(June 16, 2014 at 9:40 pm)Heywood Wrote: We've had continual hostilities with Iraq since it invaded Kuwait in 1990. Bush did not start these hostilities. Sadaam Hussien did. Now you can blame Bush for escalating them...but our hostilities with Iraq started in 1990.
Well, I blame Bush for making one of the stupidest foreign-policy decisions in American history, and I don't give a shit who started the fighting.
The fact is, the Iraq invasion weakened our forces in Afghanistan at a critical moment, meaning that that front would have six more years of meat-grinder going for it. Bush's decision weakened both forces; by invading a country 3 times the size of California with little more than 100,000 troops, he guaranteed that they would not win a lasting peace, while at the same time weakening the forces in Afghanistan just as they were about to get everything settled there.
The Japanese have a proverb: he who chases two hares catches neither. That sort of wisdom ain't, ahem, rocket surgery.
