people I discuss such matters with on this forum, refuse to think strategically, and won't look beyond the short term. One of the ways to look at the decision to break Iraq down to parade rest is to look at Yugoslavia, and watch what an internal fracture does to a nation cobbled together badly. Tito went down, then the wall went down, and internal corrosion finally broke Yugoslavia. (Yugoslavia and Iraq were both cobbled together by The Powers after The Great War.)

If you look mid to long term in 2002, Saddam had held the place together. It does not take a rocket scientist to foresee that if and when he falls out of the picture (for the moment assuming no intervention nor invasion) that Iraq will likely fall apart as Yugoslavia did, possibly more dramatically, thanks to the slightly different power balance.

Then what? Civil war. Something like Rwanda plays out in Iraq. Heck, there was (is??) a civil war of varying intensity for five years even with the presence of the US and its allies trying, albeit with little success, to prevent one. Nobody in the region wants that, it disrupts their regional balance. It creates mass refugee flows out of Iraq. Hmm. Guess what? That happened anyway.

There are times that I wonder if the decision to go into Iraq wasn't underwritten by the strategic idea of trying to control the change of Iraq when Saddam fell, because he was going to leave office eventually, and not willingly. That framework was certainly not how the war was marketed. The political problem is to take a strategic concern, like the one I sketch out above, and package it as rational to act on a preventative basis. The idea is similar to preventative maintenance being done on a car: fix it before it breaks down. That, while possibly a rational idea, was not marketable. Or, if it was, the wrong sales team was trying to sell the product. The only organ that probably has the capacity to act in such a way is the UN, maybe, if the entire UNSC can be lead in a particular direction and agree on "x" as a sound policy, and then put the resources to that policy.

For the time and place, and likely for the foreseeable future, the UN was not the team to do it either.

DR

Nothing there I can disagree with. But I don't see how you can sell that war to the American people. Selling we are going after him because of 9/11 was what got people behind the war, and telling them it would be cheap helped.

So you get the strange situation that he was executed for things he was doing while Cheney and Rumsfeild were wooing him as America's ally.

 

[gumboot]

I really do wonder what the head honchos were thinking when they devised their invasion plan.

One of the most tragic things I have ever read is a USMC Lieutenant's autobiographical account of the invasion of Iraq, from the time that his Battalion arrived in Baghdad. (1st Recon Marines, they led the feint push up the centre and drew all the Iraqi fire leaving the war pigs free to roll on through).

It was tragic because this young Lieutenant was watching the entire thing go wrong, and was predicting how it was going to all turn to custard because they weren't doing the right thing, and reading it, all these years later, you knew he was spot on, and you couldn't help be appreciate how helpless, frustrated, and angry he felt.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Nothing there I can disagree with. But I don't see how you can sell that war to the American people. Selling we are going after him because of 9/11 was what got people behind the war, and telling them it would be cheap helped.

Yes.

So you get the strange situation that he was executed for things he was doing while Cheney and Rumsfeild were wooing him as America's ally.

No. He was executed for Iraqi reasons having naught to do with America, other than America having caught him.

@ Darat: yeah. I recall being utterly amazed when President Bush kept up the public harangue for "Saddam to step down" in the week before the war. The place was going to break when he and his faction were removed, and as everyone else scrambled for a piece of the pie. Trying to insert Chalabi was a related move that, IMO, made little sense to me. The guy had been an expat for some years, what street cred did that give him with people who had stuck it out and suffered through Saddam's various policies while Chalabi lived the good life?

DR

 

[a_unique_person]

Yes, he does. If he is pleased, I guess he isn't hard to please. His team, and thus he, made a series of awful policy decisions in pursuit of that war. ....

DR

IIRC, Powell thought that all along, but he was deliberately frozen out of the picture because he did think that.

 

[davefoc]

I think DR is saying that there were arguments to be made for the war but that the ineptitude and corruption that were part of the occupation was a major part of the Iraq disaster and that might have gone much better with different leadership.

One of the things that I came to realize as an engineer was that it is easy to find fault with the way somebody has run a project because one picks out the things that went wrong and figures out with hindsight how they would have done them better. But, very few people look at the things that went right and figure out how they would have done them that would have made the outcome of the project worse.

So when I look at what appears to be the disaster of the Iraq occupation I am constantly concerned that there is something missing, that in fact the Bush administration did do a reasonably good job and we are just focusing on the things that went wrong.

But sometimes there are projects that were just screwed up. The wrong people were in charge, bad decisions were made and a project that might have succeeded failed. That certainly looks like the situation with regard to the Iraq occupation, especially in the early years. The Iraq occupation was a project riddled with corruption and ineptitude and millions of Iraqis have payed an enormous price for the failures of the American president. It is bizarre that people at the highest level of American government seemed oblivious to the enormous potential problems with an Iraq occupation, this is especially puzzling given the very recent problems that had played out in the former country of Yugoslavia.

The explanation for the American failures hinges, I think, on the priorities of the Bush administration which were strongly skewed towards partisanship and cronyism. Iraq was not seen as a huge problem that might boil over into a horrible violent civil war without the most careful and skillful management. Iraq was seen as an opportunity for patronage where Republican loyalists, regardless of qualifications were given leadership roles and giant, crony corporations were given sweet heart deals to implement ill conceived projects. Given the Bushco priorities perhaps Bush's assessment of the war isn't all that wrong.

 

[JihadJane]

What gives the US the right to remove leaders it doesn't like?

 

[Darth Rotor]

I think DR is saying that there were arguments to be made for the war, but that the ineptitude and corruption that were part of the occupation was a major part of the Iraq disaster and that might have gone much better with different leadership.

Well, we can might have until Sunday, and none of us the wiser. The key to the failures (agreed with your point on them overshadowing such success as was realized) was in the entering assumptions on the nature of the war, and particularly, on the nature of the thing Bush said he wasn't in favor of before he took office: nation building, or what is Phases III-V of Operation Iraqi Freedom. W, it seems, wasn't in favor of nation building after he was elected either. Or, it took a while to understand why it was important.

There is a much quoted line by Clausewitz that goes roughly like this: no one should embark on a war unless he is first very clear on its nature, "it" being the war and situation under consideration. Each war has its own unique details that must be understood before beginning with the intermural homicide.

There is some evidence that this clarity in understanding was absent early on, and remained absent for some time. This "I am pleased" may indeed go hand in hand with still not having that clarity of understanding.

DR

 

[Darth Rotor]

What gives the US the right to remove leaders it doesn't like?

Have you asked a Dutchman lately? The Dutch signed up as well. Have you asked a Spaniard lately? Likewise. Have you asked an Italian? See above.

DR

 

[JihadJane]

Coalition the willing, bribed and bullied

Have you asked a Dutchman lately? The Dutch signed up as well. Have you asked a Spaniard lately? Likewise. Have you asked an Italian? See above.

DR

Ask a Dutchman and you are more than likely to receive a disdainful earful about the shame of government's collaborating with US international criminality. Same with an Italian or a Spaniard. Coalition partners didn't join the invasion to honour the will of their people.

The Anglo/US military alliance managed to gather, by fair means and foul, a motley crew of unfortunate collaborators to assist in and disguise their obscene war crime, but the invasion and destruction of Iraq was/is an Anglo/US criminal imperial adventure.

Since WW2 the US has been the world's most prolific remover of foreign leaders that it didn't like.

No matter. What gives any country or alliance the right to remove the leader (of another country) that they don't like?

 

[Darth Rotor]

Rubbish snipped

What gives any country or alliance the right to remove the leader (of another country) that they don't like?

Depends. Often the "right" is derived from a notion of "the greater good" and it follows from there.

Your question, however, is irrelevant, since it can happen only in the limited case where there is the means and will to do it, and sufficient support for it not to be obstructed.

To paraphrase another adage: all that it took for America and its coalition to invade Iraq was for most other governments to do nothing.

DR

 

[Alferd_Packer]

Maybe George can have another "Mission Accomplished" banner made up for when he takes that last ride in Marine One, Jan 19, 2009.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Maybe George can have another "Mission Accomplished" banner made up for when he takes that last ride in Marine One, Jan 19, 2009.

A friend of mine was the Navigator on Abraham Lincoln. He was there that day. He is still disgusted with what the media and Bush's political opponents have done with that photo op. (IMO, he ought to reserve some of the disdain for Bush's PR clowns.) That banner wasn't about the end of the war. That banner was about the Lincoln doing the mission, which was done in spades. From an old CNN article:

The Lincoln, currently en route to NAS North Island, has been at sea for nearly 10 months, after participating in both the Afghanistan and Iraq war theaters.

It isn't every day that the President drops by your ship to pass on a "job well done." The crew appreciated it. Ray's observation is that some prize arseholes have taken their day, and pissed on it.

DR

 

[JihadJane]

Rubbish snipped

Depends. Often the "right" is derived from a notion of "the greater good" and it follows from there.

Your question, however, is irrelevant, since it can happen only in the limited case where there is the means and will to do it, and sufficient support for it not to be obstructed.

To paraphrase another adage: all that it took for America and its coalition to invade Iraq was for most other governments to do nothing.

DR

You have a great talent for appearing to answer questions while not answering them at all!

 

[gumboot]

Since WW2 the US has been the world's most prolific remover of foreign leaders that it didn't like.

No matter. What gives any country or alliance the right to remove the leader (of another country) that they don't like?

The clue is in the bolded bit above. Not that I'm saying all of the US's decisions were smart ones, but the simple fact is the greatest unnecessary loss of human life in our entire long history occurred because the cultured and enlightened nations of Europe refused to remove the leader of another country.

The USA's entire post WW2 foreign policy makes perfect sense framed from the point of view of "avoid another WW2 at any cost".

 

[gumboot]

A friend of mine was the Navigator on Abraham Lincoln. He was there that day. He is still disgusted with what the media and Bush's political opponents have done with that photo op. (IMO, he ought to reserve some of the disdain for Bush's PR clowns.) That banner wasn't about the end of the war. That banner was about the Lincoln doing the mission, which was done in spades. From an old CNN article:

Ya that whole "Mission Accomplished" thing pisses me off. My understanding is that the crew of the ship asked Bush if they could keep the banner up, not the other way around.

You think people would pay more attention to what the man actually said, and less to what happened to be chosen as the backdrop. From his speech that day:

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people. (Applause.)

The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq. (Applause.)

And if that wasn't clear enough, a little later:

The United States upholds these principles of security and freedom in many ways -- with all the tools of diplomacy, law enforcement, intelligence, and finance. We're working with a broad coalition of nations that understand the threat and our shared responsibility to meet it. The use of force has been -- and remains -- our last resort. Yet all can know, friend and foe alike, that our nation has a mission: We will answer threats to our security, and we will defend the peace. (Applause.)

Our mission continues. Al Qaeda is wounded, not destroyed. The scattered cells of the terrorist network still operate in many nations, and we know from daily intelligence that they continue to plot against free people. The proliferation of deadly weapons remains a serious danger. The enemies of freedom are not idle, and neither are we. Our government has taken unprecedented measures to defend the homeland. And we will continue to hunt down the enemy before he can strike. (Applause.)

The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide. No act of the terrorists will change our purpose, or weaken our resolve, or alter their fate. Their cause is lost. Free nations will press on to victory. (Applause.)

Mission Accomplished? Doesn't sound like it.

 

[TragicMonkey]

He's also "very pleased" when he manages to eat a pretzel without it nearly killing him.