Chinese expansionism (Page 3)

kittybobo34: Pretty hard to ignore Iraq, launching an attack against Kuwait, we had a defense agreement with Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. The news reports about Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of their incubators at the hospital was the final straw. As I recall Bush gave Saddam an out,, leave or else.
In the second war, Saddam was breaking the cease fire by shooting at our planes. Had we left after taking Saddam, the potential civil war was something the Iraqi's own, not us. I think the Bath party would have recovered their power, probably with another dictator.

ouweknar75: Ignoring Iraq in 1990 was indeed a hard sell. Ignoring Iraq in 2003 was not only simple, it was the smart play.

2003 was 100% a war of choice, and it has only one clear winner: China.

Your proposal to topple Saddam and then let the Iraqis deal with the fallout is very shortsighted from a strategic perspective. Iraq was a powder keg only being held together by Saddam's brutality. removal of Saddam would have led to civil war (as you acknowledge). Where you go wrong is assuming that this civil war would be limited to Iraq. A simple look at what happened in reality should show you that once unleashed the chaos and violence spill inevitably over Iraq's borders. Syria, Jordan, Iran and Saudi would all be affected.

The only winning move is not to play. And to answer your question, should we just let Saddam shoot at our planes then? The answer is yes. Saddam was not a strategic threat to the US, he was an annoyance. The US wasted 20 years of strategic focus on what amounts to a irrelevance whilst China kept growing and growing, and that is what made Iraq a geostrategical blunder of epic proportions.

The giant midget: Kittybobo I do recall those horrible media footage of the slaughter of the innocent orphanage kids.
It was heart breaking and that nurse crying unstoppable describing the massacre.
It was a total setup.that was the only thing that convinced the American public to agree with the invasion of Iraq
That nurse thanks to social media a few days later it was found out that she was a half ass 2 bit inspiring actress, granddaughter of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia..

There was never any agreement that USA had to provide security to Kuwait and even better Saudi Arabia.

The civil uprising in Iraq was caused by USA and its allies by not including various tribal groups that form the nation for hundreds of years in how to take the next steps forward. The final results are the thousands of people being killed.

kittybobo34: Yes, I did hear that Kuwait faked the whole thing to get sympathy with the west, Kuwait had lots of other contacts with the west as well . We did have an agreement with Saudi Arabia, more of a gentlemens agreement between Bush and the King.

The giant midget: Kuwait didn't fake that orphanage scenario. It was the US that orchestrated the whole thing.

Kittybobo every president since 1930s has had a gentlemen's agreement with the Saudi kingdom.

Agreement is only to make sure that the financial perks of oil royalties and weapons dealing are deposit in the President proper bank account