Article about incompetence of cosmic proportions

[UtahDan]

Originally Posted by hoyacoug

First of all, Afghanistan and Iraq are not the same country. They have completely different problems to work through. In Iraq, you have 3 large groups all dedicated to the destruction of the others. They have been kept in check by a brutal dictator. Once that dictator was removed, chaos ensued. This, to me, was easily predictable and fairly obvious.

The area formerly known as the USSR IS more dangerous now than it was when it was in existence (though I recognize this isn't what you meant). In fact, that may be our single greatest threat today- a nation with nuclear power that has little control over its weaponry and a strong history of corruption.

Japan's success was not predicted by many, but it came to pass only with an enormous expenditure of time and money and a sensational plan. We have not had any great plan to put Iraq back together, and, even if we did, I am not sure it would have worked. Japan, like Afghanistan, is a very different country than Iraq (and the rest of the Middle East).

To top it all off, I am still wondering why we went into Iraq to begin with (setting aside the many bad decisions we have made once we went in).

I don't really disagree with any of that. I am just trying to answer your question of how we could have done something that in hindsight seems like a really bad idea. My point was only that these things are often not knowable before hand and history doesn't always guide us. That and part of our national identity has been the notion that there isn't anything we can't do.

No matter what we do, someone will think it is a great idea and someone else will think it is horrible. One of them will be right, of course.