Top Military Historian ranks Bush's War as the most Foolish War in last 2,015 Years

C

Cypress

Well-known member
CHEERS to not finishing dead last: George W. Bush has not led the worst military operation in history after all. A respected military historian says Emperor Augustus was worse... 2,015 years ago:

To describe Iraq as the most foolish war of the last 2,014 years is a sweeping statement, but the writer is well qualified to know.

He is Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the world's foremost military historians. Several of his books have influenced modern military theory and he is the only non-American author on the US Army's list of required reading for officers.

Professor van Creveld has previously drawn parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, and pointed out that almost all countries that have tried to fight similar wars during the last 60 years or so have ended up losing. Why President Bush "nevertheless decided to go to war escapes me and will no doubt preoccupy historians to come," he told one interviewer. [...]

In his eagerness for regime change in Iraq, Mr. Bush blundered into a trap from which in the short term there is no way out: the Americans will be damned if they stay and damned if they leave.





http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1653454,00.html
 
This is the part I see as most significant. It's pretty much my answer to Damo and others who say we can't honorably withdraw until the Iraqi forces are able to take over.
Noting that some two-thirds of Americans believe the war was a mistake, van Creveld says in his article that the US should forget about saving face and pull its troops out: "What had to come, has come. The question is no longer if American forces will be withdrawn, but how soon - and at what cost."

Welcome as a pullout might be to many Americans, it would be a hugely complex operation. Van Creveld says it would probably take several months and result in sizeable casualties. More significantly, though, it would not end the conflict.

"As the pullout proceeds," he warns, "Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge - if, indeed, it can do so at all. All this is inevitable and will take place whether George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice like it or not."

-- emphasis added. O.B.
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actually, hitler's war should be number one on that list. iraq is a minor skirmish. the 'historian' is obviously a partisan hack.
 
but this war has outlasted hitlers war , officially from an American standpoint.
I am not sure on the cost, but I figure it is getting close as well.
 
uscitizen said:
but this war has outlasted hitlers war , officially from an American standpoint.
I am not sure on the cost, but I figure it is getting close as well.
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Nah, that is also a partisan view. The "war" actually lasted weeks, it is the insurgency and occupation that have lasted so long. How long did we hang around in West Germany?

Fricking Nationbuilding... It's never worth the cost.
 
uscitizen said:
Have we ever gotten an official surrender from Iraq ?
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When their Army disbanded you don't think that was a surrender? The government no longer stood and the military was defeated...

We then occupied the nation. That one occupation was more pacified doesn't change the point at which we are in this.
 
Gaffer said:
actually we did. saddam was pulled out of his hole and said he was ready to negociate. He surrendered. Since he was the government of iraq then iraq surrendered.
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That's odd. Whenever Saddam is allowed to talk in the court room, he urges the sunni insurgents to fight on. His fedayeen militia and probably the special republican guard was the backbone of the initial sunni insurgency.
 
Cypress said:
That's odd. Whenever Saddam is allowed to talk in the court room, he urges the sunni insurgents to fight on. His fedayeen militia and probably the special republican guard was the backbone of the initial sunni insurgency.
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Last time he said that he wanted them to stop the internal violence. It doesn't sound like he was trying to get them to "fight on" at that moment.
 
Damocles said:
Last time he said that he wanted them to stop the internal violence. It doesn't sound like he was trying to get them to "fight on" at that moment.
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Guess again.

Saddam had months, perhaps years to prepare an insurgency against any american president foolish enough to invade.

Saddam praises the insurgency. He wants the sectarian violence to end; i.e., he wants iraqis to stop killing iraqis, and focus on killing americans


Saddam Takes the Stand, Praises Iraqi Insurgency
by Tom Bullock - NPR

All Things Considered, March 15, 2006 · "Saddam Hussein takes the stand and launches into a political speech, praising the insurgency and urging Iraqis to halt sectarian violence"


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5282182
 
Cypress said:
Guess again.

Saddam had months, perhaps years to prepare an insurgency against any american president foolish enough to invade.

Saddam praises the insurgency. He wants the sectarian violence to end; i.e., he wants iraqis to stop killing iraqis, and focus on killing americans


Saddam Takes the Stand, Praises Iraqi Insurgency
by Tom Bullock - NPR

All Things Considered, March 15, 2006 · "Saddam Hussein takes the stand and launches into a political speech, praising the insurgency and urging Iraqis to halt sectarian violence"


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5282182
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Try again...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,227577,00.html

AMMAN, Jordan — Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis on Sunday to reject the sectarian violence ripping his country apart and to "not take revenge" on "invading" forces, his chief lawyer said after the ousted leader was sentenced to death.

Saddam expressed his views shortly before he and two co-defendants were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging for war crimes in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail.

Saddam "knew that he would be sentenced to death and wanted me to pass on this message to the Iraqi people and to the whole world after the verdict was announced," Khalil al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Baghdad.

...
 
Damocles said:
Try again...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,227577,00.html

AMMAN, Jordan — Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis on Sunday to reject the sectarian violence ripping his country apart and to "not take revenge" on "invading" forces, his chief lawyer said after the ousted leader was sentenced to death.

Saddam expressed his views shortly before he and two co-defendants were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging for war crimes in the 1982 killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail.

Saddam "knew that he would be sentenced to death and wanted me to pass on this message to the Iraqi people and to the whole world after the verdict was announced," Khalil al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Baghdad.

...
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This is a statement from his lawyer. Not from Saddam. So who knows how accurate it is?

Nevertheless, if this is true, I stand corrected.

But, I seriously doubt Saddam wants the iraqi people to "accept" an ameircan occupation. Sounds like Fox News spin to me.


Fact is, there's never been any formal surrender by the iraqi forces, militias, or bathist government, to the United States. Show me the document. Surrenders are always accompanied for formal, legal documents that are signed by the warring parties.
 
Cypress said:
This is a statement from his lawyer. Not from Saddam. So who knows how accurate it is?

Nevertheless, if this is true, I stand corrected.

But, I seriously doubt Saddam wants the iraqi people to "accept" an ameircan occupation. Sounds like Fox News spin to me.


Fact is, there's never been any formal surrender by the iraqi forces, militias, or bathist government, to the United States. Show me the document. Surrenders are always accompanied for formal, legal documents that are signed by the warring parties.
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and

uscitizen said:
So we have an official document of the surrender of Iraq signed by sadam ?
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Even without that, total military defeat clearly ends that aspect of the war. Occupation is a different thing than the "war"... (Which this wasn't because there was no war declared.)

There were two points that you could compare. The "war" then the occupation. In this case the occupation has an insurgency and probably a civil war as well, in the other it was more pacified. It was the aftermath that was so messed up to begin with here...
 
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