Presidential election, 2016

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-28-2016, 04:04 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Unintended consequences. Barack Obama is above all else a realist. He may have had no grand scheme of asserting American power but he ended up doing so. His biggest objective was to capture or kill Osama bin laden, something that he could have never done had he not recognized that intel is desirable even if it is counter-intuitive. Even if he is not a chest-thumping  super-patriot, he can make the right decisions that happen to look as if they came from 'Neocon Headquarters'.

The fault with the Neocons was that they latched themselves to the wrong President. People who try to force history to meet their dreams have a poor win-loss record.

I'm not sure how much better they would have done with another president.  The objectives that were set for the Iraq incursion were incompatible with the ideal Neocon doctrine.  They would have liked to have gone in, purged the weapons of mass destruction, and got out.  They might have succeeded at that.  Big Oil wanted to stay and pump for profits.  Some idealists wanted to nation build, to turn Iraq into a modern democracy.  This meant a long term occupation.  If they didn't pay a lot more attention to keeping the people of Iraq happy than they did, an insurrection would be nigh on inevitable.  There was also enough talk -- and action in terms of building bases and the huge embassy complex -- of Iraq being a first step and further invasions would follow.  You might put blame on other factions within the Bush 43 administration for trying to stay indefinitely, but their own manifesto -- Rebuilding America's Defenses -- advocated troops near the oil.  I guess they have to take part of the blame at least for that.

No doubt Bush 43 was a poor leader.  Various factions with various agendas had control of different parts of the occupation force.  I didn't sense then and still don't believe they had a common plan.  You had State trying to win hearts and minds while the army thought a high body count of locals was the goal.  Pulling all Baathist party members out of government and education down to the lowest levels ticked of a lot of powerful locals, making the insurrection just about inevitable.  With 20 20 hindsight I think a competent Commander in Chief might do far better, perhaps even keeping the locals happy enough to avoid the insurrection.  Don't get do overs, though, in battles for hearts and minds.

Yes.  They would have had a better chance with most anyone but Bush 43.  Their doctrine was still flawed though.  High tech won't win insurrections, and I don't see how they could have avoided insurrection.