Reply #44: A "successful occupation" was never a possibility except in [View All]

[Morgana LaFey]

the fevered minds of the PNAC crowd and their supporters.

There was no interest in "salvation" on the part if the Iraqis -- they were always going to be hostile to us and our designs, even the ones who LIKED us, even the ones who WANTED Saddam gone. No one there invited us in (and Chalabi doesn't count, for multiple obvious reasons).

There was further no homogenous population to "accept" or receive the "salvation" we wanted to impose -- only those 3 factions that needed to be controlled by a strong-arm dictator, and even more basic than that: you don't create democracy through force. The mission was doomed from the start, and there were plenty of people who KNEW and predicted that well before the ill-advised war ever got off the ground. I'd refer you back to some of the contemporaneous anti-war articles, which would be better iterations of the reality than I can provide after the fact and with my weak memory. If you're interested I'm sure you can find some. If you're not interested, you'll whine about me not providing any links.