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About LinkBacksIf we had the Gulf War to do all over again, would you think it good if Bush Sr. had ignored his promise to stop short of Bagdad, and simply taken contol of the entire country and captured Saddam?
If we had the Gulf War to do all over again, would you think it good if Bush Sr. had ignored his promise to stop short of Bagdad, and simply taken contol of the entire country and captured Saddam?
Interesting question.Originally Posted by justoneman
If the alternative was to be in Iraq today, then I think we should have ran Saddam off back then.
What is intersting to me is that nobody wants to offer up whether it would have been a good idea or not. I know some here think the Gulf War was wrong for the US to engage in. At the time I thought that Bush Sr. was very smart to stop when he did. I thought Saddam would stop military action. Instead he continued. As time went by my opinion changed about Bush Sr.'s decision to stop short. After the attempt at assasination of our president and the gassing of the Iraqis and then to cap it off the daily firing upon our fighter jets in the no fly zone, I started to think that bush was a fool for holding back. He let Saddam's ellite guard fighters go when he had them in a pincer action.
I hear you.
It's so easy now to say we should have gone in then, but hindsight is 20/20. At the time I certainly thought it was the right idea.
Is it possible in the future we will say the same about this war? The popular opinion seems to be we need to pull out right now, short of taking down Al-Quida. I think theres a good chance that 20 years from now, we'll be wishing everyone wasn't willing to stop so early.
It would have pissed off a fuck load of Arab nations and people
True but they are pissed of at us always anyways. What's the difference?
One A-bomb on baghdad in gulf war one would have sent a clear message to all the jihadists and Iran and bin laden not to mess with USA and 9-11 would not have happened. So many soldiers would still be alive and saddam and all his buddies would be gone in a millisecond.
In fact the predictions, on this very issue, made by both the elder President Bush and Mr. Cheney turned out to be eerily accurate. They made very cogent arguments for NOT continuing into Baghdad- and these very thoughts reflect the reality as it stands now:
Dick Cheney on deposing Saddam.
Cheney changed his view on Iraq
I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.
"And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.
"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."
In the Northwest: Bush-Cheney flip-flops cost America in blood
"Extending the war into Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Exceeding the U.N.'s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. —George Herbert Walker Bush, 1998"
So the answer is NO. We should not have gone in then and we should not have invaded in 2003.
Well your quotes are from the past. Much has happened that has altered the course of history. If Bush senior had known that Saddam would later gas the Kurds and the Shia and that he would have to establish a no fly zone to protect them and that Saddam would then shoot at the jets in that zone I am sure it would have affected his decission.
