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Really the main failure in Bushes camp in the Iraq war was their fundamental misunderstanding of how things work over there.

It had surfaced that they seriously believed (or they even lied to their inner circle type people) that after Saddam was toppled the people of Iraq would get together like Japan and Germany did and start picking up the pieces and have some elections.

They just didn't get that an all too significant portion of the three ethnic groups present would be much more interested in ripping each others throats out. And that's been the real problem.

Still from the some of the recent Al Queda letters they intercepted it sounds like recent efforts at empowering locals (with weapons) is working. For now.

And to their credit the Iraqis did go to the polls in impressive numbers despite attacks.

But that doesn't change the fact that they really should have known the different groups would try to rip into each other.

The recent sucesses in Anbar haven't really come from arming the locals, or any particular drive on the part of the US military, so much as the fact that the local Bedouin objected to al-Qaida's attempts to enforce Sharia. They'd already kicked out the US army, but once al-Qaida started on their "full burkha, don't educate women, don't do x, y and z" they went too, and the US was invited back in as the lesser of two evils. It helped that the US military has finally got its act together and developed a coherent counterinsurgency doctrine - to the extent that they're now better than the British military, who have long been the masters of COIN.

Huh. Nice to have some more details on that.

Anyway as to the OP I think that Bush will be remembered for the Iraq war. I suppose I'm talking about what students might know about him twenty or so years from now.

As much as some people spaz about the invasion of rights I think it's more of a matter that people didn't know the US was freely spying on the rest of the world all the time. Generally I think all of that business will be forgotten as trivial.

He might be remembered for the torture business. But generally I expect that would be more as a footnote to the Iraq war.

His tax cuts, while annoyingly for the rich more than the middle class, aren't the sort of thing that'll get him remembered one way or the other really.

Same for most of his other stuff.

If he's lucky he'll get remembered for his swift attack on Afganistan though.

sunnyside wrote:Really the main failure in Bushes camp in the Iraq war was their fundamental misunderstanding of how things work over there.

It had surfaced that they seriously believed (or they even lied to their inner circle type people) that after Saddam was toppled the people of Iraq would get together like Japan and Germany did and start picking up the pieces and have some elections.

They just didn't get that an all too significant portion of the three ethnic groups present would be much more interested in ripping each others throats out. And that's been the real problem.

Still from the some of the recent Al Queda letters they intercepted it sounds like recent efforts at empowering locals (with weapons) is working. For now.

And to their credit the Iraqis did go to the polls in impressive numbers despite attacks.

But that doesn't change the fact that they really should have known the different groups would try to rip into each other.

What didn't enter into their minds was that Japan and Germany where under military governance for ten years after the war in an effort to root out the garbage and rebuild the country. The US wrote the Japanese constitution for them so that the same shit that Afghanistan pulled with theirs wouldn't happen in Japan.