At the time I thought it was insane that people would still support Bush after going into Iraq. It was pretty obvious to me, and should have been to anyone paying attention, that invading Iraq was nothing more than a pet project for Bush/Cheney. The reasoning for invading them was completely disingenuous. I thought it couldn't get much worse than Bush. I couldn't have been more wrong.
having been there 03-04 I can say I didn't meet a single iraqi that was not happy we came in and removed saddam. The dude was unstable, physically harmful to his own people and would flip his decisions day to day on international policy.
He was just itching to go off again unless he was kept contained, and even then he just started locking the doors and not letting the UN in anymore, because he kept starting fights with his neighbors and escalating the warfare we were having to do checks. Whether it would be as bad as he had been capable before, probably not. But everyone was happy he was gone, foreign and domestic. Yeah "the lie" to go in was icing on the cake, the US wasn't the only one that was just a nudge away from stepping in. Iraq at the time had similarities to N korea without the Chinese protection.
What I was told the most was to stay out of their problems. Fix the roads we fucked up, get some schools and infrastructure running while we scoured the countryside, and even I feel we should have been on our way. Trying to make it a beacon of democracy was the bad play. Honestly, I feel if we had captured/killed BL much quicker in the war we wouldn't have had much leverage to stay, but probably would have found a reason.
How did any of the hundreds of thousands that died feel about our presence? Was Saddam a piece of shit? Yes. Was that our job to take care of? Are there plenty of other piece of shit dictators out there? Yes. Why didn't we oust them as well?
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u/Zealousideal_Fuel_23 May 26 '23
2004 election was held during the 4 months that the Iraq War appeared to be going well.