“Re: RE: RE: Bush, Iraq, al Qaeda, WMD, Terrorism, etc., etc., etc.”

On Apr 20, 2004, at 9:48 AM, Brian Carnell wrote:

  

I raised the issue of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The U.S. and its 
allies stopped short of deposing Hussein because of rather 
short-sighted near term political reasons.
    

Short sighted near term political reasons?  They were in the Persian 
Gulf to liberate Kuwait, not depose Iraq's government.  There's no way 
the public would have tolerated that.  Perhaps the public would have 
accepted a targeted assassination of Hussein, but not the occupation of 
Iraq.
  

And, in retrospect, it was a mistake to only treat the symptom rather than the disease. I think the American public would have accepted the occupation of Iraq just as well as they are today (initially there would have been lots of support which would have gradually waned somewhat). One of the reasons the occupation of Iraq wasn't pursued was that the destruction on the Highway of Death (much of it caused by the Iraqi's own extensive mines) was causing negative reactions in Arab media, which is, in retrospect, one of the reasons the occupation probably should have been pursued.

I wondered what might have happened if Iraq had been occupied by 
allied forces then and  the process of creating a democratic state 
there that Bush wants to undertake in Iraq had already been ongoing 
for 10 years.
    

Hm... let me guess: the allies would have sparked the current explosion 
of islamic jihadist terrorism then instead of now, and something like 
9/11 probably would have happened many years sooner.  Nothing has been 
better for the jihadists than occupying Iraq.  It plays right into 
their hands and gives them the ammo they need to recruit new people.
  

Islamic jihadist terrorism was one of the direct results of the invasion of Iraq even without occupation. So we ended up in the lose-lose situation of anti-American jihadic terrorism without getting rid of Saddam. In hindsight, it would have been better to just bite the bullet, eliminate Saddam and weather the storm of international disapproval.