The GOP Is Incoherent On Iraq Because Democracies Can’t Wage War

[Geee]

The Federalist:

The ongoing debate among GOP candidates about whether we should have invaded Iraq in 2003 and what we should do about ISIS underscores a rather uncomfortable reality: it is nearly impossible for a democracy to conduct strategic foreign policy. Public opinion gets in the way of strategic imperatives and in the end politics and perception trump sound policy.

 

Nowhere has this been more apparent than in Iraq, where President Obama in his first term discarded a policy that was working, for purely political reasons. Obama had promised during the 2008 campaign to “end the war” in Iraq, riding an anti-war sentiment on the Left and tapping into a sense of war-weariness among moderates. He floated a 16-month timeline for troop withdrawal during the campaign and tried his best to stick to it once in office, heedless of conditions on the ground.

 

Republicans presidential hopefuls need to make the case that even if invading Iraq in 2003 was ill-advised, a far worse strategic mistake was withdrawing in 2011. That means they need to understand what’s happened in Iraq, and it is not clear that many of them do.

How to Show You’re Uninformed

Thus far, none of the 2016 Republican contenders have fared well when asked about the invasion of Iraq. Rick Perry has done best by answering plainly, “No, I would not have done that.” Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, by contrast, have struggled to give straight answers. Bush simply dodged the question, and Rubio offered lamely that, “The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn’t run Iraq.”

 

When candidates say how much worse things might have been in the Middle East had we not invaded Iraq, it marks them as unserious and ill-informed.

 

[Valin]

@Geee

 

Dear John Davidson

 

Thank you so much for your input, (not to mention That foreign policy genius David Harsanyi). Rest assured I will give it all the consideration it so richly merits.

 

With no respect

Valin...Proud Neo-Con

 

 

PS 10 minutes of my life wasted on Libertarian/Isolationist foreign policy drivel.