A Few “What Ifs…”
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in WarWhat if we had never gone into Iraq?
What if, in that time, Iraq continued to pose no immediate threat?
What if, regardless of us not being in Iraq, Iran went ahead with its nuclear program?
Would we be in a better position to confront Iran?
Would we hold more authority with our allies and semi-allies?
Would the American people be more amenable to military action?
Would Iran be treating the West like we don’t have the will to stop them?
What if the greatest mistake of Iraq is that it’s made it much, much harder to adequately confront the graver, more imminent threat of Iran?
I don’t actually know the answer to any of that. It’s foolish to assume foreign affairs is a simple matter. Oftentimes, all choices lead to poor ends. But I just can’t help but wonder if we shot our bolt at the wrong target.
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April 19th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
You are assuming that the administration knew there were no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq and lied about it, or that every intelligence agency in the world were wrong, or that General Sada’s claim that WMD did indeed exist and were smuggled to Syria is a hoax, ect…
If chemical weapons were smuggled into Iran from Iraq and used against our troops during some regime change operation, It might have been an unacceptable loss to our military, and the public would cry, “why didn’t you deal with the iraq situation first!”
Also, the Apocalyptic rhetoric from Iran’s leadership was not so strong in 2002 as Amedinajad was not appoin..er, elected then, and many people had hoped that a Lebanon-type student movement within the moderate, youthful population of Iran there could emerge in Iraq’s wake.
The whole middle east, in particular, the greater Arab world needs some geoploitical shift to occur. I’m not sure if a Persian and Pashtoon democratic movement would indirectly promote political change in Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia which are the craziest terror generating countries. That was the hope, at least, with Iraq.
April 19th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Not at all, Dimmy.
If as you say “Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia are the craziest terror generating countries” why did your paran… normal, pscho… President not start there instead of Iraq?
At least I can understand ASC.
You make a decision, act on it.
“What if…”s and regrets are futile.
If you make a decision and act on it, despite the misgivings and contrary advice of many others, then you need to regret the decision, the act and the foolishness.
Alan, I would not worry about it too much. I know that I will not see an Islam dominated world. I believe that my children will not see an Islam dominated world.
It is more likely by far that the world will be controlled and dominated by corporate government; not the Microsoft, Shell Oil, Glaxo Kline corporations of today but the offspring of those. Their control and “governance” will be subtle and unseen. It will centre on the control of resources – energy, labour, raw material.
Think that unlikely? Just look to the last three Presidential elections in the US, and the direction that politics, political funding and political patronage have been heading.
April 19th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Because neither of those countries were on parole for 10 years, while violating each and every condition of said parole, nor are they regimes that were suspected to possess or be producing chemical and biological weapons. Would you have been happy if those 3 states were attacked by the U.S. if you agree to the premise that the entire Arab world is f**ked up?
You seem disspaointed.
April 19th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
“or that every intelligence agency in the world were wrong”
The majority of the intelligence showed that Iraq didn’t have WMD. They agreed that at one time they had such programs and Saddam wanted to rebuild them, but the majority agreed that at the time of the war they didn’t have them.
April 19th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Jimmy,
What on earth makes you think I was accusing Bush of lying?
In retrospect, Iraq clearly posed no immediate threat and likely would not have posed any threat for some time to come. That’s the facts as we know them now. What we knew then (or thought we knew) is irrellevent to my game of “what ifs.” And, yes, it is a game. But games are useful for generating discussion.
April 19th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
the ‘what if’ I’ve been asking myself a lot lately is “What if we really went to war and actually commited the nation to the cause? What if Bush and Co. taken real advantage of the post September 11th atmosphere and asked the nation to make some sacrifices, so that the maximum possible effort could be dedicated to the Great War on Terror?” Would many have opposed a limited draft after 9/11? an overwhelming ground presence in Afghanistan?
I’ve never been a fan of Bush and I opposed the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that we had no viable exit strategy. However, I’ve come to accept that the invasion of Iraq didn’t have to be a failure. With enough men on the ground and a sound post war strategy we’d be in a much better position. How much better off would we be confronting Iran with forces on the ground in a stabalizing Afghanistan and forces on the ground in a pacified Iraq i.e. a position of strength. Would Iran even be pulling this shit under those circumstances?
Unfortunately this is all arm chair quarterbacking. We were never asked to make any sacrifices. We never methodically strengthened our position in the middle East. We never cut off the flow of foreign insurgents, weapons and supplies into Iraq. Ironically, as I’ve come to buy into Bush’s vision in the mideast more, I’ve come to hate him more because of the way he choose to execute that vision.
So now we face Iran with forces tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq, neither country particularly secure or stable. We are unable to expand our army and the president has spent all his political capital, both at home and abroad.
April 19th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
My what if would be – “what if the majority of American peope as whole had supported the war – would it have been more of a success”?
Here’s another – “what if the Bush administration hadn’t quit communicating with MSM reporters – would they have gone as off the wall as they did”?
And another – “what if our media hadn’t been rabidly anti-Bush – would the anti-americanism that has flared up throughout the world, based mostly on our media reports, been as bad”?
April 19th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Monica, seriously…those are some hacky questions.
April 19th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
Justin, what do you mean?
April 19th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Justin, I think the point that Monica is making is that ROW (of which I am part) are all completely deluded, totally incapable of making reasoned or rational decisions or judgements about the actions of the American Administration.
It seems to be her belief (and she is one of a very large number who think thus) that MSM, ROW, leftys, liberals, commies and cranks are all against the US and its war of heroism in Iraq. She could well include half of the Republican Party, and a good part of the US Army in that anti-American movement now as well.
Monica, I fear that when television shows your President, live, the day after 9/11, use the word “crusade” and both Powell and Cheney standing behind him wince, things are not getting off to a good start. Or are you suggesting that was a doppelganger group put in front of the cameras in an attempt to defeat American interests?
When your President says things such as “You are either with us or against us” the ROW winces. There is one thing ROW does NOT like and that is being told what to do without question. It might be a patriotic reaction from a neo-con but most people like to think about things as part of making up their own minds. Or are you suggesting that MSM made that speech out of micro clipping previous speeches?
When Powell is shown giving “the evidence” to UNSC with photographs of chemical factories and bio labs are you suggesting that presentation was a manufacture of the tv networks? Was it a MSM double in front of the UNSC telling lies and giving false evidence to embarrass the US President?
When GWB gives a speech and says that “things are going well in Iraq”, and the following item on the news is 30 dead from a bomb in Baghdad are we supposed to believe just GWB and ignore the rest of the news?
No, Monica, the propaganda accusing the MSM of “acting against the war, of being treasonous…” is the falsity.
The unquestioning stampede after unjustified utu (that is a Maori word, part of its meaning is “revenge”, but it goes a lot further – such as eating the brains and eyeballs of a vanquished enemy and things like that) led by a string puppet in the control of who knows what forces is the consequence.
The milblogs coming out of Iraq are no more truthful and no less truthful than the broadcasts that came from “embedded” journalists. They are likely subject to the same level of censorship and control. They should be read with that qualification in mind.
(Just as an aside, no one has ever explained simply enough for me just who those journos were in bed with, and how they managed to report while they were doing whatever it was they did while they were in bed…).
Similarly, there is wisdom in reading the MSM with a similar scepticism of their motives and political standpoint. That is simple common sense.
Monica, there is a fundamental truth.
The first casualty of war is truth.
Don’t ask me who coined it, but it is a fundamental.
If you believe one side without any cognizance of the other then you are getting less than half of the truth and completely deluding yourself as to its veracity.
Finally to answer Monica’s “questions”
NO. No amount of blind patriotism will ever overcome poor planning, ignored intel, and stupidity.
The MSM reporters did not go “off the wall”. They reported what they saw and heard the great man say.
Was the media “rabidly anti-Bush”? Perhaps they saw something that gobbled, strutted, gobbled again and was dressed in black and white so they decided it was a turkey and said so.
April 19th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Dimmy,
So the Egypt / Syria / Saudi Arabia / terrorism link is something that you just “discovered”?
Or is this the first zephyrs of the same propaganda that preceeded Iraq, is preceeding Iran, and is indicating the next step in America’s global colonial ambitions?
Who comes after them? Morrocco? Indonesia – hey they got plenty oil there too buddy! Phillipines – oh we did them over in the 1890s, but they still got terrorists there though.
Venezuela – ah, get shot of Chavez… plenty oil. Pity that they are Catholic, huh! Might make things a touch difficult to justify. Oh, we always got the commie string to pull. Go for it lads…
No, Dimmy, you said it. Stop wriggling because it only drives the hook deeper.
There would have been no less true justification for invading those three countries than there was for Iraq. Seems in hindsight that the only ones who didn’t know the truth about Iraq and WMD was the US and Britain administrations. Been there said all that so many times before…
The Teheran government is no worse than that of Zimbabwe, Sudan, or Myanmar or China even, and in fact could be a whole bunch better. But then, who gives a monkeys about them?
April 19th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
probligo:
I love this global conquest meme. As if attacking Iran is really about some neocon-zionist conspiracy to “colonize” the world. Its so clear to me now; Bush wants a prmanent military occupation of Iraq so we can start moving American colonists to the persian gulf, enslave all the arabs (then the persians), suck up all the oil then jump in the flying saucers and move to another planet.
If Morrocco and Indonesia start buliding nuclear weapons and threaten to wipe France off the map, we might wan’t to colonize them too.
Alan:
I didn’t mean to give the impression I was accusing you of anything. I kink of expected people like probligo were gonna post afterwards.
I guess my point is that Iran would be a potentially harder nut to crack with the threat of Iraqi chemical weapons on our troops. Plus, I think Kevin makes a good point about how a successful regime change and subsequent stable Arab democracy would have given us a HUGE advantage against Tehran if they tried to pull anything. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone in this administration expected the occupation to last this long with such intensity, when they were playing “what if” before the fact.
April 19th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
probligo -
You are so projecting things onto me that I absolutely do not believe. You’ve obviously been scarred thru some hate filled debates, but this isn’t going to be one of them.
I don’t think that the Left is anti-american or unpatriotic and I don’t think that pro-war people are blinded by patriotism. In my opinion, each side (pro and anti war) strongly believe in their beliefs about the war and I dont believe either are acting in bad faith.
April 19th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Monica, if that is the case then I unreservedly apologise.
Can I just say that the questions you pose are exactly like the right wing posturing and bluster that one sees throughout blogland. Forgive me for the misread.
Dimmi,
I asked if that was the scenario that you were drawing. It is not one of mine – yet. Y’see, if you accuse E / S / SA as being “the worst”, who is next on the invasion list after Iran? What manner of justification will be found? Or is it justification enough to invade and occupy just because you believe “that the entire Arab world is f**ked up”.
Why do you even make the statement? Is it because you like spouting to see who agrees and who does not? Or is it because you like the thought that “we the US can pick these raghead bastards off as and when we want”?
Dimmi, I fail to see why you made the comment without there being some purpose to it.
April 19th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
I think we attacked Iraq because Bush and the military knew that Iraq was militarily weak. The other two of the “Axis of Evil” have stronger armies and would put up a bigger fight. We bullied Afghanistan and Iraq because we knew we could defeat them with our high-tech Army. But we forgot the lesson of somewhat high-tech USSR versus Afghanistan insurrgents. It’s easy for a superpower to defeat a third world country, it’s another thing to install a puppet government at the end of a gun barrel. I remember an interview on CBC with an Arab journalist, the idea was it was OK for Afghani rebels to behead Russians – what do you expect to be different in Iraq?
April 19th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
probligo -
Thanks for the apology.
Please know that at the heart of my questions, I was thinking more of what I see as Bush’s and his administration’s failures. I wasn’t thinking about the Left or Democrats at all.
April 19th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
(Small voice, timidly raised)
What if we’d truly dealt with the situation 15 years ago?
Might have been freed up to deal Iran that way, too.
April 19th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
What if george bush really was a uniter not a divider?
What if george bush didn’t act like a petulant 5 year old when challenged?
What if george bush took his meds when he heard voices instead of acting on them?
April 20th, 2006 at 8:06 am
There was no way to change iraq without a military invasion. This event was hoped to inspire geopolitical reform throughout the rest of the Arab speaking world if a stable, functioning democracy were to be established there. The arab world is like a pile of dry logs and iraq was to be a spark. The theory is you invade Iraq, so you don’t need to invade syria, saudi arabia, egypt ect..
The craziest terrorists come from saudi arabia, egypt & syria but are not necessarily agents of the government, and those regimes were not on parole the way Saddam was. It is difficult to justify a regime change in the arab countries other than iraq, but something needs to be done to start a shift whereby Arab governments need to use their authority to persecute terrorists, rather than support or turn away from them. The jury is still out, but if the Iraq project turns out to be successful, I’m confident that the rest of Arabia would demand change the way the Lebanese have recently done.
April 20th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Reader_iam: yeah, ain’t that the truth. Of course Papa Bush was afraid of getting into the exact kind of entanglement W is in now. But given that Bush Sr’s administration was far more competent, I think they might (might) have been able to do a better job.