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Look, I'm not saying the Iraq War was a good idea, but this "we shouldn't create a power vacuum" etc. type of reasoning is something I have a lot of problems wi

by arp242 3y ago

Look, I'm not saying the Iraq War was a good idea, but this "we shouldn't create a power vacuum" etc. type of reasoning is something I have a lot of problems with. Whatever one can say about the Iraq War, Saddam really was a horrible dictator. While the worst of his crimes (Iran war, genocide of Kurds) had been quite a few years in the past, there are many stories even from the late 90s/early 00s which demonstrate it was still a hugely dictatorial and oppressive regime. I don't think the Iraq War was a good move, for a long list of reasons, but that doesn't mean deposing Saddam was, in principle, a good thing by any reasonable standard. So to go back to the top post: "America was wrong. Saddam was evil. They can both be true". I'll go a step further and say: "The Iraq War was a bad idea. Deposing Saddam was a good idea. They can both be true".

mandmandam 3y ago
> this "we shouldn't create a power vacuum" etc. type of reasoning is something I have a lot of problems with. You seem to have missed the point of that sentence, apparently by ignoring everything around the words "power vacuum". It was well known that Iraq would be a quagmire and a clusterfuck, for many reasons and not just that one. > So to go back to the top post: "America was wrong. Saddam was evil. They can both be true". At no point in any of my comments have I argued that America was right, or that Saddam was a nice guy. > I'll go a step further and say: "The Iraq War was a bad idea. Deposing Saddam was a good idea. They can both be true". In the real world, outside of hypothetical vacuums entirely, deposing Saddam was a terrible idea and W's Administration knew it. They said so themselves! Then they found a way to profit from it. Or should I say, profit again - because it was a lot of the same Admin who sold Saddam weapons and intel in the first place. Context matters.

by arp242 3y ago

mandmandam 3y ago

> this "we shouldn't create a power vacuum" etc. type of reasoning is something I have a lot of problems with. You seem to have missed the point of that sentence, apparently by ignoring everything around the words "power vacuum". It was well known that Iraq would be a quagmire and a clusterfuck, for many reasons and not just that one. > So to go back to the top post: "America was wrong. Saddam was evil. They can both be true". At no point in any of my comments have I argued that America was right, or that Saddam was a nice guy. > I'll go a step further and say: "The Iraq War was a bad idea. Deposing Saddam was a good idea. They can both be true". In the real world, outside of hypothetical vacuums entirely, deposing Saddam was a terrible idea and W's Administration knew it. They said so themselves! Then they found a way to profit from it. Or should I say, profit again - because it was a lot of the same Admin who sold Saddam weapons and intel in the first place. Context matters.