"We've come a long way in five years, and it's been well worth the effort."Dick Cheney on Iraq
Not "it will be worth the effort" or "it is becoming worth the effort", but it has been well worth the effort - already, so far, up to now. ('The effort', I guess, is a euphemism for all those opportunities, dollars and lives lost.)
In what sense could Cheney mean it? Obviously some firms have made billions from sleazy no-bid contracts and the like, but what benefit has there actually been for others (not potential future benefit, but so far)?
I'm guessing there's the "at least Hussein has gone" idea - but was it really well worth wrecking the infrastructure, material and social, of an entire nation (not to mention the US military) to do it? There are better ways to depose dictators.
...there were complaints about the way we used to take out dictators
Who and how, for example? I don't think there were significant complaints about how Hitler was 'taken out'.
Stalin, Mao, Milosevic, Pinochet, Mugabe, Gaddafi, Castro, Noriega, Kim Jung Il, Amin, Marcos, Pol Pot..?
Either the complaints were pretty muted, or they weren't (haven't been) taken out by the US. Some dictators, like Noriega and Hussein, were initially helped into power by the US - which I guess could have led to complaints whatever happened subsequently.
"Could do worse" is a far cry from "well worth it". Was Cheney just blowing smoke?
NNN, don't forget the Shah of Iran, who was put back in power by the CIA (along with the British) in 1953. That directly led to the brutal regime (propped up by the US arms industry) that caused the students' revolt, the Iran Hostage Crisis, and the situation in Iran today. Nice job, guys. In fact, it was a heck of a job.
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There were protests about the invasions of Grenada and Panama. But, compared to the fiasco in Iraq, those were successes - relatively cheap, relatively light in casualties, causing little backlash, and those countries weren't bombed 'back into the stone age'.
It couldn't be possible, could it, that those operations were somehow seen as a model for what would happen in Iraq? Looking back at the comments of the neo-con crazies who promoted the war five years ago, their hubris is stunning.
'Five years ago, on the evening of 19 March 2003, President George Bush appeared on American television to say that military action had started against Iraq.
This was a veiled reference to an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein by dropping four 2,000lb bombs and firing 40 cruise missiles at a place called al-Dura farm in south Baghdad, where the Iraqi leader was supposedly hiding in a bunker. There was no bunker. The only casualties were one civilian killed and 14 wounded, including nine women and a child.
On 7 April, the US Air Force dropped four more massive bombs on a house where Saddam was said to have been sighted in Baghdad. “I think we did get Saddam Hussein,” said the US Vice President, Dick Cheney. “He was seen being dug out of the rubble and wasn’t able to breathe.”
Saddam was unharmed, probably because he had never been there, but 18 Iraqi civilians were dead. One US military leader defended the attacks, claiming they showed “US resolve and capabilities”.'www.truthdig.com
'Forget Osama. Forget Saddam. The Pentagon's newest target is the city of Baghdad.
U.S. military strategists have announced a plan to pummel Iraq with as many as 800 cruise missiles in the space of two days. Many of these missiles would rain down on Baghdad, a city of five million people. If George W. Bush gets the war he wants, Baghdad could become the 21st century's Guernica...
...The Pentagon now predicts that the Iraq blitzkrieg could approximate the devastation of a nuclear explosion. "The sheer size of this has never been ... contemplated before," one Pentagon strategist boasted to CBS News. "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad."..'www.alternet.org (2003)
'...the world's most modern military, one determined to minimize civilian casualties, went to war with stockpiles of weapons known to endanger civilians and its own soldiers. The weapons claimed victims in the initial explosions and continued to kill afterward, as Iraqis and U.S. forces accidentally detonated bomblets lying around like small land mines.
A four-month examination by USA TODAY of how cluster bombs were used in the Iraq war found dozens of deaths that were unintended but predictable. Although U.S. forces sought to limit what they call "collateral damage" in the Iraq campaign, they defied international criticism and used nearly 10,800 cluster weapons; their British allies used almost 2,200...'www.usatoday.com
'Serious and complex challenges remain in Iraq, from the presence of al-Qaida to the destructive influence of Iran to hard compromises needed for further political progress.
Yet, with the surge, a major strategic shift has occurred. Fifteen months ago, America and the Iraqi government were on the defensive. Today, we have the initiative.
Fifteen months ago, extremists were sowing sectarian violence. Today, many mainstream Sunni and Shia are actively confronting the extremists.
Fifteen months ago, al-Qaida had bases in Iraq that it was using to kill our troops and terrorize the Iraqi people. Today, we have put al-Qaida on the defensive in Iraq and we're now working to deliver a crippling blow.
Fifteen months ago, Americans were worried about the prospect of failure in Iraq. Today, thanks to the surge, we've renewed and revived the prospect of success...Bush Speech on Iraq
It seems Bush would rather say "we've come a long way in fifteen months" - not 'five years'. Of course, if you carefully choose your start point on any graph, you might be able to find signs of a positive trend.
Well, five years ago, there was no significant al Qaeda presence in Iraq, and Iran had little influence there at all. Bush seems to be saying that, after wasting countless lives and billions of dollars, there are some hopes of solving the problems that he helped bring about.
If you choose to start a war, you should be aiming to point to an improvement on the conditions that existed before you triggered the carnage, not an improvement on some arbitrary low point in the process.
