I liked what Katie did, so here's another:
If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?
I'll put the answer in the comments.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Date: April 13, 1991.
ReplyDeleteWho said it: This guy
Source: here
I'll add to that another, similar quote:
ReplyDelete"Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq....There was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles.
Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish.
Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."