US Involvement in Iraq

Saddam Hussein was a terrible man, but he was not much of a threat to the US. As a matter of fact, he was a good counter-balance to Iran, both countries keeping each other in check. President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was ill-advised and we will be paying the penalty for that fiasco for a long time.

One thing is for sure: the current invaders of Iraq wouldn’t have gotten very far if Saddam had stayed in power. Sadly, the Iraqi army has not done much to defend the homeland, so these fanatical islamists called ISIS have taken over a good part of the country. Because of what we did to Iraq by our invasion, I believe we owe it to the people of Iraq – and for our own self-interest – to do all we can do to stop and turn back ISIS, short of “boots on the ground.” I include in our actions a vigorous air campaign against ISIS, aggressive intelligence gathering to help the Iraqi army, sending advisors to guide and train the Iraqis, and some black ops against ISIS targets. Once we leave Afghanistan, I believe we should support their government by doing those same things. If we don’t, the Taliban will be back in power before you know it.

If we don’t stop ISIS and push them out of Iraq, they will be able to establish a base of operations in that country, get oil revenue to fund terrorism around the world, disrupt the flow of oil to punish or blackmail the West, and spread their brand of Islam to other countries. They are in the process of establishing a caliphate whereby non-Muslims are forced to either convert or face death.

Both Iraq and Afghanistan were terribly mishandled by the Bush administration. We spend trillions of dollars and lost thousands of American lives, only to make the situation worse and accomplish very little. George W. Bush will go down in history as one of our worst presidents, if not the worst. We should now try to salvage what we can from this mess for our own protection, and for the good of the inhabitants of those countries.