The fall of post invasion Iraq

[Thumpalumpacus]

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.

I think our error in Iraq was not the invasion part. The invasion was the easy part. Where we screwed up is in disbanding the Iraqi army and marginalizing the Sunni's.

You're right, those were greivous errors. I think Maliki was more instrumental than we were in the anti-Sunni stance (remember, we fought against the Shi'ite Muqtada al-Sadr's forces, and were especially concerned about Shi'ite Iran's involvement).

I'd still say that we wouldn't have made those mistakes had not not been there, and that's what to my mind makes the invasion itself our greatest blinder since at least Vietnam.

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I think his point, that American intervention is for us lose-lose, still stands.

Not really. We could win if we ally with Iran. But it requires a major eating of our own words as well as a political determination to shatter the influence of Israel lobby.

We won't be able to ally with Iran, on a long-term basis, without withdrawing our objection to their nuclear program, and I don't see that happening, myself.

"Politics is the art of the possible," and all that.

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We could win if we ally with Iran.

It might be worth it, Chuck. Think of all the republicunt assholes who would literally shit themselves to death if that happened.

It's worth considering.

Having spent four years of my youth in the Shah's Iran, I would love to see it happen. But I'm not optimistic.

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Looks as if Turkey is thinking this over.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/17...04309.html

ERBIL, Iraq -- In a statement that could have a dramatic impact on regional politics in the Middle East, a spokesman for Turkey's ruling party recently told a Kurdish media outlet that the Kurds in Iraq have the right to self-determination. The statement has been relatively overlooked so far, but could signal a shift in policy as Turkey has long been a principal opponent of Kurdish independence, which would mean a partitioning of Iraq.

"The Kurds of Iraq can decide for themselves the name and type of the entity they are living in," Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for the Justice and Development Party, told the Kurdish online news outlet Rudaw last week.

If that is correct, it could be huge. The question is, can they drag Iran (which also has a sizeable and somewhat persecuted Kurdush minority) along?