Just to let it all kick off I might pooint out that "we" (US and UK) kept The Great Dictator in power as he seemed to keep Iran and Syria under what is laughingly called "control" as well as making a tonne of money out of selling him weapons. We seem to have a long tradition of fighting people we trained and armed to help us fight people we trained and armed. Funny that.
I'm not sure if I'd ever call a war a "good idea". I did consider getting rid of Saddam a good idea, but do not know what the real reason for going to war actually was, in the minds of the people who started it. Given that they tried to mislead people as to the reasons of the war, saying that it was because Saddam had WMA and was a danger to us, and trying to link the war to 911, I think that was a very bad "idea" for a war. And I definitely think it was handled badly. Not to say that I could have handled it better, but then I am not a military person nor a strategist nor a leader, and I do not want to be in charge of handling wars.
You left out the, "Would the UK be better off if we'd left Iraq to the Americans on the grounds that we had enough commitment already in Afganistan?', question though.
Any possible 'good' that could spring from it is besides the point when we were quite openly lied to by Blair to get us in there in the first place. That overshadows everything.
[X] Very carefully, taking as long as it takes not to leave an insanely huge power vacuum, and with a promise to assist with infrastructure etc.
Anybody with two eyes could see that the US/UK had zip, zero, nil, nada justification for entering Iraq. Entering Iraq pre-emptively has got to be the biggest threat to global goodwill ever, partly because of precedent and partly because it gives a massively stronger incentive for any so-called ¨rogue state¨ to arm themselves with nuclear weapons in order to avoid their own pre-emption.
If anyone answered anything other than "i have no idea" for the first 2 questions, you must be either psychics or full of crap.
How can anyone know what will happen?
I answered bad idea, badly handled for number 4, but only if you consider thousands of people dying and the destablizing of the middle east a bad thing.
The Americans know that if they pull out now, the Saudi Arabians, frantic over the sunni/shia ethnic cleansing, will promptly move in and then the entire area region will explode. While staying is obviously not working, the situation if they were to pull out now would be devastating. This is a consequence that should have been forseen and this is the reason they should never have invaded, quite apart from the initial human cost. The cruelty of invasion would almost have been forgivable if they hadn't been so stupid.
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[X] Very carefully, taking as long as it takes not to leave an insanely huge power vacuum, and with a promise to assist with infrastructure etc.
Anybody with two eyes could see that the US/UK had zip, zero, nil, nada justification for entering Iraq. Entering Iraq pre-emptively has got to be the biggest threat to global goodwill ever, partly because of precedent and partly because it gives a massively stronger incentive for any so-called ¨rogue state¨ to arm themselves with nuclear weapons in order to avoid their own pre-emption.
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How can anyone know what will happen?
I answered bad idea, badly handled for number 4, but only if you consider thousands of people dying and the destablizing of the middle east a bad thing.
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