The "Iraq was a mistake" talking point

[noise]

Whatever the Iraq policy was it is sickening to use the word mistake to define it. If al Qaeda was truly the dire threat we are led to believe then Iraq was a treasonous diversion not a mistake. Is it wrong to wonder if in fact al Qaeda is not a dire threat and the reason the Bush administration focused on Iraq was because they knew this to be the case? I just can't go along with the notion that suddenly the US government remembered that al Qaeda was a dire threat. That isn't acceptable. We have outrage after outrage coming out seemingly every day (Karzai's brother on the CIA payroll, Blackwater more involved in CIA operations than previously known, etc.) yet we are still supposed to believe the Afghanistan policy is as stated? Why should we believe this?

[Electric Monk]

1. Mistake was the wrong word. I prefer 'diversion', fwiw.

History will judge. Graveyard of Empires, etc etc etc, blah blah blah.

[noise]

3. I really don't understand why the public should accept this

The original Afghanistan policy (going after al Qaeda) called for a small footprint in part to avoid getting bogged down. Several years later we are told the only way to achieve the original goal is with a much larger footprint.

This isn't right.

[tblue]

4. Oh but we're not supposed to remember what was said yesterday.

That was then, this is now.

[tblue]

2. Al Qaeda was never not considered a genuine threat. But hey we're "looking forward."

The fact that Bush/Cheney will never be investigated so we will never be told the truth behind the invasion of Iraq does not in the least help us move on and embrace expansion into Afghanistan. Instead it makes us doubt our government even more. Your skepticism is right and healthy. The whole thing -- the detentions, tortures, white phosphorous, WMDs, Tora Bora, Blackwater, Karzai, Erik Prince, Pat Tillman -- everything about it is shrouded in lies. What are we supposed to think? How could we possibly feel other than outraged and cynical? We'd be fools to take what we are told at face value.

[Smarmie Doofus]

5. Good questions. This is definitely " not wrong ":

>>>Is it wrong to wonder if in fact al Qaeda is not a dire threat and the reason the Bush administration focused on Iraq was because they knew this to be the case?>>>>>

Rather, it's healthy skepticism... given what we know so far. And we really don't *know* a lot so far..... despite endless reportage on the topic in the US media.

[paulsby]

6. tell it to hilary

she won't even admit we shouldn't have invaded iraq, EVEN if we knew then what we know now

she makes oreilly seem reasonable on this issue

[yurbud]

7. it was not a mistake. It was sold with a lie and they thought they'd get away with it.

That the Taliban had anything to do with 9/11 other than being the landlord of bin Laden and al Qaeda is also a lie. If that level of support for al Qaeda was justification for occupying a country, we should have invaded http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2008/03/foia-doc-shows-911commission-lied-about.html">Saudi Arabia and http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jul/22/usa.september11">Pakistan first and second before we sent a single soldier into Afghanistan since both countries were actively involved in the financing and support of the 9/11 hijackers.

It was about oil money. Our oil companies were shut out of Iraq, and rather than negotiate fair terms with Saddam, they thought if we invaded, they could keep 88% of the oil income and just give scraps to the Iraqis. It didn't quite turn out that way, but they did get back in the door.

In Afghanistan, two sources of income for Wall Street are keeping us there: the Trans-Afghan pipeline that will begin construction a couple of months after our troops get there, and the massive, now industrial scale heroin trade that needs to launder their drug money and our banks are usually glad to oblige. If you don't believe me, google drug money laundering and the name of any big bank.

[noise]

8. Why isn't your analysis standard?

People don't want to think their leaders are capable of such deception? The media is too corrupt to report the truth?

I'm sure you know that many people would dismiss your analysis as conspiracy theory.

[yurbud]

10. historians would not. Did we expand across the United States to quell the Indian terrorist menace?

or did we use Indian raids as an excuse to take their land?

every country claims to have a good excuse to take the land,resources, whatever, from the people they invade. Hitler was trying to protect the abused German minority in Poland. Japan wanted to establish a ''peaceful East Asia'' (under their control), and even when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he said it was because they were slant drilling into Iraq and drinking his milkshake. But instead of just taking the territory needed to correct the problem, he took the whole country.

[yurbud]

16. more...

But history is written by the winners, so we call what Hitler did to the Jews the Holocaust, but what we did to the Indians doesn't have an equally iconic name because we won.

Once a generation or two passes and no one in America has a dog in the fight in the Middle East, history will say that American oil companies hoped to capture ownership of Iraqi oil fields through the war in Iraq, and to steal pipeline business from Russia in Iran and Afghanistan. They will probably even acknowledge the role of Afghan drug money in Wall Street, just as it is slowly moving out of the realm of investigative journalism into history in our proxy wars in Columbia today, with Nicaragua in the '80s, more settled as history with the smuggling of heroin in coffins of soldiers in Vietnam, and not even disputed that the British were fighting for illegal drug income in the Opium War with the Chinese in the 19th century.

It is only a conspiracy theory now because the public would not support the real reasons. Like Goering said at Nuremberg,

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob ona farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of
it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people
don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in
Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the
country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to
drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist
dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same in any country.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp

[Gregorian]

14. People like being happy.

Having been blessed with a combination of things in my life that turned me away from the happy side at an early age, I have been watching this for many years.

Being happy is like balancing on a ball. People shop, drive, breed, and do all kinds of things to avoid being unhappy. It scares them to be unhappy. We're living in an unnatural world now, and reality is such that we should be unhappy. Look what we've done. From melting the planet, infesting it with way too many humans, and hurting the ones that have what we want.

Also, people like to have a leader. I will never understand it. The notion that the news, and the leaders, are lying bothers people's concept of trust in their leadership.

I came to DU with the hope that we could all pool our brains and make a better world. I am slowly beginning to wish for the worst so people will see the truth instead of what they wish the truth is.

We stumbled on to the PNAC a number of years ago, and from that moment on I didn't just think Iraq was planned, I knew it.

[Goldstein1984]

9. It all piles up pretty fast, doesn't it?

I have struggled to maintain my support for the man I helped vote into the Whitehouse. I'm not succeeding

Secrecy; support for reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act; not investigating the Bush/Cheney use of torture; suppressing torture photos; and using the catch-all "vital national interest" line to defend the decision to escalate in Afghanistan.

And we're told this isn't another Vietnam? Do you know what military leaders are studying right now? Books analyzing the Vietnam conflict.

We should not believe any of it.

[spanone]

11. it was a deliberate criminal decision

[Octafish]

12. ''Disaster Capitalism for Empire'' is a fancy phrase for warmongering.

Excellent summation of the situation, noise. It was no mistake on the part of Smriko McCokespoon or anybody.

The nation's secret government knew exactly what it was doing. Control of the planet's energy resources means control of the global economy and cold cash. Controlling Afghani heroin pipeline is icing on the cake.

Gangsterism at it's finest. And for America, a traitor by any other name...

[Martin Eden]

13. Iraq was PNAC; Afghanistan was FUBAR

Let's be clear about the invasion of Iraq:
The neocon Bush administration was intent on doing this from day one for several reasons, least of which was any "grave and gathering threat" posed by WMD or non-existent ties to al Qaeda. It was about oil, Israel, and the Project for the New American Century. It was launched under a pack of lies, and is a major war crime.

Afghanistan was Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. Bush failed to do what was necessary to capture/kill bin Laden and prevent the al Qaeda leadership from setting up shop in nuclear-armed Pakistan, then decided to stay in Afghanistan without investing the resources necessary for a successful nation-building operation in a country that throughout its history has been the graveyard of empires.

Without a doubt diverting resources to Iraq guaranteed failure for the mission in Afghanistan, but what exactly was the mission? To me it looks like Bush couldn't bring himself to pull out but didn't seem all that intersted in "winning" there either. It was feckless neglect that allowed the Taliban to reclaim much of the countryside, leaving Obama a no-win quagmire.

The mission in Afghanistan now is one last major effort to keep the Taliban from eventually unseating the government in Kabul. This is deemed necessary because of the Taliban's alliance with al Qaeda and the related instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

The "diversion" talking point has some validity because the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated partly as a result of the shift to Iraq, but we have to be careful about how we define the invasion of Iraq. It wasn't a "diversion" -- it was a war crime.

[Turborama]

19. Very well put

That's a very concise explanation that I'm taking ages to do myself.

People too often conflate Afghanistan with Iraq and use "the pipeline" theory to somehow make both wars the same. They are not. Iraq was a war crime, Busch's http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=afghanwar_tmln&afghanwar_tmln_us_invasion__occupation=afghanwar_tmln_economic_reconstruction">mishandling of Afghanistan's reconstruction was criminal.

[gratuitous]

15. Hand-in-hand with the "mistake" meme

Is the idea that nobody could have possibly foreseen it, either. That's a very important element, because otherwise, some dirty fuckin' hippie is going to smirk (or whatever they do) and say "I told you so." And then where would we be? Those dirty fuckin' hippies would have to be ignored twice as hard.

[Sparkly]

17. They wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11.

The PNAC tried to pressure Clinton into it, too.

When BushCo took office, we *knew* they'd start something in Iraq, and sure enough -- the script went right back to the Reagan era's as if there were no such thing as terrorist groups anymore. It was, like a bad re-run, all about "ICBMs from rogue nations." They squelched the counter-terrorism the Clinton administration had going. (Read Richard Clarke.)

If there had been a real, defensible reason for invading Iraq, they would have come right out with it. Instead, they were pussyfooting around with vague warnings about "rogue nations" and ICBMs, leading up to something or building a case.

An administration without this agenda would have seen 9/11 as a reality check, and in some ways, they got back on track (while blaming Clinton, of course). But as we know, they used it to further their goal of invading Iraq.

As for Afghanistan, I remember the Tora Bora incident well. All reports said that there was heavy fire coming back and that the intelligence was that Bin Laden was there. Who decided not to use our forces, and why? For some reason, we relied on ragtag groups of people who simply said they were on our side; give them some money and ammo and let them go up there and get them. Then it was "Oops, he got away."

They want us to believe the military strength of the U.S., not to mention our allies there at the time, couldn't secure a 10-mile radius? Really?!?

At the time, I wasn't sure if it was stupidity or something else. Why wouldn't they want the political victory of capturing Bin Laden?

I never thought they'd actually try to mix up Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, or Al Qaeda and Iraq. I mean, who would believe that?! It couldn't possibly make any sense to anybody!!

THAT is where I was completely wrong. Much of The American People get pretty damned stupid when they're scared, and they're easily scared.

Even as they tried to "make the case" for going into Iraq, I couldn't figure out why. I've heard of the oil and money, but surely there were easier ways; I thought Saddam might have something on the Bush Empire and they wanted to silence him or retrieve something or whatever, but when they didn't get him immediately, letting him stand trial, that theory was discounted. I thought it might be that they were SO clueless and incompetent, they wanted the political power of a "War Presidency" flexing his muscles (cough) -- that pseudo-macho posturing was such a part of their image. Maybe they just wanted to play war. But they could have done that in Afghanistan. Maybe Iraq looked like lower hanging fruit as far as overthrowing a central government, but surely they weren't so idiotic to consider that without something there to rise up and take it's place, there'd be chaos.

I still don't think we have the answers to why we went into Iraq. I'm not sure we ever will, to be honest.

[Mithreal]

18. kick, good points in this discussion