The conclusions in your original post were based on incorect information and assumptions. While many people have pointed out these incorrect conclusions, you have basically ignored them. I'll try to summerize.
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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
when i watch and read news analysis concerning post-war iraq, the comments often end in someone saying something like...
"we should have a more developed exit strategy"
"it could have been handled much better"
"unseating saddam was the right thing to do, but we didn't have to use military force"
"the post-war strategy is going much worse than planned"
and infinite permutations of such things. the end of the conversation is always a nodding of heads, a kind of silent assent to the the assumed truth of such thought. i am surprised to see these statements go unchallenged.
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There are very good reasons behind each of those quotes. “We should have had a better exit strategy” is based on what we are seeing now. A correct exit strategy would have taken less time than the one in place, and would have saved many lives of the servicepeople who died. The Invasions on Iraq started as a bombing mission, followed by a ground invasion, followed by deconstructing and arresting the government. Our mission was to “free Iraq” (actually it was to protect America from ficticious WMDs and false al Qaeda 9/11 links, but who’s counting?), but what about leaving? Rice is still not commenting on an exit strategy (
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...q_050201232127). This is a problem because Americans have been pleading for the government to get the soldiers home as soon as possible. While officials are often quoted saying “We’ll bring our soldiers home (applause)”, they have still not shared this plan with the public. It is a valid request to ask when our servicepeople will be coming home.
"it could have been handled much better"
There were no WMDs and there were no Iraq-9/11 links. The invasion claiming lives and injuring so many was clearly unnecessary.
"unseating saddam was the right thing to do, but we didn't have to use military force"
We did not have to lose 1447 lives to remove one man from power. Agree or disagree?
"the post-war strategy is going much worse than planned"
I don’t suppose you read ManX’s post, did you?
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Vice President Cheney, for example, predicted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's troops would "step aside" and that the conflict would be "weeks rather than months," a phrase repeated by other top officials. Others in advisory roles in the administration predicted Iraqi soldiers would "throw in the towel"
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The post war strategy IS going much worse than planned. That is obvious to everyone.
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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
now i'm not saying that we haven't made mistakes in our post-war strategy. however, did you really expect it to go much better?
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No! I didn’t expect it to go better! The problem is that Bushco was constantly telling us how it would be fine before the invasion. We were bombarded with soundbites telling us about how the Iraqis would be treated as liberators, not conquorers. This is incorrect, and they had no reason at the time to believe this. They constantly told us about how easy this would be. They were wrong.
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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
to me, that's like saying the Patriots really didn't go about playing the Super Bowl the right way. sure, they won... but didn't you see them fumble? their running game was slow out of the gate! too many penalties!
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We didn’t win. We might not have lost completly, but we didn’t win. Like I said, that analogy couldn’t be more wrong.
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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
while all those statements are true, they don't reflect the fact that a monumental achievement was made. the same is, i think, true for people's perceptions of iraq. sure, it has been hell for our soldiers there. sure, we've had things thrown at us that we weren't prepared for. but in the end, did you think it would or could have gone much better? i know i didn't.
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The singular acheivment of removing Saddam isn’t something to be proud of. The singlular acheivment of holding electiosn doesn’t balance out. Not by a long shot. Those are only 2 victories out of this whole mess.
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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
et's face it: many of you out there predicted SEVERE doom and gloom. if i didn't have a life outside of TFP i'd love to compile a list of all the nay-sayers for our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq from the public debate and opinions given on this board. the new fetish seems to be to create (and by create, i mean completely imagine) inflated casualty figures in a sleazy attempt to add weight to an argument. instead of going to such lengths to justify the negative forecasts... why not rejoice in the fact that such predictions were wrong?
-if you did not predict that the iraqis would be holding successful elections in less than two years after the war... you were wrong. rejoice.
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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
How many lives will it cots in the long run? You can rejoice to that, but I won’t be joining you.
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That’s a wonderful way to trivialize the lives of the 1447 servicepeople who died for a government who said that this would be easy. Remember when Bush said “Breing them on”? Well they brough it on, and it cost us dearly. That is a wonderful way to trivialize the deaths of so many innocent Iraqi civilians who did nothing to warrent death. They lived under a dictator and were killed by an army that was supposed to save them.
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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
-if you thought the war would unstabilize the region and spiral into an uncontrollable regional conflict... you were wrong. rejoice.
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Tell me that in 2 years, it’s too early to call that one yet.
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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
-if you thought that it would cost 10,000 American lives... you were wrong. rejoice.
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Originally Posted by analog
1,000 or 10,000- people died for this war. I hope the future history books will show the war's results that those people who gave their lives were more important than a worst-case number-crunch.
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Insurgents aren’t just killing American servicepeople. They are also killing the Iraqis working with the Americans. What do you think will happen if we ever pull out?
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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
and I KNOW that many of you were in hysterics because you were SO SURE this was all going to happen. well, it hasn't... yet nothing but negativity is heard from many. it's unfair to judge such a dangerous operation on such untested ground a failure because there are obvious problems. rather, think of this operation and match it against all plausible outcomes... i see a strong case for labeling it a success.
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It was wrong to attack them. It was wrong to kill and to be killed over a false threat. It was wrong for our government to have told us this would be easy. It was wrong for lies to lead us to war. It was wrong to go to war. We are seeing the consequences every day as we open our newspapers and reading about how a helicopter crashed or a bomb went off or a smart bomb hit a hospital. We are seeing the death tole rise every day. We still don’t even have an exit strategy.
Mission: falied.