Question 10: Will We All Ever Agree That Iraq Was Right or Wrong?
Question ten in our ongoing debate series about the War in Iraq and the War on Terror is a two part question.
If Iraq becomes a real and stable democracy, will we all be able to agree it was worth it? If Iraq descends into anarchy or a terrorist-supporting theocracy, will we all be able to agree we made a mistake?
Question One: Why did we invade Iraq?
Question Two: Has the Iraq war set any precedents?
Question Three: Are we safer?
Question Four: Why do some think America is the enemy?
Question Five: Why are we so divided?
Question Six: Why do we use words like ‘Hitler’ and ‘unpatriotic’?
Question Seven: Can you oppose the war and still support the troops?
Question Eight: Why has there been a rise in democracy in the Mid East?
Question Nine: What’s the next step on the War on Terror?
posted by Alan Stewart Carl @ 8:45 AM
8 comments
8 Comments:
If Iraq becomes a real and stable democracy, will we all be able to agree it was worth it? Some will never, ever agree it was worth it. No matter what!!! Call it hardheadedness or whatever… Some if not all people are just flat set in their reckoning on this matter and nothing is going to change their mind.
If Iraq descends into anarchy or a terrorist-supporting theocracy, will we all be able to agree we made a mistake? My original short answer to this part of Question 10 will be the only one I will give. (There is no other acceptable answer to this question in my view.) "This question is a mistake… We can never, ever let something like this happen. NEVER!!!"
If we have either clear success or clear failure in Iraq, I think reasonable people will agree after the years have done their work, eroding the sharp edges.
That said, it would have been a lot easier if Bush had been right in his early rhetoric -- we use overwhelming force to bring down Baghdad, then the Iraqi people welcome us as liberators. If he had been right about that, I would be behind him now. Honestly I would.
But if we end up with year after year of instability, which is what will likely happen, and conservatives want to call that success, then I doubt if we will ever agree.
It really makes sense to think about how many people are being killed over there day after day and add it all up. Compare it to life under Saddam. Ordinary people used to feel safe in Iraq.
If we had waited for a better opportunity (or better yet, acted on one of the earlier opportunities when the Iraqis were themselves rising up), we might have been able to help them without so much bloodshed.
I wonder how history will remember this after all of us are gone. Even if, heaven forbid, we lose twice as many soldiers before this is all over, it'll rank as a rather minor conflict for the U.S. Of course, it will always be a major moment for Iraq.
I think , overtime, a consensus will develop about the outcome of Iraq. If it does become the stable, democratic nation we hope it will be, then I think most will agree we did the right thing--although I expect there will be debates from here on out regarding the wisdom of nation building via military force.
Aubrey, I admire your take on what will happen if we fail. Really, that can't be an option. Even people who support the full withdrawl of American troops have to support doing everything we and the International community can to help Iraq become a stable nation. It's simply not acceptable to let them collapse into another tyranical regime.
But it is posible that they develop into a less than pro-American nation. I don't know what happens then. As long as they aren't contributing to terrorism against us, I think we can handle an Iraq that is not really an ally. But anything less and I don't know. Iraq could end up stable but still bad for our interests. At that point, I don't know. But it will be another administration's problem. And that's something to remember, people call this Bush's War, but, like it or not, it's our war. It'd still be here inf Kerry won and there will likely still be some work to do after Bush leaves office. What happens in the next 3 years may set the stage, but what happens in the 10 years after that will also guide how we as a nation come to see this conflict.
No, I think the people of our generation will never agree that it was right or wrong... problably like korea.
Although most people are in the majority that Vietnam was a bad idea, there are still people out there who don't. So, no, we'll never agree on Iraq.
If Iraq becomes a stable democracy, I'll give props to Dubya, but I'll never agree with the shady way he went to war. He should have come clean from the beginning that it was a democracy building exercise and left all that WMD and terror tie crap on the barber floor.
On the flip side of the coin, if Iraq is still a major failure ten years from now, there will still be Dubya's defenders trying to figure out a way to blame it on "dem damn demos".
Can ayone agree what right and/or wrong is?
I think it is going to be hard to get an agreement that Iraq was worth it even if all goes well, because of the opportunity costs.
One of these is the war against al Qaeda et al. We took resources away from that to fight in Iraq. If al Qaeda fades away, this will be a minor footnote in the history books. If not, people in the future will be amazed that even after 9/11, fighting al Qaeda wasn't the top foreign policy goal of the United States.
A second opportunity cost is that we haven't stopped the genocide in Darfur. When told about Clinton's inaction on the Rwandan genocide, Bush is reported to have declared, "Not on my watch." But as a result of Iraq, we have neither the troops to intervene nor the international standing to shame other contries into addressing the issue. Because of Darfur, I don't think that Iraq can be justified on humantiarian grounds, no matter how much it improves the lot of people living in Iraq.
i agree, only time will tell. at least five years after we leave Iraq will be the soonest that a judgement can be made.
i wish the left would at least acknowledge that. But most dont seem to be capable of seeing anythign but complete failure.
look at jennifer still talking about if we were accepted as liberators. That is not an objective fact. Every soldier i spoke with says we were welcomed as liberators. But there goes the absolutes, regarding things that are not absolute.
ordinary people use to feel safe under saddam? are you serious. Exactly why there are the issues with this war. If people actually believe what jennifer is repeating, then they are not open to objective facts. It is alos irrelevant. More people died due to our fighting ww2, than would have dies only at the hands of the germans. irrelevant.
I agree with Ted though. That it is not "win whatever the cost". i also think that saying the only way we win is if Iraq becomes a democracy is wrong. Even if Iraq does fall into some level of chaos, that is not automatically bad. Sorry, but civil wars happen, and are almost impossible for outsiders to prevent. I always felt we should have let them split the country in three, and left. But, there is a balancing act, regarding cost and reward. the biggest reward we have already gotten, saddam out, and other nations know we can mount a serious military campaign to topple them.
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