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[quote][i]Originally posted by AirForceJetFan[/i]@Nov 11 2003, 10:43 AM
[b] Prior to the US going in to Iraq to save our friends the Kuwaitis there was never an Al Queda/Bin Laden attack on US soil (please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). So we went in, we rescued Kuwait and instead of finishing the job and coming home we decide it would be a good idea to keep our troops there for a decade or so.
Then the hypocritical religous zealots are mad and they decide the US is polluting their land so they must now launch terrorist attacks against the US which puts us in the situation we're in today. So without yelling and screaming about right/wrong with the current situation, why is it we never hear about what the root of this problem really was? If we had gone in, saved Kuwait and left, none of this would have occurred.
The US can't allow a guy like Bin Laden to push us around but from all the reports I've heard, he did say he would start a war with the US if we didn't get out of the "holy land". So now it appears [b]Bush Sr, Clinton, and Bush Jr [/b] (no blind faith here, 3 consecutive presidents botched this whole ordeal and put us where we are today) didn't take him seriously enough and let him roam free.
IMHO, if we get in, get the job done, get out....we're all good but it was the decision to make our stay indefinite (kind of like Korea that is now over 50 years)
that put us where we are today. [/b][/quote]
Well, I agree that there had never been an islamic terrorist attack on U.S soil prior to the first gulf war...but...If your advocating that because we defended Kuwait against a murderer who clearly had designs on not just Kuwait but as much of the region as he could get, and, who would've terrorized us in another way { oil } if we would have stood idly by I don't see where we could've done too much differently at that time.
Should we have finished the job and gone into Iraq and ousted Saddam, that seems to be the popular notion but I don't believe at that time it was feasable, if we had advocated that position we would've gotten bogged down in partisan politics and been accused of trying to start WWIII etc.....and would've ended up haggling with the left about how we couldn't afford to lose the thousands of servicemen that it would take and couldn't afford monetarily to dislodge the leader of such a potent army.
Remember, at that time the media was reporting the Iraqi army was the 4th largest army in the world and would be a formidable foe, I remember reports from some hysterical journalists who were predicting we could lose upwards of 10,000 men if we just wanted to push them out of Kuwait, imagine what the outcry from the left would've been if we said we not only were gonna push them out of Kuwait but continue into Baghdad, it would've caused liberal mass hysteria.
And not only would the left been trying everything in their power to thwart such an effort, but, we never would've been able to piece together such a dominating coalition if we had been more ambitious, most of those middle eastern countries could side with us because we were defending Kuwait against Iraq which to them is O.K, but, if we wanna take this war into Iraq they cannot outwardly support us because we are now the aggressor against another middle eastern country.
And what about France, Germany, Russia and the U.N.....you think they would've went along with us if our stated goal was to continue into Baghdad, no way, if we would've tried to do anything other than just push Saddam back into Iraq there would have been so much opposition on so many fronts that Kuwait { and their oil } probably would be controlled by the Iraqis today.
And once we liberated Kuwait we couldn't just walk away and even if we did IMHO it wouldn't have changed anything about how the fanatics would've treated us, first off, we've had servicemen in Saudi Arabia { the holy land } for a long time, I know this cause I was in the USAF betwen 82-86 and almost got sent there myself and knew a bunch of guys that served over there, if the fanatics didn't have that particular excuse as to why they are against us they'd just invent another one like our support for Israel, or our culture, or one of a million other things they find distasteful about us.
As far as " 3 consecutive presidents botched this whole ordeal " I would take issue with that as well, I don't know what else The 1st president Bush could've done under the circumstances he dealt with, Clinton on the other hand seemed ambivilant to the whole terrorism issue, he sat there 8 years knowing there were people sworn against us who were capable and intent on inflicting mass casualties on U.S soil and he never pressed the attack against them choosing instead to look the other way while plans were being made against us, I feel he should've been much more aggressive in trying to combat terrorism but he was far too concerned about his legacy to get involved with something as messy and complicated as that preferring to hope the $hit hit the fan after he left office.
As for G.W Bush he now is forced to try to clean up a mess he inherited that could've at least been somewhat lessened by the previous administration but sadly was neglected, I believe he has chosen the best course of action to effectively deal with this problem.
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