Quote:
Originally posted by Gattigap
Well, we've seen the result when there isn't much of any. Does it fill you with confidence?
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I'm not so sure that the looming long term problems with our economy would have been handled any better by any combination of Pres and Congress. There is a case to be made that we had to do the Iraq thing to protect our ability to get oil from that region, and that we'll be positioned perfectly when China and India need Iraqi oil down the road (Iran, Russia and the Saudis cannot feed their needs alone). Iraq is one of those things you can't judge for another 20 years. Its a long range economic hedge being analyzed on short term bases by groups of people who are using criticims or support for it for their own political gain. I watch foolish people my own age harrumph about how bad an idea Iraq was and can't help but recall these same people a few years back talking about how blue chips were a "old man's" investment strategy. You can't evaluate a long term plan based on 36 months of violence that erupted in the wake of our attack. We horribly misjudged what would happen over there short term, but that doesn't mean we're doomed to be wrong on the long term result as well.
Iraq has a shitload of oil, very little of which is being pumped right now. We control that oil. There will come a day down the road when the world will require that the Iraqi oil spigot be turned on. We will be there to turn the knob, and ensure that we get all the benefits that come with such control.
I am not sure about the war's wisdom, or what will happen long term, but I don't share the knee jerk ChickenLittleism of so many people around me because I just don't see the factual support for it. Predicting where Iraq will be in 2020 is silly. And saying its doomed because things haven't turned as we predicted in the first 3 years is dumb. If I hear one more idiot cite the fact that "they didn't greet us as liberators" as factual proof Iraq is doomed, I'm going to throw my beer through my television. Its pathetic the level of "facts" we base things on today. The idiot wind coming from the mouths of experts, pundits and news/entertainment types is deafening, and has turned us into a nation of people debating the undebatable.
The long term is all that matters, and you'll know where Iraq will be in 2020 in 2019. No sooner. If you'd like to advertise your lack of knowledge, dillentantism and gullibility, parrot whatever crap Lewis Lapham or Bill Kristol tells you back and forth amongst yourselves.
