President Bush The Smarter Has Passed Away

[Angrboda]

The simple problem with blaming Bush, Sr. with not taking out Iraq is that doing so would not have been a just war and would have compromised our aims in the region and elsewhere by setting a precedent that the U.S. was willing to shamelessly engage in conquest and imperialism for unjustifiable reasons.  A precedent that would have had far reaching and damaging consequences.  Bush, Jr. realized this.  That's why he manufactured the charge of harboring WMDs in violation of UN agreements and violating the no-fly zone.  Bush, Jr. attempted to give a war on Iraq the legitimacy that it would have lacked under Bush, Sr.  To say that Bush, Sr. was a failure for not engaging in an unjust war is simply short sighted thinking, concentrating  only on the immediate goal of regime change in Iraq, and ignoring the consequences of engaging in such without adequate moral justification.  It is not only immoral, it is bad policy.

Why did the US, under Bush Sr., encourage an internal revolt in Iraq with the aim of overthrowing Saddam?
It has nothing to do with imperialism or conquest. Once free, Iraq auctioned and contracted its oil to the Chinese.
WMDs and oil were just a pretext. The real reason was to get rid of a dictator like Saddam. As far as I'm concerned, that's all that matters and that's all the justification needed.
When troops were already on the ground in Kuwait, it was just a matter of crossing the border and heading north a few miles to Baghdad. Bush Senior made a blunder just admit it.
Instead, we allowed Iraq a full decade to regroup and try to recover. That partly explains why the insurgency during the Second Gulf War was so intense. The Baathists were preparing for it and had increasingly militarized the Sunni triangle. They knew they could never defend against the Americans in a conventional war, which is why they didn't even try in 2003.

You're still ignoring the larger ramifications of doing so, which, in and of themselves, make going to war in that instance bad policy. It's true that the U.S. engages in attempts at regime change, but such attempts are almost always covert. Engaging in regime change overtly through the expedient of an unjust war sets you up for the negative consequences that I've already outlined, whereas covert actions are not as likely to do so. The fact that the U.S. does and has preferred covert attempts at regime change to overt acts of war aimed at regime change undermines your argument because it shows that, for reasons which I've only partially argued, doing so is worse and more harmful to our long term interests than covert action is. Your own example refutes your argument that overt action in the absence of moral justification is a desirable and that such would not be bad as a foreign policy. The existence of plentiful covert action and the paucity of actual overt actions shows that the people who are actually responsible for such decisions don't consider such overt attempts at regime change solely for the sake of regime change to be good policy. Maybe you know better than they do, but I doubt it. I suspect you simply haven't considered how such an overt war in the absence of sound justification and multilateral support would actual be harmful to our interests in the world instead of helpful. I agree that in some parts of the world, regime change would be desirable. That doesn't mean that all methods of achieving regime change are equally desirable or even good, on balance, overall. You have confused the goal with the method. The goal of regime change is desirable. Overt military action with neither moral justification or multilateral support is not.


A quick note about our "allies" and them being largely a group of Arab countries. That's actually a positive and not a negative as the goal in such actions, including regime change, is to further stability in the region. Stability in the region is enhanced if the Arab countries in that region are onboard with what we are trying to do in the region via regime change. If it is not supported by Arab countries in the region, that just sets up the conditions for divisiveness in the region and undermines the goal of stability in the region. The goal of regime change is sometimes about extending our sphere of influence, but where it has been the primary goal of action, doing so tends to have bad consequences, up to and including undermining stability in the region. We want allies, not puppets. Puppets don't work and undermine both our effectiveness in the region, as well as the harmony necessary for stability in the region. It is typically an unhealthy sign if your policy is aimed solely at making our side happy. Any conversation about happiness has to include the other side or it leads to bad results.