Some blame the current situation in Iraq on President Bush. If only he had left Saddam Hussein in place, Iraq would not be falling apart they say. And they may be right. But to embrace this point of view you would have to ignore the following facts. 1) Hussein would now be 77 years old and would have been in power for 35 years – that is a long time for a dictator anywhere, let alone this region. 2) Hussein was ousted on April 9, 2003 – since that time Zine El Abine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosinin Mubarak in Egypt, Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, Mummar Gaddafi in Libya have all been overthrown from their seats of power and civil war has erupted in Syria. 3) According to President Obama himself Iraq was “moment of success” and “we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government.” (December 12, 2011 speech by President Obama to troops returning home at Fort Bragg, NC) Had we not gone into Iraq, Iraq might be a mess anyway -- It is doubtful that the elderly Hussein would still be in power and the underlying conflict would have filled the vaccum caused by the loss of a strongman. Bush did break Iraq, but with the surge it was mended with the blood and toil of thousands of members of our armed forces and stable when we left. The current chaos is not caused by us going to Iraq, but by forces that filled the vaccum cause by our leaving.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 12:29:14 +0000
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