U.S. Out of Iraq By the End of the Year

[Jenksismyhero]

Comparing Iraq to Libya is just... lazy. It's not comparing bad to worse, it's more like comparing Wasilla to New York City. I didn't agree with intervening in Libya and I'm not going to hypocritically pretend like I supported it the whole time now that it's been a successful operation, but terms of time, cost, and resources, Iraq was several orders of magnitude bigger than Libya. Iraq took over 8 years, took 3000+ American lives and far more than that permanently disabled, overall cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and had strategic consequences that would take too long to detail here, whereas Libya took a few months, took 0 US lives, and cost like a billion dollars. Also the US did almost everything in Iraq alone with the Brits helping out as much as they could and others lending token help while Libya had the French and British doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

 

Of course you could argue the long term benefits and specifically the particular interests of the West in Iraq were much, much larger.

[NorthSideSox72]

Of course you could argue the long term benefits and specifically the particular interests of the West in Iraq were much, much larger.

I'd argue the opposite. On the list of countries that posed a threat to the US at the time that war started, Iraq wouldn't have cracked the Top 10. Neither would Libya though. There were very few benefits of invading Iraq. The main goal of BushCo in that war was two-fold... 1. to bring the War on Terror to a central location to be fought militarily, and they realized that Afghanistan wasn't going to work well enough that way. And 2. The neo-con idea that they could somehow change the terrain in the Middle East by creating a nexus of democracy in action.

 

#1 didn't really work, since AQ and other groups still operated all over the globe, and in fact were simply given more reason to exist in Iraq. And #2 is a disgusting example of the OPPOSITE of what conservatives are supposed to stand for... plus it didn't work either, because they had no plan for state building, so after 10 years you might maybe have a Democratic Iraq, but that certainly hasn't caused anything positive in the region.

 

[bmags]

It also dramatically strengthened Iran.

[Jenksismyhero]

I'd argue the opposite. On the list of countries that posed a threat to the US at the time that war started, Iraq wouldn't have cracked the Top 10. Neither would Libya though. There were very few benefits of invading Iraq. The main goal of BushCo in that war was two-fold... 1. to bring the War on Terror to a central location to be fought militarily, and they realized that Afghanistan wasn't going to work well enough that way. And 2. The neo-con idea that they could somehow change the terrain in the Middle East by creating a nexus of democracy in action.

 

#1 didn't really work, since AQ and other groups still operated all over the globe, and in fact were simply given more reason to exist in Iraq. And #2 is a disgusting example of the OPPOSITE of what conservatives are supposed to stand for... plus it didn't work either, because they had no plan for state building, so after 10 years you might maybe have a Democratic Iraq, but that certainly hasn't caused anything positive in the region.

 

I just said you could make the argument, didn't say it would be a good one

 

Though I do think that since Iraq produces about 2 times the the amount of oil per day as Libya, with a much higher overall capacity, Saddam could have inflicted some massive economic damage if still in power. Obviously that was not as big of a danger in 2001 as it is today, but i'd imagine defending those oil fields was an objective and an important consideration for the future.

 

 

[NorthSideSox72]

I just said you could make the argument, didn't say it would be a good one

 

Though I do think that since Iraq produces about 2 times the the amount of oil per day as Libya, with a much higher overall capacity, Saddam could have inflicted some massive economic damage if still in power. Obviously that was not as big of a danger in 2001 as it is today, but i'd imagine defending those oil fields was an objective and an important consideration for the future.

Iraq has to sell oil to survive. He had no choice but to continue producing it, just to barely skate by. If he had tried to hold back production, he would have created his own civil war, OPEC would increase production to compensate and penalize Iraq, and basically, he loses on that proposition.

 

[StrangeSox]

Iraq produces ~ 33% more oil than Libya, not 100%.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count..._oil_production

 

As an isolated move, Iraq stopping oil production could be compensated for, since oil production was depressed for years after the invasion.

http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?coun...raph=production

[Jenksismyhero]

Iraq produces ~ 33% more oil than Libya, not 100%.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count..._oil_production

 

As an isolated move, Iraq stopping oil production could be compensated for, since oil production was depressed for years after the invasion.

http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?coun...raph=production

 

http://warandpeaceinthemiddleeast.com/2011...oil-production/

 

According to this Iraq is up to 2.9 million, and I assumed Libya was still around 1.7, so "about" two times as much.

 

And yes, Iraq stopping production COULD be compensated for, but look at recent examples with Egypt and Libya. It's down now, but 6 months ago oil prices were going up, up, up because of the fear of that lost production.

[StrangeSox]

Did that inflict "massive economic damage?"

[bmags]

Did that inflict "massive economic damage?"

 

It severely stressed our economy. But that said, did we really secure the oil fields in Iraq?

[StrangeSox]

Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq

 

 

It was frustrating when it was happening, it's nauseating looking back. What a waste.

[Soxbadger]

At the end of the day, no matter if the US was right or wrong, I hope that the people of Iraq have a better future than the one that they may have had under Saddam.

[Soxfest]

Glad we are leaving Iraq, it's about time.