Define victory in Iraq - and now describe the motivation for going there in the first place?

Answer 1

Victory in Iraq ?

.....let's start with motivation.

The motivation (believe it or not) to go to war in Iraq, was to return the world's fourth largest oil producing country, WHO IS NOT GOVERNED BY OPEC, back to the world market....to secure the global economy which relies heavily on affordable petroleum for stability. Especially in developing countries.

So if you could read the minds of the war mongers, they would constitute victory as "the point in which oil flows freely into the world economy and prices stabilize because OPEC has to compete with Iraqi oil"...and the world's energy crisis is over.

The general public believes victory is acheived when the violence ends and Iraq has it's own security forces.

When we finally do leave Iraq, it won't be because the violence has ended......the entire middle east has been violent for thousands of years and will continue to be. When we finally leave Iraq, rest assured it will be for political and economic reasons.....not security reasons.

Answer 2

As one answer put it...short and sweet, "victory" would be if the Iraqis could provide their own security; so we could get out of it. But that is not likely to happen...the "provide their own security" part...I think we'll get out, like Vietnam, and leave the Iraqis to fight it out in a bloody civil war that will be supported by Iran, Jordan, and Syria...to mention a few.

Ruled by war lords who have their own agenda for grabbing power, Iraq and, indeed, most of the Middle East, is doomed to secular and religious wars. It is their way. They have not yet gone beyond the fiefdom (warlord) stage of politics like the Western Nations have.

This is why democracy is not suited for the Middle East. They have not yet matured politically to the point where they can accept rule by majority, while respecting the rights of the minority. This is why civil war will reign for a long time after the U.S. stops meddling in Middle East affairs.

As to the "motivation," certainly ensuring petrol supplies remain available to the Western Nations is one motivation. But with GWB, I think it goes further than mere economics. I believe GWB thinks it is the Christian thing to do, to save the Middle East from Islamic extremists...maybe Islam in general.

Little has been mentioned in the Western media of the "C" word GWB used on TV some months before we attacked Afghanistan and, then, Iraq. But the Muslims haven't forgotten the day when GWB said "crusade" in response to a question on the air. The Muslims have been teaching their kids about the rape and murders done to them by Richard I and others since the first of eight crusades. As far as they are concerned, it's payback time. And GWB''s mention of a crusade is reason enough for that payback.

Answer 3

'Victory' in Iraq, and this point, has been defined as the establishment of a relatively stable, pro-US democratic government. That is profoundly unlikely, obviously, since democracies are largely shaped by the majority of thier citizens, and the majority of Iraqi citizens are Shiites, and Iraqi Shiites tend to be pro-Iran, not pro-US.

The original intention was to assure that no 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' (a term coined, IIRC, by Bush I, when he couldn't find evidence of a serious nuclear program in that country) still existed in the country, and, incidentally, depose Saddam. Those goals have been accomplished, but the aftermath has proven far more challenging than expected.

Answer 4

The reasons for going to Iraq can be divided up into two parts:
*the stated reasons
*the implied reasons

The "stated reasons" are of course the ones that Cheney, Bush and Rumsfield trumped around for months in 2002/2003 to drive the American war uphoria. They are:
1) Weapons of Mass Destruction held by Saddam (based on faulty intelligence)
2) Saddam's ties to the evil-doers of 9/11 Al Qaeda (again based on faulty intelligence)

These are well known, but it is the other set of reasons --the "implied reasons" -- that tie directly into the answer of the second part of your question i.e. "what the hell happened and what do we do now?" These reasons are:
1) Desire to create a peaceful democratic state in the Middle East to serve as an example for millions of people in the region
2) Desire to create an ally in the war on terror in the middle east

These are essentially also the long-terms goals in Iraq as well. Anyone familiar with the history of the middle east could tell you that in order to accomplish this you would need

1) An enormous army of soldiers well trained in counter- insurgency techniques and able to close off the countries borders in order to combat the thousands of insurgents who will fight against the occupation
2) A plan to rebuild the country that is exhaustively planned out, practical, and done with the cooperation of the Iraqis themselves

Unfortunately we did not implement any of this. We went in with 120,000 troops, when we would need several hundred thousand to secure the borders and stave off the insurgency. We needed widespread counter-insurgency techniques, the type of tactics that have worked throughout history to seperate the evildoers from the population. There was no counterinsurgency training of any type. We needed a plan to rebuild IRaq that met the basic needs of the people there, instead our CPA (Central Provisional Authority) spent their time disbanding the Iraqi army, harshly punishing those they felt were politically unacceptable, drafting up lofty legislation like flat taxes and national id cards -- all the while ignoring basic issues like jobs and security.
Experts predicted these failures could lead to
1) Civil War That spills over the border to surrounding countries
2) Genocide
3) proliferation of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda
GUESS WHAT....THEY WERE RIGHT.
So here we are now, and thus the best we can do is stay in Iraq for many years doing our best to combat terrorist, prevent widespread genocide, and prevent war from spilling over into other parts of the region. Our trooplevels can draw down but nothing good can come from this sadly

Answer 5

Short and sweet...
Victory would to have the Iraqi Natl Guard and Iraqi Police be able to defend their own country from insurgents

Going there in the first place is another story... GW has a little penis and needed a war under his belt to look big and tough. Personally I'd like to believe that when I went in 2004, I was helping to liberate a country from a ******* dictator, terrorists and to help them stand up for themselves. Thet seem like the entire people suffer from Battered Wife Syndroome and I was happy to help beat-up the husband!

Answer 6

stunning question. i've got faith that victory in Iraq is a multifold answer. First, we ought to ascertain that they have not got weapons of mass destruction. This has been carried out. Even extra suitable, we ought to eliminate the government's desire to attack us. This has additionally been carried out (while those 2 prevalent objectives have been finished, you may remember George Bush claiming that the project became into performed). 0.33, if we eliminate the government and replace it with a clean government, we ought to ascertain that the recent government is deemed valid with the aid of the Iraqi human beings so as to ascertain that a civil conflict does not ruin out in the rustic with the aid of our strikes. it is broadly believed that this has additionally been carried out. ultimately, it is right that we bypass away the rustic with a working infrastructure that contains clean water and electrical energy at tiers a minimum of equivalent to those on the beginning up of the conflict and a protection tension and police infrastructure able to coping with person-friendly crime and self protection from threats the two foreign places and relatives. it is the prevalent sticking element between republicans and democrats in congress. is this part of "prevailing the conflict"? i do no longer think so, even though it is needed in bobbing up an best chum and a extra good center east that's pertinent to our very own relatives protection. The be conscious win that McCain friends with this, and extra importantly, the be conscious lose that he friends with Obama's plan, is empty and hurtful rhetoric that serves the objective of clouding the situation and denigrating those he opposes. they're efficient yet meaningless words. the real debate is whether or no longer the Iraqi government is able to teaching this is very own protection tension to a sufficient generic, how directly they are going to be waiting to, and whether or no longer our presence interior Iraq brings extra violence and terrorists into the rustic, or whether our absence could reason a backlash or up swell of violence. the final answer, in my view, could be to persist with Obama's plan, yet shelter troops in Israel, Kuwait, and doubtless Turkey and Saudi Arabia (with their respective permission) for a quantity of time to respond to any possible develop in violence that the Iraqi government became into incapable of coping with.

Answer 7

Victory in Iraq will happen under one condition.

We must invent a time machine, go back in time and stop them before they try to go for it... of course if we went back to the early 1990's we could stop PNAC from drawing up it's plan to invade iraq...

Answer 8

there is no victory in Iraq, there is no defeat either, you can't "win" a war on terror, you can't completely eradicate terrorism, all you can do is fight it as best you can and try to isolate and control it...anyone telling you otherwise is selling you a bill of goods...we need to leave Iraq now and put the 12 bill a month we're spending to better use

Answer 9

It's just like Vietnam, only worse...There will NEVER be a victory. If there is just ONE "terrorist" left, there would be no surrendering.

Well we went into Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction and we found them...er...wait a minute...