Fruits of the Iraq War March 1, 2011
Posted by Jason in Uncategorized.trackback
In the NYT: Libya was scared into giving up its WMD program in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq War in 2003. What would the Qaddhafi regime do today with artillery shells filled with mustard gas and casks of highly enriched uranium?
This leads to the larger question- would the Arab revolutions of 2011 have happened at all, or in the same way, without the second Iraq War? Or did US intervention in Iraq discredit the idea of democracy and postpone the public upheaval we see today?
Then there is door #3: these revolutions should be understood in economic and country-specific terms, and we have to get out of the habit of assuming the US is the unmoved mover in the Middle East.
News That Stays News 
That’s a good article. I’m glad that one of our actions led to something good, but I still choose #3. The Iraq war was too big and caused too many different reactions in too many groups of people for us to untangle whether it helped, hurt, or had no effect.