Trump Thread

[Pannonian]

I think a big part of the problem with Iraq was that there was no plan. And it was based on lies. The US went in as a preemptive strike saying that Iraq was manufacturing WMDs. Later they admitted that they lied. And then there was no plan, there was neither the claim to free the people nor a plan on how to go about it or any kind of long-term committment. The result was the rise of the IS, borne from former elite soldiers of the Iraqi army who were replaced with noobies by the US and allies IIRC.
I'm not going to pretend that everyone would be fine with it, but had they had a more decent plan about how to fix the country, or, even better, had they actually fixed the country the first time they invaded in the early 90s, there'd have been far fewer complaints and problems.
Dariush already mentioned how the US basically played with the country for decades.

Right is obviously the conservative option.
Otherwise it depends so much on the circumstances IMO that one cannot make a general rule. The only rule there might be is that when the major motivator to go in and "help" is that one expects huge benefits for one's own national interests, it is very likely to turn sour. If one goes in to help, there should be some altruism involved to make it more likely to work and be received well. With enemies like the Taliban even that rule is not universally true though.

There was little secret about the agenda of the neocons. I was aghast at the time that people were buying the WMD argument, when it was plain that they were based on ideology. Or as I called it at the time, idiocy. That liberal democracy could be spread like an ink spot on blotting paper. The subsequent 2005 attacks were justified by the perpetrators and their supporters, not on doing a bad job in Iraq, but being in Iraq in the first place. Hence argument 1.

There is no butting and umming about times and circumstances. It's been clear since WWI that argument 1 is the default. There is no void of argument where you decide how much of each to apply. Argument 1 applies unless a sovereign nation agrees otherwise. If they agree otherwise, then the subsequent agreement applies. But in the absence of such an agreement, argument 1 applies.

I might accept ideological consistency from someone like Bush or Blair, who genuinely believed in argument 2. In such a case, I wouldn't call the hypocrites. I'd call them idiots instead, as I did in 2003 and subsequently as it turned out as badly as I'd expected. But anyone who criticised the US and UK for going into Iraq has no right to argue that they should not be held responsible for their governments. Argument 2 was a genuine attempt to establish a different paradigm from argument 1. If they don't want argument 2, then argument 1 is what they're stuck with.