Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I don't agree with the view that our war aims were limited to coercing countries in the region to cooperating more with us, and was trying to make the point that our behavior leading up to the war suggests that the planners took my view, not yours. Woodward's book (for example) makes pretty clear that Bush settled on a course of invading Iraq early on, and never really entertained an alternative course.
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I don't see why any of that supports your view (primary goal was regime change - wait, was this your view?) any more than it does mine (primary goal was securing a well-situated long-term troop base in region). I'll even throw in "sanctions & policing were not getting desired results and were really damn expensive and tended to make the US/UN look incapable of follow-through on threats," which argues for regime change regardless of other strategic goals, though in that view regime change itself could be seen as a mere tool for forwarding a different strategic goal in the WOT - beign seen in the islamic world as a bad-ass that would actually punish those who made themselves our enemies. But the two goals are really quite complimentary; permitting relative instability in Iraq actually achieves both goals, the "keeping troops there" goal particularly. In fact, if the US hadn't set itself up as the savior of international democracy, we could have quite a convenient arrangement, as we do in Afghanistan, where we aren't really doing much by way of providing security but have a fairly free hand in the outskirts of the country to conduct raids into neighboring hostile territory. (Hmm, I'm beginning to see the logic of Stratfor's position more and more.)
None of that makes Iraqi democratization a more (or less) useful goal for forwarding US strategic interests vs. militant islam.
