Has the GOP Learned Anything from the Iraq Debacle?
“GOP Agrees Bush Was Wrong to Invade Iraq, Now What?”—that’s how the US News headline put it last week. A good question, because it’s not at all clear what that grudging concession signifies. It’s nice that 12 years after George W. Bush lumbered into the biggest foreign policy disaster in a generation, the leading Republican contenders are willing to concede, under enhanced interrogation, that maybe it wasn’t the right call. It would be nicer still if we could say they’d learned something from that disaster.
Alas, the candidates’ peevish and evasive answers to the Iraq Question didn’t provide any evi...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 4, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Gene Healy Source Type: blogs
Iraq Is Bankrolling ISIL
Iraq continues to fund ISIL by continuing salaries to the many Iraqi government employees who live in ISIL-controlled territory. That fact is a reminder of how poorly the country has been governed. (Source: The RAND Blog)
Source: The RAND Blog - May 26, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: RAND Corporation Source Type: blogs
New Coke and the Iraq War
David Boaz
Donald Keough, who was president of Coca-Cola, has died at age 88. All the obituaries lead with his role in the New Coke debacle. On April 23, 1985, Coca-Cola replaced its amazingly successful product with a new formula, called New Coke. Some people liked the new flavor, but many did not. On July 11 the company reversed its decision and reintroduced the original formula, called for a time Coca-Cola Classic. Wikipedia reports, “ABC News’ Peter Jennings interrupted General Hospital to share the news with viewers.”
The experience was generally regarded as one of the biggest stumbles by a major corporation in...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 26, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
Salvaging Iraq
The Iranian government, particularly the Revolutionary Guards, is playing a huge role in helping the Iraqi security forces fight the Islamic State. Iraq and Iran share a 910-mile border that is mostly porous. Iraq's territorial integrity is critical for Iran too. (Source: The RAND Blog)
Source: The RAND Blog - January 26, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: RAND Corporation Source Type: blogs
Special to Going Global Blog: The 'Why' of Ultrasound
By Christine Butts, MD
I typically write my columns about the “how” of ultrasound, but it's also important to think about the “why.” Ultrasound to me is a tool that can be shared across cultures and barriers to broaden education and to improve patient care.
So when a colleague approached me about teaching ultrasound in Kurdistan, Iraq, I was intrigued. Nervous but intrigued. I have been teaching ultrasound to residents, students, and other faculty here in the States for almost seven years, but have always harbored a desire to teach internationally.
I spent two months as a medical student working in a...
Source: Going Global - January 9, 2015 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
Reading Iraqi Newspaper
The first pages of all Iraqi newspapers have to be ugly enough to be taken seriously, or to raise itself to the proclaimed level of ugliness needed those days. As an Iraqi I cannot help but to avoid reading them. Although I will put for you some pictures from yesterday’s first pages of Al-Mada Newspaper, without translation. As you approach the end of the journal the pages get more interesting, a little. Here an Iraqi poet writes about what is happening in the USA lately in that young black man being killed and all what followed. Still I don’t find what Yacine Taha Hafudh had written as interesting to me. &nb...
Source: psychiatry for all - December 8, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Washington Should Back out Of Iraq’s New Civil War
Doug Bandow
George W. Bush’s foolish invasion of Iraq sowed the wind. Now Iraq, its neighbors, and America are reaping the whirlwind. Some Iraqi officials are calling for the return of U.S. combat troops. Washington should say no.
American conservatives traditionally rejected domestic social engineering. But the neoconservative takeover of the Republican Party pushed the GOP into social engineering on a global scale.
Alas, it didn’t work out that way in Iraq. At the cost of several thousand dead the U.S. opened a geopolitical Pandora’s Box, unleashing a sectarian-guerrilla conflic...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 16, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Doug Bandow Source Type: blogs
Maliki Turns the Page in Iraq
Christopher A. Preble
It is good news that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has decided to step down as Iraq’s prime minister. This means that, for the first time in Iraq’s modern history, there is the prospect of a peaceful transition of power, based on democratic principles and without the heavy hand of the U.S. military seeming to tip the scales to one party or group.
But don’t pop the champagne just yet. As the New York Times notes today, the new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi—like Maliki, a Shiite and member of the Dawa Party—will likely face many of the same challenges that Maliki did. Abadi will need to find a ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 15, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Christopher A. Preble Source Type: blogs
President Obama Makes U.S. Participation Inevitable in Renewed Iraq War
Doug Bandow
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called for a Declaration of War against Germany. His unreasonable policies regarding submarine warfare had made America’s entry well-nigh inevitable.
When President Barack Obama first spoke to the nation about Iraq, he sounded reluctant to be the fourth straight president to intervene militarily. However, the conditions he set on Washington’s participation guarantee a much broader and longer campaign.
President Wilson implemented a policy which ensured that war would result if Germany used the only maritime weapon it possessed capable of contesting London’...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 13, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Doug Bandow Source Type: blogs
Murky Goals in Iraq
Benjamin H. Friedman
The goals that animate the renewed U.S. bombing campaign in Iraq are a muddle. Any rationale for bombing Sunni militants there today suggests prolonged campaign against them. Any effort we make against Sunni insurgents in Iraq contradicts our pro-insurgency policy in Syria. And while President Obama claims fidelity to the hope of making Iraq a stable multi-ethnic state, by defending Iraq’s Shi’ite regime and Kurdish North against Sunnis, the bombing may hasten Iraq’s dissolution.
The president’s stated goals are clear enough. Last night, he said that the airstrikes have two aims. First, they w...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 8, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Benjamin H. Friedman Source Type: blogs
More Questions than Answers on Iraq
Christopher A. Preble
The U.S. bombing campaign being waged against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) raises more questions than it answers. Ben Friedman noted the muddle of U.S. policy here. Among the most vexing questions for me:
- What is the actual end game? Can it be achieved by the means being employed?
The narrow, short-term mission that President Obama laid before the American people on Thursday evening is almost entirely humanitarian: this is about saving the lives of desperate people, including women and children stranded without food and water. But unlike relief operations after hurricanes or earthquak...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 8, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Christopher A. Preble Source Type: blogs
Iraq: No Military Redo a Decade Later
Doug Bandow
Little more than a decade ago the U.S. invaded Iraq. The promised cakewalk turned out far different than expected. Today the government—and entire state—created by Washington are in crisis. Yet the same voices again are being raised calling for military intervention. With the promise that this time everything will turn out well.
Social engineers never seem to learn. It is hard enough to redesign and remake individuals, families, and communities in America. It is far harder to do so overseas.
As I point out in my latest Freeman column: “Nation-building requires su...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 29, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Doug Bandow Source Type: blogs
Kennan on Iraq, June 1944
Christopher A. Preble
Cato hosted a discussion of The Kennan Diaries today. Editor Frank Costigliola read the following entry, from June 1944, which George Kennan wrote during a three-day stop in Baghdad, on his way to Moscow. I can’t help but hear echoes of Colin Powell’s infamous pottery barn warning, and other cautionary notes that went unheeded in the weeks and months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And, as further evidence that we haven’t learned the right lessons from Iraq, there are still those wishing that we had never left Iraq, or that we should go back in. They might ponder these words fr...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 9, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Christopher A. Preble Source Type: blogs
