It is a testament to just how horrifically awful the Bush Administration has been that our March 2003 invasion of Iraq is not, in fact, the worst moment of his administration. But at #4 on a list of Bush failures, it’s pretty freakin’ awful.
Let’s review all the reasons that invading Iraq was a bad idea:
- They didn’t have WMDs.
- Had we allowed the UN inspectors already on the ground to actually do their jobs, we would have figured that out without invading.
- Which we did because we said they had WMDs.
- Which they didn’t have.
- And of course, all our friends and allies told us this, and said that it was a bad idea to invade even if they did have WMDs.
- Which they didn’t have.
And that’s ultimately the failure of the Iraq War — that our whole reason for invading was false. Oh, sure, we got rid of a bad guy — but hardly the only bad-guy, tinpot dictator in the world, and not even the worst — but this particular bad guy was at least serving a geopolitical purpose; now, with him out of the way, Iraq has fallen under the influence of their neighbor to the east — our buddies in Iran.
The Iraq war was unnecessary, and it ultimately has made America less safe. And cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Oh, and it’s killed thousands of Americans and at least hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Other than that, it was a great decision.
Not *all* your friends and allies told you it was wrong. /Australian shame
I would add a reason:
*It was based on a false link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, and the invasion only served to strengthen that falsity, leading the country down even more strange paths.