An interesting statement.
One wonders by what metric it is judged.
Similar logic would then support the following assertions:
The Declaration of Independence was a mistake and a failure because it led directly to the Revolutionary War -- which killed more Americans than 9/11.
The Constitution of the United States was a mistake and a failure because it led ultimately to the U.S. Civil War -- America's worst war by far (well over 100 times worse than Iraq).
Huh???
The mistake and failure crowd is judging current conditions by comparing them to some fantasy alternate timeline in which there are absolutely no bad consequences to have not taken action. This assumes Saddam Hussein was just a misunderstood teddy bear.
How about otherwise having to face not just Iran's budding nuclear program, but Iraq's as well, as sanctions would have decayed under the oil-for-fraud program?
Let's examine the specific claims:
Iraq was a mistake and a failure because...no WMD stockpiles were found.
I call that a lucky break for our troops! To complain about this again assumes Hussein never, ever had or would have WMD-producing or using intentions.
Translations of captured Iraqi documents are proving otherwise, though the MSM doesn't really report it. The govt. can't apparently handle the translation task of millions of documents and put them on the web. This site is a great resource for what is being found. For example,
On the subject of nuclear program, I translated and posted a document last month dated January 2001 that shows with a shadow of doubt that Saddam was personally involved with his nuclear scientist to re-build the nuclear program.Seems some people would rather our troops got gassed.
Nothing to see here, move along...
Iraq was a mistake and a failure because...we are less safe.
This relies on assuming a Hussein-free Iraq generates more terrorists, which produces a higher threat.
Well guess what, prior to the Iraq War, there were already plenty enough terrorists with resources to pull of 9/11, which is about as bad as terrorists alone can ever hurt us. Producing more terrorists by itself doesn't make their lethality increase, nor apparently the frequency of their mass attacks.
What would make terrorists more dangerous is their ability to connect with a rogue state and acquire atomic bombs.
Which they now can never do from Hussein's Iraq.
Ergo, we are more safe, which is all the justification needed post 9/11.
Iraq is a mistake and failure because...people keep dying.
By that reasoning, the whole world is a mistake and a failure. Wake up and smell the Hobbesian Leviathan.
Iraq is a mistake and a failure because...daily life is miserable in Baghdad.
The Tikriti-connected Sunni arab in Iraq may certainly view the Iraq war as a mistake. The Nazi SS also came to regard our entry into WW2 as a bad idea. So what? Our nation is safer.
Kurdistan, "the other Iraq", happens to be doing very well. They don't think it's a mistake.
To match our opinions to that of a single faction is ludicrous.
Iraq is a mistake and a failure because...liberal democracy hasn't taken hold.
The project of injecting Western-style freedoms into Islamic culture may indeed fail. A mistake to try? More like a moral imperative, as if it does work it would spare us having to solve Belmont Club's Three Conjectures by force, i.e. killing a billion people.
That again would be their failure, not ours.
There's lots of confusion between us and them these days though, isn't there? Multiculturalist dogma has worked hard to destroy a confident self-identity in the West.
Iraq is a mistake and a failure because...things aren't as good as they could have been with better postwar management.
Yes, mistakes were made and the best-case outcome failed to materialize. Very true. Adapt and adjust. Make the best of it. We're still safer and better off for having acted than not.
I mean, look at Libya's secret atomic program: "I saw what happened to Saddam, and I was afraid!" wailed Gadaffi.
Iraq is a mistake and a failure because...we hate George Bush and he must not be seen to succeed at anything.
All too many subscribe to that line of reasoning. One would think they had no stake in the outcome of a civilizational struggle, as if they live on some other planet.
What has been obscured by partisan sniping and biased reporting is that Iraq can be seen as a series of successes, each leading to further layers of problems that were exposed.
Baghdad was captured in March 2003 in a brilliant campaign. Major combat operations ended in April 2003. Saddam Hussein was dragged out of a hole a few months after that.
Looks like Victory and Success to me!
So Sunnis and Shiites hate each other. Our problem? Our mistake? Our failure?
One might even say that true cynical Realists would welcome driving a wedge into the faultline in the rotten Middle East between Arab and Persian, Sunni and Shia, to pit them against each other as they are both our common enemies; properly understood, al Qaeda is simply the Saudi-backed Sunni counterrevolution in terror and islamic fundamentalism, trying to regain the mantle of leadership from the Iran-backed Shia islamic terror revolution that flared up in 1979.
As Spengler says, embrace chaos because it's inevitable, even vital if we are to survive:
Like or not, the US will get chaos, and cannot do anything to forestall it. My advice to President George W Bush: When chaos is inevitable, learn to enjoy it.He even has a prescription that I endorse:
...
A tragedy is unfolding whose final curtain never comes down. Washington must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, because the Ahmadinejad regime wants an oil empire stretching from the southeast shore of the Caspian Sea to the southwest shore of the Persian Gulf. Reza Pahlavi, son of the late shah, warned of Iran's imperial intentions in a Fox News interview on Saturday. President Mahmud Ahmadinejad cannot abandon Iran's nuclear ambitions any more than Adolf Hitler could have kept the peace with Poland in 1939 and remain in power.
Aerial attacks on Iran's nuclear capabilities - Washington's only effective option - will set into play Iranian assets in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere, precipitating a regional war (War with Iran on the worst terms, February 14).
...
When the administration of president Ronald Reagan set out to bring down the Soviet Empire, it did not inquire as to the consequences for Russian or Ukrainian; its object was to reduce a threat to the United States.
The first principle is to reward friends and punish enemies.
Americans do not wish to shed their citizens' blood for the purpose of nation-building in countries they do not much care about. The best solution would be to adopt the French model, in the form of a Foreign Legion based offshore. The world still is full of first-rate soldiers with a Russian or South African pedigree who are not suited to civilian life. By extension, Washington might issue Letters of Marque to private entities to deal with enemies at arm's length.I'd also recruit Gurkhas!
