Wehrwolfen
Senior Member
- May 22, 2012
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By MARK STEYN
03/22/2013
Ten years ago, along with three-quarters of the American people, including the men just appointed as President Obama's secretaries of state and defense, I supported the invasion of Iraq. A decade on, unlike most of the American people, including John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, I'll stand by that original judgment.
None of us can say what would have happened had Saddam Hussein remained in power. He might now be engaged in a nuclear arms race with Iran. One or other of his even more psychotic sons, the late Uday or Qusay, could be in power. The Arab Spring might have come to Iraq, and surely even more bloodily than in Syria.
But these are speculations best left to the authors of "alternative histories." In the real world, how did things turn out?
Three weeks after Operation Shock and Awe began, the early-bird naysayers were already warning of massive humanitarian devastation and civil war. Neither happened.
Over-compensating somewhat for all the doom-mongering, I wrote in Britain's Daily Telegraph that "a year from now Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs." Close enough. Maj. Gen. Andy Salmon, the British commander in southern Iraq, eventually declared of Basra that "on a per capita basis, if you look at the violence statistics, it is less dangerous than Manchester."
Ten years ago, expert opinion was that Iraq was a phony-baloney entity imposed on the map by distant colonial powers. Then-Sen. Joe Biden, you'll recall, advocated dividing the country into three separate states, which for the Democrats held out the enticing prospect of having three separate quagmires to blame on Bush, but for the Iraqis it had little appeal.
"As long as you respect its inherently confederal nature," I argued, "it'll work fine."
As for the supposedly secessionist Kurds, "they'll settle for being Scotland or Quebec." And so it turned out. The Times of London, last week:
"Ten Years After Saddam, Iraqi Kurds Have Never Had It So Good."
In Kurdistan as in Quebec, there is a pervasive unsavory tribal cronyism, but on the other hand, unlike Quebec City, Erbil is booming.
Read More:
Ten Years After Iraq Invasion, It Still Looks Like The Right Thing - Investors.com
03/22/2013
Ten years ago, along with three-quarters of the American people, including the men just appointed as President Obama's secretaries of state and defense, I supported the invasion of Iraq. A decade on, unlike most of the American people, including John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, I'll stand by that original judgment.
None of us can say what would have happened had Saddam Hussein remained in power. He might now be engaged in a nuclear arms race with Iran. One or other of his even more psychotic sons, the late Uday or Qusay, could be in power. The Arab Spring might have come to Iraq, and surely even more bloodily than in Syria.
But these are speculations best left to the authors of "alternative histories." In the real world, how did things turn out?
Three weeks after Operation Shock and Awe began, the early-bird naysayers were already warning of massive humanitarian devastation and civil war. Neither happened.
Over-compensating somewhat for all the doom-mongering, I wrote in Britain's Daily Telegraph that "a year from now Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs." Close enough. Maj. Gen. Andy Salmon, the British commander in southern Iraq, eventually declared of Basra that "on a per capita basis, if you look at the violence statistics, it is less dangerous than Manchester."
Ten years ago, expert opinion was that Iraq was a phony-baloney entity imposed on the map by distant colonial powers. Then-Sen. Joe Biden, you'll recall, advocated dividing the country into three separate states, which for the Democrats held out the enticing prospect of having three separate quagmires to blame on Bush, but for the Iraqis it had little appeal.
"As long as you respect its inherently confederal nature," I argued, "it'll work fine."
As for the supposedly secessionist Kurds, "they'll settle for being Scotland or Quebec." And so it turned out. The Times of London, last week:
"Ten Years After Saddam, Iraqi Kurds Have Never Had It So Good."
In Kurdistan as in Quebec, there is a pervasive unsavory tribal cronyism, but on the other hand, unlike Quebec City, Erbil is booming.
Read More:
Ten Years After Iraq Invasion, It Still Looks Like The Right Thing - Investors.com
