Eleven years ago, the U.S. military installed a Shiite-majority puppet government in Baghdad. The cost of regime change in Iraq has been estimated at between $2 trillion and $6 trillion. Nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers were killed. Tens of thousands were wounded. At least one million Iraqis died.
You could think of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq as the most expensive startup of all time, a high-risk experiment, but with real human lives at stake.
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> … every American should have seen this coming ages ago.
… y’think? SOME of us did see it coming, and we were called cowards and traitors as usual. Just take a step back at look at it: our plan is to force freedom on people at gunpoint. Something seems amiss with that plan.
“It’s hard to convince people that you’re killing them for their own good” – Molly Ivins
I’ve got a … (wait for it) … crazy idea. Let’s try a new experiment. Let’s stop bombing those poor slobs into the stone age. Let’s stop forcing crazy-ass dictators on them at BP’s behest. Let’s give them some breathing room to develop their own damn culture.
Europe went through periods of feudalism & church-sponsored terrorism. Seems to me like those are just normal growing pains. What would have happened if we hadn’t knocked over Iran’s nascent democracy in 1953? Would Arab Spring have bloomed sixty years earlier? Would the Muddle East now be a showplace for peace, love & groovy? Would we have actual allies instead of vassals who smile in our face while stabbing us in the back? Would 9-11 have been a good day to take in the view from the top of the World Trade Center?
Just how many times do we have to shoot ourselves in the foot before we realize that it hurts?
*”… the Muddle East….”*
^
I like that! 😀
Ted,
I realize it’s a bit early to be asking for prognostications from you, but you do know more about the region and the politics affecting it than I do. So I hope you’ll weigh in with some “good guesses.”
Or, I could wait for Tom Friedman and simply stick a “not” after every sentence as appropriate.
Let’s go back to the Constitutional requirement for a declaration of war where all of the pros and cons can be deliberated before the mass murder and the mass debt numbers run up.
There are a few provisions in the Constitution that have been kicked aside by the traitorous occupants of public office that really would be nice to see revived.
As the situation now stands the timorists frighten the gullible public into swallowing any remedy purely on faith; and only by shutting up do you prove you don’t support terrorists.