Can someone explain why it was a good idea to overthrow Saddam and let ISIS take over?

Call me cynical. But is it not obvious by now that the end game of U.S. foreign policy is to serve the military industrial complex. U.S. Presidents have come and gone. Enemies in the middle East come and go. Only one thing remains constant throughout. There is an enemy somewhere that needs to be vanquished and high tech military gadgetry can solve the problem. Beyond that I don't think the powers that be in the U.S. have any plan.

Look at things now. All the land ISIS controls has been taken back. Thanks in large part to U.S. bombing supporting Iraq militias. But there is no plan whatsover by the U.S. on what to do now. Now its plain as day that Shiite militias and Sunnis are going to go after each other for revenge. The U.S. has no plan for it whatsoever.

You can blame Trump. But its the same foreign policy we have had with any President the past 16 years. It would have been more less the same with Al Gore and Hillary.

Let's see, Iraq was in violation of UN Resolution 1440. If there are no consequences to drawing a line in the sand then don't do it.

Crime and punishment wrote:

Let's see, Iraq was in violation of UN Resolution 1440. If there are no consequences to drawing a line in the sand then don't do it.

Right. With Saddam playing the shell game with the UN inspectors for a decade after Desert Storm, something had to be done. He felt pretending to have WMD to keep Iran from attacking was a good bet, but he was making us look like idiots or cowards or both.

If I had known what to do instead, I would have told Bush. I felt it was the best of a bunch of bad options. Thank God the UK and Poland saw it that way, else we would have gone alone.

Hilary Clinton voted to go to war with Iraq; I'm glad she's not president. Also, it's crazy that George W. hasn't jumped off a bridge-what a horrible person.

Sara Palin wrote:

Crime and punishment wrote:

Let's see, Iraq was in violation of UN Resolution 1440. If there are no consequences to drawing a line in the sand then don't do it.

Right. With Saddam playing the shell game with the UN inspectors for a decade after Desert Storm, something had to be done. He felt pretending to have WMD to keep Iran from attacking was a good bet, but he was making us look like idiots or cowards or both.

If I had known what to do instead, I would have told Bush. I felt it was the best of a bunch of bad options. Thank God the UK and Poland saw it that way, else we would have gone alone.

But Saddam did have WMD. He used them against the Kurds.

That is incorrect. He used chemical weapons but he did not use WMDs on the Kurds. The reason for the war was WMDs and they did not find them because it was all a LIE. That

Crime and punishment wrote:

Sara Palin wrote:

Right. With Saddam playing the shell game with the UN inspectors for a decade after Desert Storm, something had to be done. He felt pretending to have WMD to keep Iran from attacking was a good bet, but he was making us look like idiots or cowards or both.

If I had known what to do instead, I would have told Bush. I felt it was the best of a bunch of bad options. Thank God the UK and Poland saw it that way, else we would have gone alone.

But Saddam did have WMD. He used them against the Kurds.

Crime and punishment wrote:

But Saddam did have WMD. He used them against the Kurds.

So Saddam used gas against the Kurds in 1988, we finally decided to go after those weapons in 2003.

Makes sense.

Coach wrote:

I was not in favor of overthrowing Saddam and was against both wars but the "1% of crazy Muslims" as you state bombed the US before we overthrew Saddam.

It's often hard for us to see how our policies look from other countries. We don't always realize that lots of Muslims in the Middle East could name specific policies that pissed them long before we overthrew Saddam. For example, some Muslims, including OBL, were not happy that we kept troops in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War. That is why, in 1996, OBL called for "Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holiest Sites." Even before that, lots of Muslims were upset about our support for Israel. The treatment of the Palestinians was a big part of the justification offered for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

When asked to explain why ISIS was popular, one of the 1993 WTC bombers said, "People over in America ask why ISIS did this. [But] people in the Middle East ask, "Why is the US doing this to us?"...If you throw a ball against a wall, it's going to come back at you. If you throw a ball hard, it's going to come back at you hard. ...The Arabs are not radicalizing themselves. Your government action is radicalizing the Arabs..."

He goes on to say that in situations like this, "Nobody wins. Both sides end up with death and destruction." Unfortunately, the more death and destruction, the more each side believes it is right and the other side wrong.

leadership wrote:

NW traveler wrote:

You won't find a defense from me. Perhaps rojo on letsrun, but he's the equivalent of Sean Hannity on foxnews... dumb as a post. Obviously overthrowing saddam backfired. It made the United State a target for for the 1% of Muslim who are crazy as sh*t. So unnecessary. Now we have a president intent on screwing us over in the middle east even more. Idiot.

I agree. In contrast to this idiot, the last president's mid-east strategy was brilliant. Our interventions in Libya and Syria were textbook examples of dynamic leadership.

You must be kidding me. Obama = ISIS

Yep. Obama founded ISIS. It's so obvious. Foreign born, foreign sounding name, terrorist sympathizer. It all makes sense. The sort of sense Fox tells me is right.

I just wish we could find all the WMDs. Because W. and Rummy said those WMDs were everywhere!

You know what? I bet Obama hid the WMDs! He probably did it when he was on a break from taking peoples guns away.

Follow the money to MIC and Big Oil.

Pappy, Shrub, Cheney, Wolfie, Condie, Rummy war criminals one and all.

ryan foreman wrote:

Call me cynical. But is it not obvious by now that the end game of U.S. foreign policy is to serve the military industrial complex. U.S. Presidents have come and gone. Enemies in the middle East come and go. Only one thing remains constant throughout. There is an enemy somewhere that needs to be vanquished and high tech military gadgetry can solve the problem. Beyond that I don't think the powers that be in the U.S. have any plan.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Or maybe when you spend billions on a big beautiful hammer, you have to use it every once in a while to justify the money you spent.

looking to learn wrote:

The logic to overthrowing Saddam and letting ISIS take his place must be over my head, because I can't seem to make sense of it. Can someone explain?

Part of the Greater Israel Project.

Install puppets or bomb/invade/occupy and create failed states all around Israel so Israel can continue to take more land as it sees fit.

Israel loyalists run Washington DC. I am always surprised that here in the year 2017 lots of folks still are unaware of this.

This is the reason Dubya wanted war with Iraq:

http://www.mediaabsurdity.com/wp-images/bush-wimp.jpg

He could never overcome that Newsweek called his daddy a wimp.

Cheney was in it for the oil. Rummy was in it for the thrill of war.

At the time I was a naive liberal and I was convinced by the talk about regime change and that it might lead a democracy domino effect on the rest of the Middle East. Stupid. But back then most of us didn't know much about Islam. The common was that as soon as we eliminate a few bad guys the people will come forward and crave democracy. The experiment failed badly.

We should all know better today. Just look at the polls in Muslim countries. They want Islam. And more Islam. Only strong and cruel leaders like Saddam and Assad can keep these crazies at bay.

Only morons like Obama held on to the stupid belief in regime change in Arab countries. He overthrew Gaddafi and the staunch US ally Mubarak.

Then he pulled down his pants and bent over for the Muslim Brotherhood. The poor Egyptians had to fix all his mess.

Bush wasn't the smartest but compared to Obama he was a pure genius.

Saddam had no active nuclear program at the time of the war.

This was established afterwards

NW traveler wrote:

You won't find a defense from me. Perhaps rojo on letsrun, but he's the equivalent of Sean Hannity on foxnews... dumb as a post. Obviously overthrowing saddam backfired. It made the United State a target for for the 1% of Muslim who are crazy as sh*t. So unnecessary. Now we have a president intent on screwing us over in the middle east even more. Idiot.

I guess 9/11, the Kenyan embassy bombings, were after 9/11. Going into Iraq may have been a bad idea but the crazy 1% have been after Western Society for years.

The consensus was Iraq had WMD's. Oddly enough it's the same three letter departments that says there is a consensus Russia hacked the election.

Runningart2004 wrote:

Hard to predict the future. There was no ISIS in 2003. ISIS is a product of the War in Iraq and the general Sunni Awakening.

I guess it was thought that a democracy we have hands in controlling in the Middle East was worth the gamble. But no one predicted the Sunni Awakening nor the establishment of ISIS nor the difficulties of establishing an Arab democracy.

You can't force democracy. People have to want it. Sometimes authorization governments are just easy to follow along, especially if you've known no different.

McDonalds and KFC....that's how you start a western democracy in a foreign land.

Alan

And yet somehow there were people who predicted just such an outcome. Even Colin Powell warned Bush, "You break it, you own it." Of course, Bush didn't own it. He left the no win situation for the next guy. And now the current guy is left to deal with it. Not that he would, or could, but especially while having to deal with problems of his own making.

But the point is, as the OP knows, it wasn't a good idea, and that was obvious to anyone who was being honest and not hiding behind a flag pin in their lapel.

Nuke. wrote:

Saddam had no active nuclear program at the time of the war.

This was established afterwards

It was actually established beforehand by both US and UN inspectors, but Bush and Cheney chose not to believe them, but rather a source code named Curveball, that the CIA said was not to be believed.