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February 20, 2016

Shallow Talk about Iraq on the Brink of South Carolina

The real reason most of us wanted to go to war was far grander, far nobler and, alas, far more mistaken. We wanted to transform the Middle East, free that benighted part of the world from the brutal religious and secular dictatorships that oppressed its people for generations by giving them democracy and bringing them into the modern world. Yes, we wanted to "nation-build," and there was nothing inherently evil about that. The impulse was positive, idealistic. It just happened to have been dead wrong. It couldn't be done, at least not in the way we were willing to do it. (We brought democracy to Germany but we had to firebomb Dresden first. Also, the Arab Middle East was and is far more primitive and tribal than Japan or Germany.) -- Roger Simon

Posted by gerardvanderleun at February 20, 2016 9:15 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

I respect Simon's work very much, but my response is: Farking Middle East's always intense.
If you put yourself into the mindset of the US and the West before the Gulf War and before the later Iraq War (2003 -), then you recall how mortified we were of any kinetics there. It was the third rail. Now, we have put our hand into the snake pit, and SHAZAM! - it was full of trouble.
Grow up. My dad must be chuckling from heaven at all of us. "Back in my day, when we were attacked we went over there and killed em!" "In my day, we didn't go to Europe to backpack, we flew over it and bombed the shit out of them!"
Don't make me bring up Okinawa.
It's not over in the ME. Not by a long shot.

Posted by: Casey Klahn [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 20, 2016 10:07 AM

"It's not over in the ME. Not by a long shot."
=================

For me it was over before it started.
Foreign entanglements and all that jazz.
I just can't get worked up over that petro dollar stuff. I gotta go move the chicken tractor....

Posted by: ghostsniper [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 20, 2016 11:38 AM

The bullshit from the treasonous neocon filth knows no bounds, does it?


As Dick Cheney said, Iraq was invaded for the sake of “Israel and oil.”

Posted by: bilejones [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 20, 2016 4:51 PM

Was Ronald Reagan a neocon? Just wondering...

Posted by: Casey Klahn [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 20, 2016 5:53 PM

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