Actually tackling Afghanistan was seen as much more difficult then any War with Iraq.
Afghanistan was landlocked and already had the reputation of the graveyard of Empires and the United States didn't have any friendly reliable neighbors nearby and no way to deploy troops for an offensive operation in the Fall/Winter... or at least that was the assumption. I remember on SB people throwing up how the United States was going to get its ass whooped worse then the Soviets and the Taliban couldn't be toppled because Afghanistan was already in the stone age, so you obviously can't bomb them back to the Stone Age.
At worst, it was expected that the regime wouldn't collapse literally within months of the first US troops landing there. David Hackworth himself was predicting it would be a clusterfuck, we had SAS 'experts' stating that the United States was going to get wrecked and pull out since they couldn't stomach the conflict lasting as long as the Soviet Union one and so on and so forth. It'd be like Mogadishu only worse and so on and so forth. The most optimistic predictions were that the United States might be able to sponsor a Spring Offensive out of the North in 2002.
Even as the campaign went on there was still a lot of naysaying but by the end of 2001 the Taliban had collapsed across most of the country and when Bin Laden escaped to Pakistan that Winter, the new angle was that the United States was too soft and ineffective under Bush to stop Bin Laden from escaping across the Afghan-Pakistan border in the middle of Winter and it was "outsourced" to local Afghans.
Anyways, the success of the Afghanistan operation probably did help shed a lot of light on giving the Iraq misadventure a try. Unlike Afghanistan where overflight rights had to be negotiated with Pakistan and basing rights rush ordered with Uzbekistan and whatnot and literally needing CIA dudes and Green Berets to make contact with the Northern Alliance leaders they never really met, Iraq was already a far more known quantity and the United States already had no fly zones on the north and southern bits, autonomous Kurdish allies in the North, and basing in both Kuwait and Turkey (though the latter turned out to not be the case a few days before the War).
And of course as an aside according to Douglas Feith in his book
War and Decision stated that in the briefings where General Tommy Franks would brief Rumsfeld, and other Pentagon and White House personnel the idea of Saddam Hussein using WMD's on Coalition troops was brought up repeatedly... but I guess all of the military, intelligence and political personnel in those briefings were lying to each other... or covering each others tracks then and up until now. The main reason Iraq was seen as a tough nut to crack in comparison to Afghanistan was the WMD issue. Everything else was kind of a known quantity. Once the Coalition started rolling over Southern Iraq the next fear was the Stalingrad like battle Saddam Hussein was prepping for in Baghdad and the Nothern cities, which didn't materialize either.
The Al Jazeera author citing Afghanistan as a 'fair war' might hold some water but Afghanistan in 2001 being easy mode compared to Iraq in 2003 doesn't hold water. Iraq obviously ultimately required more resources in personnel and money despite being a smaller population but conventionally, an airborne invasion of Afghanistan was a way bigger mountain to climb then Persian Gulf II redux.
He cites Douglas Feith but even in the memo he cites (as in most of his source material) the idea was to link WMD's, the liberation of the Iraqi people and stopping Saddam Hussein from his ongoing support of terrorism (as the intelligence was embellished at best in regards to direct Al-Qaeda contacts). But yes it would be a regime change war and the new regime was hoped to be one that would be friendlier to the United States and not support terrorism. If your going to waste your time invading a hostile power, typically you want to try and make them not hostile to you again was probably their prevailing wisdom.
I haven't read the book that the author (named Mr. Butt hurr hurr) cites Douglas Feith but I'm assuming that the supposedly damning quote actually relates to what Paul Wolfowitz said in 2003 which was "The truth for reasons of the US Bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone agreed on which was the Weapons of Mass Destruction."
Now take that quote alongside I'm assuming an out of context quote from Douglas Feith that this author purports to be a slam dunk. "The rationale for the war didn't hinge on the details of this intelligence even though the details of the intelligence at times became elements of the public presentation."
In Douglas Feith's actual book, he states they had a multipronged approach to justifying the Iraq War. Liberation of Iraq. Ending Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction. The one thing the government 'bureaucracy' agreed upon according to Wolfowitz was the 'Weapons of Mass Destruction issue.' The WMD's that everyone apparently agreed he apparently had at the time? What's the context? That the rationale of the war didn't
hinge on WMD Intelligence? Does that mean the WMD's Intelligence was falsified and an intentional international lie or that the WMD Intelligence was only one of several justifications for the War? Does that "Intelligence" even refer to WMD's? Maybe I can find out.
So... I rented
that book on the library... and the book the author cities is literally just the quotation that is used in the article.
Apparently that book cites
another book where this 'confession' was made.
Wow... so all I need to do is read the article, read one book... then read another book... and hopefully I'll get an in context answer on one line of this dudes argument on how the war was marketed? Or will I have to read another f'ing book while all of the libraries are closed? And this one line will prove every other source I spent a
small amount of time looking up was clearly all BS and Bush lied about the WMD's?
Or if I actually look up sixteen more citations like I did originally will everything I state be dismissed as
"Politicians Lie/Intelligence Community Lies/Everything you cite is a lie. Did you know this forum is right wing?"
No thanks.
In regards the Cheney article, at best it seems that some parts of the intelligence was presented to the public to 'sell' the war but it doesn't reach the bar for me of lying about WMD's since most folks seemed to assume he had WMD's and those in opposition to the War with Iraq simply considered him 'contained' or not a threat to the United States or a distraction from Afghanistan. Hence the argument for the Iraq War was mainly focused on WMD's but also connected to liberation of Iraq and ending it's regimes support for terrorism. Propping up poorly vetted intelligence about something your certain they're doing I suppose could be a lie to many people but it doesn't wash as being the worst lie from politicians to me or even pass muster of being 'Bush Lied' about WMD's in some willful or intentional manner. In this case at worst it's a YMMV situation.
Well there are two mind of that... the first is the
Punitive Expedition.
And the other is that ISIS swarmed over Northern Iraq about two years after Obama pulled everybody out so he could boost his re-election campaign. I dunno about cost and whatnot but I'm assuming its cheaper to stay in place if only a little if you need to knock over things again, then scramble about two years after a complete withdrawal.
