if george bush - the father, finished iraq...

the friendly iraqis would have been immediately freed and not murdered by saddam when we pulled out in 1991

it would have set an example for the other mid east dictatorial oil states.... and their populations would have naturally gravitated toward revolution if iraq was freed the first time around and made an example of

thats generally what you do once you declare war on a country.... once you win, you regime change them
the arab world only respects when you kick their ass.. not when you run away

so i say bush sr failed, in a shortsighted decision not to go a few hundred miles into a baghdad and take down saddam aswell, in 1991...
it would have sparked an iraqi popular revolution and we would be dealing with very few, if any.. insurgent fighters today

btw the troops we currently have in iraq were double in `91...
we are working at roughly 50% capacity vs the previous war

in 91 bush sr. pulled out for political reasons, appeasing the saudis was a large part of that decision...
also bathists in syria and iran would fear a crusade, we would be forced to clean up the entire middle east from the bath party/radicalized islam/wahab/saudi
(this is what we are having to do now anyway - with half the troops though)

plus, bush sr's advisers knew about the 3 separate factions in iraq that would each want a 'freed' country for themselves... policing a civil war wouldnt be fun, so we didnt finish the job


we completely destroyed his regimes military and could have finished the regime change with not too much effort from that point
but since we gave saddam back his country... (oh sorry, did we just kick your ass? nm later, pz)
saddam just killed all the known revolutionaries later when no one was looking..
the same people who _would have_ welcomed us like the french if we went to finish baghdad in 1991

the hole we are in now, if you trace it back... leads to one political decision george bush sr made based on particular affiliations in 1991... during which time he had double the troops we have now, and a mostly willing population in the streets

we added 3-5 years to this little expedition by procrastinating

oh no~

but 20/20 is hindsight lol

>>28
warfare is complicated, it involves a lot of economics and negotiation

the us army can wipe out an iraqi militia like ghengis khan would but they would gain little from the land they occupy and few population to run the oil wells and supporting industries, the iraqi militias survive because they are well adapted to the economic resources they can obtain from the area and their connections to other power groups

the militia are not an expensive army, what they do is make better use of limited resources

even if a militia is powerless compared to a neighbor they can give most of the oil to their neighbor and skim a little bit off the top and their neighbor will tolerate it because they don't want to cause political instability and guerrilla warfare, a balance of power is achieved, which means peace

hypothetically... america could train special forces who are far better than the militia and train spies, psychologists, businessmen and cultural experts to negotiate with neighbors and do a far better job

sounds silly but it is good to look at the abstract theory and ask why don't we? because there are so much more profitable ways to use these guys, so that explains why we left most of the iraqi militias alone

we're never going full genocide and i oppose this morally, im not naive though and i know these things were commonplace in wars in history before, ghengis khan for instance

i was talking about a show of force, a proper post-ww2 style occupation, our wars in iraq frankly left people confused, we knock out this dictator who dominated their lives for decades, then what..