Do you ever think...

Kobos wrote: I don't think. I find it a good way to live

Dont find what a good way to live?

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

Kobos wrote: I don't think. I find it a good way to live

Dont find what a good way to live?

I think I misread that the first time lol

OB1Shinobi wrote:

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: Don't get me wrong, there are literally thousands of underlying reasons for America to invade Iraq.

Everyone who participated had their own motivations for doing so, so yes, there were many thousands of reasons. But those reasons came after the decision and arent really important to the question of "was the war necessary?"
The REAL cause the invasion was the motives of our leadership at the time; Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. and they probably didnt have "thousands of reasons".

Any reason whether right or wrong, good or evil, ultimately were undermined by a new regime in America.

Yes, the Obama regime. He was a.... darker figure in the history of American politics, for sure. Still, if it was the Bush regime which started the war, and if the Bush regime's decisions were motivaed by evil, is the evil of the Bush regime somehow washed away because the Obama regime made mistakes (even catastrophic ones) afterwards?

I myself spent 2 1/2 years in Iraq and understand the GOOD people's plight.

Thats a long time. Thank you for your willingness to serve and im glad you made it back.
Its a pretty good bet that that youre not going to like reading what ive got to say, so i want to be very clear in expressing that im not trying to attack you or insult you as a person, or implicate you as being as a guilty party.

I see the Iraq invasion as being a complete sham and con job on America...one with an exorbitant cost. Im thankful that our military are willing to go where they are sent... but i think you should never have been sent there to begin with. I think it was a crime to send you, and i think the people who did it had alterior motives and point-blank lied to us all about what they were after.

Saddam had to be dethroned....

OB1Shinobi wrote: The million dollar question: why?
In what ways can we reasonaby assert that America would be worse off today if we had not invaded Iraq? This is the crux of this whole mini-discussion. If you respond to only one thing in this post, let it be this question, please: why did Saddam HAVE to be dethroned?

Like Kim, Saddam had no qualms about ending an entire village's existence because a handful of people in that village show opposition to what is going on. I'd dare say here and now it's own Jedi code that demands we fight in North Korea right now. However, I don't feel that is really my place to suggest such measures.

I was in Iraq when Saddam was captured and I was there when he was tried and hung for his crimes against humanity. I can remember watching the TV when the first war kicked off and I wanted so much to be a fighter pilot and bomb him. That wasn't at all how I felt being there.

So many of the people there just wanted to live their lives, go about a daily routine and feel confident that they are getting their fare share of the pie. The didn't like living in fear of saying the wrong thing or acting in violence, they just wanted to be free.

When we first arrived in country, that is what many of these people thought they were getting. I'll finish at the bottom.

....but proper actions were not taken to enlightening and support all parties in the area, and withdrawing just made things a million times worse.

No doubt. But Obama and his regime didnt have the sort of ties to the energy industry that his predecessors did. So they didnt have the samemotives for being there.The American people realized theyd heen duped and wanted no more of it, and elected Obama (to a great degree) because he said he would get us out.

Bush promised his friends big energy contracts and illegally invaded another nation/illegally toppled a foreign government in order to keep his promises.
Obama promised America that he would get our people home by Christmas.....
I think we need to be honest about the lessons of both promises.

Everyone I fought with, the brothers and sisters who's families only got to be reunited with an empty vessel of this life, all the friendly and helpful people I met their, that wanted to see a new and better future for themselves, all in vain.

Its truly tragic, i agree with that and im sad for all the death. And also angry. And the only way i see to possibly prevent it from happening again is to be completely skeptical (and even hostile) towards leaders who try to push us into to war. To flatly refuse to take it on faith when they tell us we have to go invade some foreign country. And then to be very, VERY hard on them when it turns out the reasons they gave were B.S.

The way I've always felt about war since I joined the service is this,
"War is fought and won on foreign soil,1 to show that if we can beat you on your home court, you should never try it at ours. 2 there is a great amount of collateral damage that cannot be avoided, our home should never have to see it."
I was recruiting at a high school in Vegas when a kid came up to me with all his hippy memorabilia and tried to pull the "Why do we have to send our soldiers so far from home just so they can die and never come back." I spat my lines back at him and he visibly slumped and went, "oh, I never thought of that."

War makes some good people fall into dark places but often brings about great heroes.

As to the thousands of reasons, a great many people were involved in the final decision to invade, not one person only. I'd dare say hundreds if not thousands of people voiced an approval and reason to attack. Many more initiatives would be added as bonuses to us being there. Maybe I have some exaggeration issues here but the point being all in all, I see that my service as I gave it was just and reasonable, but I am truly saddened by the current state of the area and feel more helpless than ever looking back over the pond.

OB1Shinobi wrote:

ནའдհдཀ༑ནკ wrote: Don't get me wrong, there are literally thousands of underlying reasons for America to invade Iraq.

Everyone who participated had their own motivations for doing so, so yes, there were many thousands of reasons. But those reasons came after the decision and arent really important to the question of "was the war necessary?"
The REAL cause the invasion was the motives of our leadership at the time; Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. and they probably didnt have "thousands of reasons".

Any reason whether right or wrong, good or evil, ultimately were undermined by a new regime in America.

Yes, the Obama regime. He was a.... darker figure in the history of American politics, for sure. Still, if it was the Bush regime which started the war, and if the Bush regime's decisions were motivaed by evil, is the evil of the Bush regime somehow washed away because the Obama regime made mistakes (even catastrophic ones) afterwards?

I myself spent 2 1/2 years in Iraq and understand the GOOD people's plight.

Thats a long time. Thank you for your willingness to serve and im glad you made it back.
Its a pretty good bet that that youre not going to like reading what ive got to say, so i want to be very clear in expressing that im not trying to attack you or insult you as a person, or implicate you as being as a guilty party.

I see the Iraq invasion as being a complete sham and con job on America...one with an exorbitant cost. Im thankful that our military are willing to go where they are sent... but i think you should never have been sent there to begin with. I think it was a crime to send you, and i think the people who did it had alterior motives and point-blank lied to us all about what they were after.

Saddam had to be dethroned....

The million dollar question: why?
In what ways can we reasonaby assert that America would be worse off today if we had not invaded Iraq? This is the crux of this whole mini-discussion. If you respond to only one thing in this post, let it be this question, please: why did Saddam HAVE to be dethroned?

The US Intel community had ben making a lot of noises for a few years about the funding cuts under Clinton having gone too far (after the wind down from the Cold War)... they were telling Washington it was a problem for them,, and so its not hard to associate that to the failure of letting 9/11 happen a few months into Bush's first term. 9/11 was a manifest threat against a soft target - which is not acceptable to them. The US response was to shift the 'forward edge of battle' away from the CONUS and instead to the Middle East - providing a hard and more accessible target to the threat to protect the US and mitigate a real vulnerability in their intel capability at that time. But also at the same time Syria and Iran were both trying to acquire nuclear technology and so too would have Saddam if he was not under the microscope of the UN and US already. So consider how close Syria was with Iraq, and how volatile Iran was with Iraq - that it was a brewing storm on its own. But Afghanistan was a bit too far from the Middle East populations centre for it to serve as a hard target for the sources of emerging threats in the climate of a bleeding US. So the US sought to and achieved a new centre of gravity for that threat to coalesce around - a flame for the moths. Saddam seemed to be uncooperative and a loose canon, a threat to the region if not directly but also well understood thanks to so much recent focus by US forces. The decision was part of the response to the threat exemplified by 9/11. Considering those two things together should highlight the potential future of the threat; terrorists plus WMD is worst case and needs to be avoided rather then reacted too. So Initially the Iraqi's sided with these foreign jihadist fighters but they eventually realized they were far worse then the US - and when the Iraqi's tribes switched support from the foreign terrorist fighters to the US forces - the situation started its process t resolving into the potential for democratic self rule. Indeed the US actions in Iraq destroyed the narrative of AQ, who at the time were convincing folk the US wanted to occupy the Middle East and destroy Islam, and this fuelled the middle class Arab Spring uprising to a large extent. Unfortunately Obama did no support the move to democracy in the Middle East as well as he could have, and the opportunity afforded by the previous 8 years was lost. Jumping to the reality that people make money out of war as the reason for it seems to be ignoring the other more salient realities of the time IMO. And the reasons given at the time cannot be the real reasons - as revealing strategy in conflict is ludicrous. That Saddam had used and had possessed WMD, and the region including his allies were actively acquiring them, just provided a truthful basis for propaganda sufficient to get the job done - as a good politician at that level should be more concerned about doing the right thing then being re-elected or remembered as popular. Any way, that was, and is my opinion, but as someone once said to me, they dropped so much ordnance on some military targets that there could be WMD there but just be buried under tons of concrete!