quote: Some would say his mistake was STOPPING THERE and only using military force against Al Quaeda training camps in Afghanistan when something bad about him popped up in the news
Funny, I tend to think of that being Bush Sr's mistake too....way before Clinton.
If Bush Sr had done the "right" thing then, there would have been a lot less trouble...
Of course the people in the millitary who advised pushing on were warned off for speaking out, against their Commander-In-Cheif.....
Some of them were still quite bitter about the way Bush treated them when I was in the service a few years later.
posted
That's not completely accurate. There were many reasons why Bush Sr. didn't push on. For one thing, the first Gulf war was assisted by a coalition of the Arab states around Iraq and one of the major things done to form this coalition was to promise not to invade Iraq after turning them back from Kuwait.
Another thing that was speculated about but as far as I know never explicitly confirmed was that there was a big concern over what Iran would do in post invasion Iraq or even in an Iraq where Saddam Hussein was disposed and there was a leadership vaccum. The U.S. had a history at this point of trying to counter-balance Iran by supporting Iraq and turning a blind eye to it's atrocities.
Finally, George Bush Sr. laid out one of the bigest reason why he didn't think going into Iraq was a good idea, namely that it would turn into a very difficult situation where the U.S. troops would be indefinitely committed to fighting against attacks by both Iraqi and international terrorists/guerrilla fighters and he didn't think that the end goal justified entering into that type of situation.
I like to U.N. bash as much as the next guy who doesn't speak directly from the Republican party's talking points list, but the U.S.'s foreign policy prior to the current President's administration was much more complex than "We want to do the right thing, but the U.N. won't let us."
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