Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Why Did We Invade Iraq?

James Fallows writes The Right and Wrong Questions About the Iraq War. He opposes asking the question, “Knowing what we know now, would you have invaded Iraq?” for a few good reasons. One, it's too easy and two it doesn't tell you anything because leaders don't get to make decisions with hindsight. I disagree a little on the second point. With hindsight you get to evaluate your decisions and learn from mistakes. Fallows basically gets to this point too, but my pet peeve is the politicians who say “I don’t answer hypotheticals”. My response to them is "Then how do you learn?".

Fallows continues with a good history lesson for the lead up to the Iraq war. We decided to invade Iraq a couple of days after 9/11.

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