6 years after

[DanS]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Either way, the statement that GWII was "inevitable" remains ridiculous. There are all sorts of plausible scenarios where GWI does not lead to GWII.

Who said that GWII was inevitable?

[KrazyHorse]

The safe harbour and extremist enmity of US existed with or without OBL and AQ. I don't see it as inevitable that without OBL something as bad or worse would not have grown up in its place.

[KrazyHorse]

dp

[KrazyHorse]

Who said that GWII was inevitable?

you did, Dan.

Originally posted by DanS

This is complete nonsense. Are you claiming that GWII was INEVITABLE?

Something close to it. Iraq was broken in GW I, so, as Colin Powell would say, we owned the place.

[DanS]

I think there's ample room in that response to consider a myriad of other possibilities.

[KrazyHorse]

dp

[Darius871]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
I might also note that if you're going to add in 9/11 as a reaction to containment then you probably have to leave it in your counterfactual of a GWI carried to "completion" in Baghdad (as US troops would have been in Arabian peninsula anyways)

There's too many damned variables to make any serious prediction, so I wouldn't back DanS up on that (or at least I don't have time to). I'm just taking it as his assumption that some less hostile replacement regime would have been stabilized in five or so years, after which a huge military presence in Saudi Arabia would no longer have been necessary.

There would probably still have been some permanent bases in Bahrain, Qatar, etc. (not holy land), and perhaps even in parts of Iraq (not holy land, except to them silly Shiite idolaters who had nothing to with al-Qaeda), but not necessarily Saudi Arabia, since that presence only began and continued because of Saddam's supposed threat to them. Don't forget that we did withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia in 2003 after the fall of Baghdad, so it's likely that the same would have happened after a completed GW1.

Marking the end of an era, the United States will soon withdraw about 7,000 U.S. military personnel from Saudi Arabia and terminate a significant military presence there that lasted more than a decade, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced Tuesday.

...

Rumsfeld said the Pentagon was ordering the redeployment, which involves mostly members of the U.S. Air Force, because there no longer is a threat from deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

...

[Only] about 400 U.S. military personnel are to remain to train Saudi troops.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/ne...430-psab01.htm

[Darius871]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
The safe harbour and extremist enmity of US existed with or without OBL and AQ. I don't see it as inevitable that without OBL something as bad or worse would not have grown up in its place.

Of course there would still have been Islamic extremism, and of course there would still have been a small subset of that movement which would have adopted terrorist tactics, and of course a small subset of that terrorist subset would have targeted the U.S. itself for propping up the apostate regimes they fight and/or its corrupting cultural influence, and probably a small subset of that subset of that subset would attempt to hit civilian targets in the U.S. mainland rather than more vulnerable overseas interests.

However, the question was whether "9/11" as we know it would have happened without OBL, and the answer is definitely no. Whether the above subset of a subset of a subset of the broader Islamic movement would have had the organization, training, discipline, funding, will, and sheer luck to pull off something on as massive a scale as 9/11 on American soil as early as 2001 without Murphy's Law grabbing at one loose string and getting them caught is a separate question, and by no means inevitable. If it were so easy for any unaffiliated wannabes to pull off, then it would happen every year at least.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DanS

Let's pretend that in GWII we had disengaged after we killed the Husseins. I think that's TCO's position, for instance. Where would be now?

I meant walk away after GWI. But ok, we walk away after the Husseins are executed...

Lots of people complain that we broke it and then walked away. Myself included. That's pretty ****ed up (worse, IMO, than walking away after GWI). The country probably falls into civil war. Possibly with Iranian involvement. Turkey too? Depends on what the Kurds did. The Kurds might be ****ed in that scenario. Lots of dead Iraqis. AQ might or might not have had greater success (would the locals have eventually turned on them anyway? I think yes). The flipside, of course, is that we'd have lost fewer troops and spent a whole lot less money on the operation.

But no... once we invaded and toppled the existing government (an important distinction in my mind) we did have an obligation to stick around and try to put it back together again.

-Arrian

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Darius871


However, the question was whether "9/11" as we know it would have happened without OBL, and the answer is definitely no.

Butterfly flapping its wings, dude. Road to ruin to attempt to trace back to causes like this. The question is whether the environment would have been significantly more dangerous in counterfactual world of road to Baghdad being taken.

You can't add in some specific event like "9/11" not directly causally connected and then say "if we changed such and such maybe it wouldn't have happened" based on some extended chain of events. You have to look at probabilities.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Arrian


I meant walk away after GWI. But ok, we walk away after the Husseins are executed...

Lots of people complain that we broke it and then walked away. Myself included. That's pretty ****ed up (worse, IMO, than walking away after GWI). The country probably falls into civil war. Possibly with Iranian involvement. Turkey too? Depends on what the Kurds did. The Kurds might be ****ed in that scenario. Lots of dead Iraqis. AQ might or might not have had greater success (would the locals have eventually turned on them anyway? I think yes). The flipside, of course, is that we'd have lost fewer troops and spent a whole lot less money on the operation.

But no... once we invaded and toppled the existing government (an important distinction in my mind) we did have an obligation to stick around and try to put it back together again.

-Arrian

Problem is that there was immediate danger of genocides once the gov't and supporting institutions were torn down. Different than moral obligation after a war which targeted mostly military, left government, police etc standing.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Butterfly flapping its wings, dude. Road to ruin to attempt to trace back to causes like this. The question is whether the environment would have been significantly more dangerous in counterfactual world of road to Baghdad being taken.

You can't add in some specific event like "9/11" not directly causally connected and then say "if we changed such and such maybe it wouldn't have happened" based on some extended chain of events. You have to look at probabilities.

Hence the portions of my post beyond the one you quoted, referring to the probability of something comparable rather than the specific event. You're not countering their take on the degree of probability.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by DanS


The containment policy was dead. As you might recall, much of the strategy was based on the United Nations' continued support. But by the end of Clinton, we and the Brits were the only folks pushing it -- and the Brits were wavering. The Europeans wanted to sell industrial hardware, the Russians wanted to sell weaponry. And other interests were pushing maximum oil production from the country no matter the government in Baghdad. The humanitarian groups were savaging us (remember the millions of dead babies because of containment that we kept hearing about?).

We continued to pay dearly for the containment strategy. For instance, we had soldiers in Saudi Arabia, which stoked resentment and was one of the sustaining rationales for 9/11.

It wasn't a steady state policy. It's selective reading of recent history to believe it so. You might believe that something could be cobbled together to replace it, but at the time, there was nothing on the table in this regard.

while containment did not work, there was actually no need for such containment, in the same sense that Iran or North Korea do not require direct military containment today. Simply leaving Iraq to go back to it's normal status + weapons inspectors was more than enough not to escalate either the violence, or the instability in the region, however the admin elected in y 2000 had other plans.

I presume they were just looking for an excuse for expansion in middle east, and 9-11 provided it with the excuse. It was pretty obvious at the beginning, ie before the war, that the data/rhetoric was not right, simply because there was no evidence, and what was given was mostly made up (eg. Colin Powell and the "legendary" second dossier) and challenged from all sides at the time.

In any case the "resolve" was there to go it alone if needed, which is what US did, and Brits followed up to protect the "special -rape me in the ass - UK/US relationship" (as owned up by Mandelsson, a few years later)... In any case US admin wanted to go to war for the reasons known to them at the time, and some "allies" followed up as they wanted to be on the right side of the worlds only superpower in short...

Other strategies with Iraq were more than viable at the time, and also are today - UK is finally withdrawing over the summer, and if anything the situation now is quite a bit worse than during the time of Saddam in all aspects - Iraq security overall, economic situation in Iraq, terrorism recruiting in Iraq, (unpredictable) extremists in the Iraq parliament, Iran influence in Iraq, ability to extract oil from Iraq, and security situation in ME overall (Israel/Palestine/Lebanon, Iran + nukes, etc)... but UK is going and we will work it out... despite of the forces not being there (or even because of it)...

In short - there is no way that GWI necessarily induced GWII... but GWII happened, and the original post just outlines the normal consequences when there is no accountability whatsoever... the destruction was not only contained to Iraq, but it finally came home as well, while the financial crisis would have happened anyhow, a trillion less cash spent over last few years (and being spent going forward), would have been a welcome addition to the current "arsenal" that the feds are fighting the crisis with. Not to mention that in part this was all made significantly worse with sky high oil prices and another 1/2+ trillion or so unnecessary "oil tax" that were the direct result of the war itself (not purely, but direct negative hit nevertheless) and so on...

The way I see it at the moment - there was no other way for the elected admin to legally rip off US taxpayers more than through a similar conflict, no amount of Iraq "democratic" presence, or "potential return" from this involvement comes close to the billions of dollars extracted through no-bid contracts, and overall "support" of the new Iraqi gov, and US forces (who themselves receive a minuscule proportion of the total spend) on the ground. Direct from taxpayers into the "contractors" coffers, 60USD for bottle of water , and similar stuff.

Iraq was "marketable" and had some other plus points for a military involvement for all the groups who had to agree to get something going there, and it was small enough to be an initial "walk over" still big enough to maintain the presence for years... the following quagmire was just a plus... probably explains really low initial troops and totally botched up security actions in the beginning, including ignoring and sidelining of US generals who though otherwise, and of totally ignoring UK military advices and requests.

Overall recounting the story from 2003 until now, is well a colossal cluster**** as expected, but well if the economies of the west don't collapse from all this (debt bubble, general fraud (will we find some more Enrons, MCI's and Madoffs soon??? ) + such colossal unnecessary spend) hopefully we together will learn a bit from all this and the population who in the end is vital in the support of such actions will be clearly against them (well it lasted about 30 years since Vietnam) for a long time to come... as in the end if there was no 50%+ popular support in US at the time this would not have happened in the first place, not to mention that they managed to market themselves into a second term too...