What If No Iraq Invasion ?
POSTED BY: Jongsstraw
UPDATED: Monday, September 18, 2023 03:55
VIEWED: 6880
PAGE 4 of 6
OK.
Instead of invading Iraq. Over 300,000 troops are sent to Afganistan. The Taliban is completely destroyed. Osama Bin Laden is captured and dragged off to Camp X-Ray. A year later he is put on trial at the Hauge. After a 6 week trial he is taken to New York and put to death in the electric chair.
Saddam Hussein, shaken by the events in Afganistan, fully complies with UN Orders. Although primarily a paper tiger he serves as a secular foil to the fundamentalist regime in Irag until he is found dead apparently of natural causes.
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And this thread is never started.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Gosh, this is such a great idea for a thread! Doesn't anyone else want to play?
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Let's party like it's 1929.
Kinda scared to stick my head up, but my guess would be that no invasion, but the US vetos any attempt to withdraw or reduce sanctions despite any inspection reports or intell to the contrary. Iraqis still die due to US policy, but the Bushite regime instead decides to strike at North Korea who build nukes after Bush withdraws from a Clinton signed treaty which kept them from doing so in the past...
Lets party like its 1939 !!!
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After matching agency predictions almost word for word, Gino is "detained" for aggressive questioning by the CIA.
Sorry Gino. The more things change, the more they stay the same! 
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Let's party like it's 1929.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
After matching agency predictions almost word for word, Gino is "detained" for aggressive questioning by the CIA.
Sorry Gino. The more things change, the more they stay the same!
---------------------------------
Let's party like it's 1929.
Its okay, Val Kilmer already taught me how to waterboard
we had fun with our guns until the lifeguard took our ammo away.....
Lets party like its 1939
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Do the Beach Boys know about this ?
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Do the Beach Boys know about this ?
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
them guys aren't nearly as much fun
Lets party like its 1939
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Quote:
Originally posted by Veteran:
OK.
Instead of invading Iraq. Over 300,000 troops are sent to Afganistan. The Taliban is completely destroyed. Osama Bin Laden is captured and dragged off to Camp X-Ray. A year later he is put on trial at the Hauge. After a 6 week trial he is taken to New York and put to death in the electric chair.
Saddam Hussein, shaken by the events in Afganistan, fully complies with UN Orders. Although primarily a paper tiger he serves as a secular foil to the fundamentalist regime in Irag until he is found dead apparently of natural causes.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!... Oh, wait... You weren't joking? You really have no idea how foreign policy really works, do you? Or logistics.
Do you know how expensive it would be to move 300,000 troops to Afghanistan? 300,000 troops that we don't have, by the way. At least, if we do have them, they can't be spared (we do have the rest of the Empire to maintain, after all). Not to mention the fact that it would be totally unnecessary and ineffective. Unless you could put one soldier on every acre of Afghan soil, you're not going to find everyone. In fact, you make it less likely that you'll find the people you're looking for, because it's doubtful the natives will take to having legions of infidels roaming the countryside, hunting the Taliban, whom they have a lot more in common with than their conquerors.
Aside from the initial failure to press our advantage and exterminate the remnants of the Taliban, allowing the bastards to regroup and reorganize, what we have been doing with special forces in the country has worked wonders. Special Ops squads have been in Afghanistan from Day One, and have done more to win the hearts and minds of the locals (the true War on Terror) than all the tens of thousands of troops with their tanks and fighter jets.
Osama would still be free, because he hasn't been in Afghanistan since the beginning of the invasion! People don't give Osama enough credit. He is one smart son-of-a-bitch. And he has to be, to run a terror network capable of striking in the U.S. That means he was smart enough to know when to leave. He's been sitting back laughing at us from across the Pakistani border from the beginning, knowing that we weren't about to invade one of our few allies (and a nuclear power) in the region, and knowing that the Paki Government was too divided on the issue to ever agree to let the U.S. Military have the free run of the country to search for him. And trying him in the Hague (if we even catch him before he dies of old age)? Are you just completely ignorant of American Psychology? Do you honestly think America would let the U.N. try the man? They probably wouldn't even execute him, if the trial even got that far before he died of old age. Americans were out for blood. If we ever caught him, we would have squeezed as much intel out of him as possible, then executed him, maybe even publicly, possibly without a trial (or at least with the bare minimum of effort to make it appear that we gave him a trial).
And Iraq? Saddam wouldn't have budged, because he was telling the truth (he said "we have no WMDs", and guess what: he didn't!), and he had, for the most part, cooperated, despite the anger he must have felt at the situation. Really, there's a certain amount of pride in being able to actually run your country without a bunch of foreigners breathing down your neck, telling you how to do your job. How well do you think Americans would take it, after all, (George Dubya especially) if the U.N. declared that the U.S. would either give them access to ALL government weapons projects and ALL of our armaments, or they would pass crippling sanctions against us? Do you think WE would cooperate fully, and show them everything?
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"O' course, ya couldn't buy an invite with a diamond the size of a testicle, but luckily I got my hands on a couple."
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Reaverman
Are you ill ? Because your post makes very little sense.
Afghanistan is working out well ? That would be news if it were true. Instead, just a few weeks ago (April 27, 2008) the Taleban infiltrated a military parade in central Kabul, firing guns and rockets in an attempt to assassinate Karzai. So rather than see his little army march in nice lines, he got to see them scatter for their lives before his bodyguards trundled him away. (Other participants didn't escape.) Poppy growing and opium production (and addiction) are now double what they were in Taleban days. Warlords maintain their heavy armaments and guns. The pipeline can't be built due to political and military instability. Meanwhile, speaking of hearts and minds, Afghanis, caught between the local warlords and US/ NATO troops when they do show up, side with the warlords simply as the greatest threat they need to appease. And it's US and NATO troops, not just the US. There is no 'national' - tranportation, education, health, business - anything. Oh, and women are still wearing those burqas.
Yeah, that went well.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Afghanistan is working out well? That would be news if it were true. Instead, just a few weeks ago (April 27, 2008) the Taleban infiltrated a military parade in central Kabul, firing guns and rockets in an attempt to assassinate Karzai.
And how many attempts have they made before that? If it's a high number, then at least we're doing something right, because Karzai isn't dead yet. If it's a low number, then they likely don't have the resources for numerous attacks, meaning that we are winning the war of attrition.
Quote:
Poppy growing and opium production (and addiction) are now double what they were in Taleban days.
Yep. Ya know why? Because we're not trying to stop it. Oh, I know the Pentagon would say that we're doing "everything in our power to wipe the scourge of drugs out in Afghanistan", but the fact is, we're not. To win the hearts and minds, you have to help people, or, in cases like the poppy and marijuana fields of rural Afghanistan, just let them benefit from whats already there. The Taliban controlled production of opium and marijuana, and took most of the profits. Letting the farmers keep their money has done a helluva lot for local morale, and the economy.
Quote:
Warlords maintain their heavy armaments and guns.
Afghanistan has always been a hodge-podge of warlord territory. Even the Taliban had to work with the warlords. And for us? The warlords' very existence is a HUGE benefit for our cause. While they are not always easy to deal with, their existence means that, when they work with us, we have readily available local militias to fight the Taliban remnant. All we have to do is make it worth the Warlords' while, and they are a tremendous help. By the same token, if we continue to look upon them as a cancer that needs to be removed, and treating them like it, they can be an enourmous hinderence to our efforts.
Quote:
Meanwhile, speaking of hearts and minds, Afghanis, caught between the local warlords and US/ NATO troops when they do show up, side with the warlords simply as the greatest threat they need to appease.
Of course they do. And they should. The warlords have been around for thousands of years, some tracing their ancestry to the days of the Persian Empire. They will still be around long after we have packed up and left. The trick is getting the warlords to side with us. If the people have sided with them, all the better. It means that by swaying a single man to our cause, we can add the force of thousands of people to the struggle on our side. That's the great thing about aristocrats: they make things simpler.
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And it's US and NATO troops, not just the US.
Semantics. The U.S. has the biggest investment of money and people on the ground. And "U.S." is easier to type than "U.S. and NATO". But if you want to nitpick, then yes, NATO is there too.
Quote:
There is no 'national' - tranportation, education, health, business - anything.
All in good time. You have to remember, there has never been a national system like we have here in the U.S. Hell, there's never even been a sense of national unity, the first step in creating national infrastructure, because Afghanistan has always been a single country in name only. In reality, it has always been a collection of dozens of rival fiefdoms that can be occaisionally led cohesively by powerful, city-based regimes, but never truly ruled over. Much like the U.S. would be now if the Articles of Confederation hadn't been scrapped.
Quote:
Oh, and women are still wearing those burqas.
I know you're probably as sick of reading it as I am of typing it, but, its all about hearts and minds. Now, people generally assume that we're out to win everyone's heart and mind. That's just untrue. To put it plainly, for now, we are trying to win the hearts and minds of the people that matter. And in Afghan society, women don't. Afghan women have no voice, and n
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