The Iraq War

Germany refused to join as well. They should have renamed German Shepherds as "Freedom Shepherds".

I think it is Orwellian to call them freedom fries.

Why?

I personally did not support it at the time, and had some pretty heated debates with people who did. But, I will say that they all honestly believed it was the right thing to do at the time, and all of them from W on down to they guy at the mall who supported it were doing their best to be what they thought was patriotic. I miss that.

Speaking for my present self personally, I think that the invasion of Iraq was a horrible short-sighted mistake. It should have never happened, even if you believed in the rationale for it I don't think that it can be justified given the cost in lives; even if it could the execution was awful. Though the invasion and war went off mostly without a hitch, the buildup to it was highly problematic and alienated many American allies while strengthening hardliners among her enemies, and the subsequent occupation was marred by many very stupid choices starting with the disbanding of the Iraqi military and most recently culminating with the decision to assassinate a high-ranking Iranian official at an Iraqi airport.

The war was never about liberating Iraqis from the evil Saddam Hussein, and certainly was not about fighting "terror." Only the naive believe it was.

However, it also was not a game for displaying American military power. Nor was it a cynical ploy to steal Iraqi oil.

You'd have to be ignorant to believe the latter characterizations, as well.

I believe that president Bush honestly believed that he was doing the right thing. But Bush was never a terribly deep thinker and his grasp of geopolitics was limited at best (though in both respects he is far superior to Trump, and he was also humble enough to seek help from advisors and take his job seriously, ill-suited for it as he was). In Bush's mind, Hussein was an evil man who had tried to assassinate his father. He was also something of an unpredictable wild card, constantly antagonizing the West and the international order, and he was sitting on top of a huge portion of the world's known oil reserves. I think that Bush probably thought that his father had made a mistake during the Gulf War when, after easily defeating the Iraqi military and pushing them out of Kuwait, the Americans voluntarily withdrew. Bush Jr. was seeking to correct this perceived mistake by removing Saddam from power.

Bush Jr. also had a (naive) dream of bringing democracy to the Middle East. He believed in all the flowery BS that many Americans do about democracy and capitalism, and was under the impression that after Saddam was toppled, a democratic free Iraq would rise up and flourish, inspiring other countries in the region to follow suit. He believed that a democratic Iraq would be friendly toward the US and the West, as historically most democratic countries get along relatively well with one another.

But the main thing was that he wanted to get rid of Saddam so that a Western-friendly government could replace him. It was believed that this would make the region and the world's economy and flow of energy more stable and reliable.

Of course, many of these assumptions were wrong. Though Bush's vision of the toppling of Hussein inspiring democracy across the Middle East did actually sort of come true - the Arab Spring was in large part inspired by the new democracy in Iraq.

and it ushered in a wave of popular democratic uprisings across the Arab and Muslim world. In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, they were actually somewhat successful. In Egypt, they managed to oust military dictator Mubarak; but then not long after the democratically-elected Morsi was replaced by another military strongman. In Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, and Iran, pushes for democracy were quickly and violently suppressed and came to very little; though may have had something to do with some small democratic reforms in Saudi and Iran since. In Syria, Libya, and Yemen, democratic uprisings evolved in to awful, grinding, never-ending civil wars.

On balance, the entire region is considerably less stable now than before the Iraq War, gains for democratic values have been pretty minimal, sectarian violence has increased dramatically, terrorism has increased dramatically, thousands of Americans have died and the West is substantially *less* safe than it was.

While I think Bush probably thought he was doing the right thing, I also think it's obvious that he got his math wrong, and that many of the things he took for granted or believed were wrong. I also think that many of the people he surrounded himself with (Cheney, et al.) were probably as much concerned with lining their own pocketbooks, or advancing their own political careers, as they were with actually making decisions that were right for the US, Iraq, or the world. Though Cheney probably also wanted to create a strong American foothold in the region, and believes in American hegemony and empire, it's hard to ignore the links with Halliburton etc. And this might be the inevitable result of electing two businessmen from the oil industry to run US foreign policy. No oil was ever stolen from Iraq (dummy Trump believes that it should have been), but that doesn't mean there weren't billions of $ to be made on contracting work, etc, in the new democracy the US installed there.

I know that the first IS stands for Islamic State.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, aka ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).

I thought it was DAESH now

Islamic State in Syria. aka ISIL. aka ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah fī 'l-ʿIrāq wa-sh-Shām (the State of Islam in Iraq and greater Syria). Da'esh is how Arabic-speaking people pronounce the acronym of the latter name, and is usually used by those who are mocking them in lieu of their preferred ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah.

I agree

Of course many Americans do believe that The Iraq War was in response to 9/11, but many Americans also believe that Hillary Clinton has murdered over 50 people and is involved in human trafficking.

Yes I tried “World Trade Center Bombing” and that didn’t work

Eric and Don Jr. should also work.