I think Iraq did much more damage to American standing in the world than the World Wars (which improved our standing among other nations) or even Vietnam (which to be sure did significant damage). After Iraq, we were no longer seen as a beacon of freedom and democracy, but a bully who invaded a oil rich country on obviously false preten…
I think Iraq did much more damage to American standing in the world than the World Wars (which improved our standing among other nations) or even Vietnam (which to be sure did significant damage). After Iraq, we were no longer seen as a beacon of freedom and democracy, but a bully who invaded a oil rich country on obviously false pretenses because no one could stop us. And then totally botched the job.
I also have to disagree that regime change in Iraq had other positive outcomes for American interests. It removed an implacable opponent of Iran and replaced it with a Shia controlled regime that was at best Finlandized and often overtly friendly to Iranian interests. Post-revolutionary Iran has never had more power in the Middle East than it does today and that is due in large part to a war that Mr. Cohen cheerled (in terms that were often dishonest).
I also have yet to see any evidence that the Arab spring was in any way motivated by our invasion of Iraq. It was led by people who had been fed up with generations of rule by violent extremely corrupt elites. How would our removal of a Sunni violent corrupt elite and installation of a Shia violent ridiculously corrupt elite with horrific outcomes for Sunnis inspire a revolution by Sunnis in other countries against their own local elites?
Again, I am huge fan, JVL. But I couldn't disagree more with you about Iraq. It was a terrible, terrible mistake.
Iraq was a mess before it was a mess. Just like Iran. Our successes always seem to make our failures. We were so clever taking down Mossadegh, until we weren't. So to fix that we propped up Saddam. But then that became the problem, twice.
So to fix that we try again. JVL's point is, at least for now Iraq is a success in that it isn't Iran.
Does that mean that had we not pulled off the Iranian coup two years before I was born we would not have had Iran vs Iraq or Afghanistan and the lesser Bush and all the rest? Very possibly. But maybe it would be even worse.
Putin may or may not be making strategic blunders -- I tend to think he's in a much better position than most here seem to think, but we'll see -- but pretty much everything the US did strategically in Vietnam, the Middle East, Afghanistan, was one strategic tie-your-shoelaces-together-and-fall-on-your-face stupid debacle after another.
But history is funny (funny peculiar, not funny hah-hah). Sometimes the face plant from tying your shoelaces together may prevent you from running into a death trap down the road.
How all this turns out -- this much I predict: it won't be what you think it will be, whatever that is, but it isn't going to be good. This is an intelligent, thoughtful community of serious people doing their best to find answers that will help the arc of history bend toward -- justice, or at least not depravity. Many offer ideas with considerable confidence that the proffered course of action is the way through Moria and back out into the sunlight. I just have to say -- we need to be very skeptical that anything we try is not going to be disastrous.
America more than any other power was responsible for Saddam in the first place and from a karmic perspective it was our responsibility to try and clean up the mess. I go along with JVL that badly as we botched it, we didn't botch it as badly as we did Cambodia and Vietnam. We made NATO to save Europe from being entirely absorbed into Stalin's empire and like it or not it's our responsibility to stand by it now; too many peoples are stuck counting on it to hold off Putin's resurgent empire. We "won" the cold war and out of that some pieces of Stalin's empire were freed finally to have some hope of a better polity and economic future. Even those not in NATO are in a real sense orphans whose predicament is the result of our actions, even though what we actually can do now to protect them ranges from very little to nothing at all.
I think one of the things that made Marxism so appealing, particularly to intellectually inclined elites of a certain personality, was that it seemed to offer what every poor bastard waiting helplessly in a trench while being shelled by history wants more than anything else: escape the powerlessness. The marxist "science" of history offered the illusion that after all, it really did make sense, and even more than that, you can actually know the consequences of whatever the hell you are trying to do.
It is so enticing to fool one's self into imagining that the future is something you have some influence over. And of course we do have influence; our actions determine the future; it's just that we can't guess what that influence will be.
I think Iraq did much more damage to American standing in the world than the World Wars (which improved our standing among other nations) or even Vietnam (which to be sure did significant damage). After Iraq, we were no longer seen as a beacon of freedom and democracy, but a bully who invaded a oil rich country on obviously false pretenses because no one could stop us. And then totally botched the job.
I also have to disagree that regime change in Iraq had other positive outcomes for American interests. It removed an implacable opponent of Iran and replaced it with a Shia controlled regime that was at best Finlandized and often overtly friendly to Iranian interests. Post-revolutionary Iran has never had more power in the Middle East than it does today and that is due in large part to a war that Mr. Cohen cheerled (in terms that were often dishonest).
I also have yet to see any evidence that the Arab spring was in any way motivated by our invasion of Iraq. It was led by people who had been fed up with generations of rule by violent extremely corrupt elites. How would our removal of a Sunni violent corrupt elite and installation of a Shia violent ridiculously corrupt elite with horrific outcomes for Sunnis inspire a revolution by Sunnis in other countries against their own local elites?
Again, I am huge fan, JVL. But I couldn't disagree more with you about Iraq. It was a terrible, terrible mistake.
Iraq was a mess before it was a mess. Just like Iran. Our successes always seem to make our failures. We were so clever taking down Mossadegh, until we weren't. So to fix that we propped up Saddam. But then that became the problem, twice.
So to fix that we try again. JVL's point is, at least for now Iraq is a success in that it isn't Iran.
Does that mean that had we not pulled off the Iranian coup two years before I was born we would not have had Iran vs Iraq or Afghanistan and the lesser Bush and all the rest? Very possibly. But maybe it would be even worse.
Putin may or may not be making strategic blunders -- I tend to think he's in a much better position than most here seem to think, but we'll see -- but pretty much everything the US did strategically in Vietnam, the Middle East, Afghanistan, was one strategic tie-your-shoelaces-together-and-fall-on-your-face stupid debacle after another.
But history is funny (funny peculiar, not funny hah-hah). Sometimes the face plant from tying your shoelaces together may prevent you from running into a death trap down the road.
How all this turns out -- this much I predict: it won't be what you think it will be, whatever that is, but it isn't going to be good. This is an intelligent, thoughtful community of serious people doing their best to find answers that will help the arc of history bend toward -- justice, or at least not depravity. Many offer ideas with considerable confidence that the proffered course of action is the way through Moria and back out into the sunlight. I just have to say -- we need to be very skeptical that anything we try is not going to be disastrous.
America more than any other power was responsible for Saddam in the first place and from a karmic perspective it was our responsibility to try and clean up the mess. I go along with JVL that badly as we botched it, we didn't botch it as badly as we did Cambodia and Vietnam. We made NATO to save Europe from being entirely absorbed into Stalin's empire and like it or not it's our responsibility to stand by it now; too many peoples are stuck counting on it to hold off Putin's resurgent empire. We "won" the cold war and out of that some pieces of Stalin's empire were freed finally to have some hope of a better polity and economic future. Even those not in NATO are in a real sense orphans whose predicament is the result of our actions, even though what we actually can do now to protect them ranges from very little to nothing at all.
I think one of the things that made Marxism so appealing, particularly to intellectually inclined elites of a certain personality, was that it seemed to offer what every poor bastard waiting helplessly in a trench while being shelled by history wants more than anything else: escape the powerlessness. The marxist "science" of history offered the illusion that after all, it really did make sense, and even more than that, you can actually know the consequences of whatever the hell you are trying to do.
It is so enticing to fool one's self into imagining that the future is something you have some influence over. And of course we do have influence; our actions determine the future; it's just that we can't guess what that influence will be.
Completely agree with you Milton. You are spot on.