Iraq - The Blame

Let's talk a little about the Iraq war.

The primary mover to going back to Iraq and ousting Hussein was the threat of weapons of mass destruction; mostly nuclear and chemical warfare products.  But, that wasn't the only reason.

Other reasons were political murder and imprisonment,  graft and corruption at every level of authority,  indiscriminate rape of woman by Hussein's brothers and others in authority; spousal rape, mutilation and imprisonment of dissenters, women genitalia mutilation.  Those are some of the criminal types of things; lessor stuff like women not allowed to go to school, no free speech, maltreatment of children, and no self-rule for the people makes up the rest of the package.

I lived through the debate on if to go into Iraq the second time or not was being had.  I don't think anyone with half a brain thinks President Bush tricked our nation into going to war.  I saw the parade of pundits, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton and others support the claim of WMDs.  George Bush was not a liar.  Don't let Donald Trump fool you with his rancorous accusations; he is piggy-backing on Obama and Democrat rhetoric .   Bush was misled as we all were. That is unfortunate, yet because we truly sacrificed our nations resources and lives that Iraq could become the free state that it did.  They got to vote.  I remember well the pride the Iraqis displayed with their purple thumbs.  Women became more protected, street rapes dropped off as they could go out in safety.  Women could go to school, children were curtailed from being exploited.  Commerce picked up between cities in safety, infrastructure was repaired and expanded.  Oil fields were repaired and the Iraqis didn't even sell us the oil. 

Don't be misled; in hindsight, even though we as a nation would have been better off had we never gone into Iraq the Iraqi people would still be suffering under Saddam Hussein or someone like him.  That would have been even more wrong than invading them.  Bernie Sanders was right on the money when he said that to go in there would destabilize the region.  He was right for the wrong reasons. 

The United States since the Korean conflict has had track record of abandoning our allies.  We foster revolt by the people hinting that if they want to get rid of their corrupt government we would come to their aid and then don't.  We did that to Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Syria, Libya and so on.  We didn't do that to Iraq the second time until President Obama.   President Obama destabilized the region by abandoning a weak, fledgling new democracy of Iraq.  The fault for the current condition in the middle east falls squarely on President Obama's shoulders not President Bushes.  As much as I am tempted to blame that on the Democrats I don't think any Democrat wants what's going on in the middle east now.  They voted in Obama with the hopes he would do the right thing and he didn't.  It's not their fault. 

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the opposite sides of the same coin.  They both pander to a young, ill-educated electorate that has suffered and seen parents suffer in the last seven years of recovery with poor jobs, lack of jobs, no means to grasp opportunity.  Perhaps, one or the other is what this country needs to recover fully, but I doubt it.  We'll see.