Do you think history will look back at the Iraq War as a FINANCIAL mistake by the United States?

Putting aside for a moment whether you think the war in Iraq was necessary or a good move, our economy hurting and our country has massive debt. How would our financial situation as a country be changed if we had not invaded Iraq? Is it possible that the debt from the Iraq War met with other circumstances (high energy costs, the mortgage crisis) to create the perfect storm for the deterioration of the United States standing as the financial power in the world?

From an economic perspective only, was invading Iraq an overly ambitious expenditure that will give countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China a chance to supplant the US (or at least seriously challenge) as an economic power? Asked by HankMoody 36 months ago Similar questions: history back Iraq War FINANCIAL mistake United States Politics & Law > War.

Similar questions: history back Iraq War FINANCIAL mistake United States.

Most of it was a financial mistake..... I agree with comment #1 and think that its easy to play Monday morning quarterback... I particularly like the point about potential nuclear attacks..... Looking back, it 'seems' that Iraq was not such a catastrophic threat but I remember prior to the war being concerned about a major attack ....and what most concerned me was a dirty bomb or something nuclear.... After 9/11, which occurred literally 2 miles from my 4th floor classroom in NYC, I was even more worried... I never thought planes would be used as weapons and my thinking after the attacks was that the terrorists would have to accomplish more devastation in future attacks...Biological chemical...or nuclear was what concerned a lot of New Yorkers who would be "sitting ducks" if such an attack were to ever happen... Seeing the towers burn and fall with my own eyes, I wondered what future attacks would look like.... and I still wonder.... Anyway, Bush's invasion did not have to become a long occupation.....once Sadaam was captured and we found no WMD's, we could have......and many will say should have left..... I think the long occupation was Bush's biggest mistake......he should have been smart enough to know that the American people would grow impatient.....creating a democracy takes time...more time than the American people have patience for...he should have known that the liberal media would dedicate air time every day to highlighting American casualties.....Every time the death toll hit another thousand mark, the media called it a "milestone" like it was something good.. He should have dedicated the resources and energy of the military to getting Bin Laden which at the very least would have helped him save face and would have justified his actions.... Not getting Bin Laden just gave liberals a ton of ammo to crucify Bush in the media every day....and point out the fact that the threat is still out there despite over 4000 casualties and billions and billions spent..... Getting Sadaam was huge but second place really.....he needed to get Bin Laden.... That is why it is so hard to defend Bush. The absence of an attack in the last 7 years to Republicans and most Independents is a great thing....but you cannot convince the left that a nonevent is an accomplishment... They will not give him credit for anything......and how can you expect them to? He didn't get Bin Laden.......that fact can't be sugar coated into something else.... Now, I agree with post #1 in that we are assuming we have the whole truth.....I don't think its impossible to imagine WMD's being hidden in Iran or Syria......to make the U.S.Look stupid...... But had we not occupied Iraq for all these years, the cost financially and in human lives would have been greatly reduced.......so to answer your question...along these lines....staying as long as we did.....becoming a "democracy builder" was very costly.... But once again, we must assume we have all the facts which I think we do not.... I actually believe that we never have all the facts..... There are probably countless other reasons we invaded Iraq that are rarely mentioned...... Strategically, there are infinite reasons to have over 150,000 troops in the heart of the middle east..... If another world war were to ever develop, we possess an edge that very few nations could handle.... And then there are the debates about oil that can be made...books have and will continue to be written addressing each of these angles....

1 Counterfactuals like this are always hard to answer, because it's impossible to know what not-invading would have cost. Suppose, for the moment, that Iraq really had turned out to have a nuclear, biological, or chemical device and managed to set it off in a major US city. I know that Bush badly overstated his case, but there were enough irregularities in the lead-up to the war (like the way Saddam jerked around Hans Blix's team) that I'm still not 100% convinced that those weapons didn't exist.In fact, if you want to get REALLY hypothetical: suppose that the Iraq war expenditures slowed down the economy during the bubble, which would have been even worse and more expensive had the economy been hotter.

I'm not saying I believe these things; I'm saying I don't know.

Counterfactuals like this are always hard to answer, because it's impossible to know what not-invading would have cost. Suppose, for the moment, that Iraq really had turned out to have a nuclear, biological, or chemical device and managed to set it off in a major US city. I know that Bush badly overstated his case, but there were enough irregularities in the lead-up to the war (like the way Saddam jerked around Hans Blix's team) that I'm still not 100% convinced that those weapons didn't exist.In fact, if you want to get REALLY hypothetical: suppose that the Iraq war expenditures slowed down the economy during the bubble, which would have been even worse and more expensive had the economy been hotter.

I'm not saying I believe these things; I'm saying I don't know.

2 As for the BRIC countries... I'm reminded a bit of Japan during the 80s. They were up-and-coming for real, but part of their scary growth was funded by unmaintainable hidden costs. They were an industrial bubble.

Brazil, China, and India all suffer from a common problem, that their industrial growth is founded on a low-paid population. And they can't do that forever. A tiny rise in wages will drastically erode their advantage, and they'll get stuck holding the bag for the environmental and social costs of forced raid growth.

That's what happened to the Soviet Union. It did turn them into an industrial power from an agricultural nation, but at huge cost. I simply don't believe the Russians will have much power."The Russians have a talent for misrule," I read somewhere once.

There is some innovation going on: Brazil's ethanol, India's high tech, China's manufacturing. The latter two have even turned in a real space program.It's more symbolic than actual innovation, and if all they're doing is copying stuff from the Russians, then it's truly a waste of money. The real problem, for me, isn't that they're gaining but that we're slipping.

Our next-to-last bubble was founded on a real innovation, the Internet. We had a land-rush and got the prime spaces: Google, eBay, Amazon. But our last bubble was built on nothing at all, trading houses to each other and booking it as profit.

No innovation, except new ways for the finance companies to profit from the shell game. We've got several perfect opportunities, but we needed to be planning for them for decades, training students to be excited about science and engineering. I'm terrified that a generation of "teach the controversy" has left us incalculably dumber and incapable of innovating any more.

As for the BRIC countries... I'm reminded a bit of Japan during the 80s. They were up-and-coming for real, but part of their scary growth was funded by unmaintainable hidden costs. They were an industrial bubble.

Brazil, China, and India all suffer from a common problem, that their industrial growth is founded on a low-paid population. And they can't do that forever. A tiny rise in wages will drastically erode their advantage, and they'll get stuck holding the bag for the environmental and social costs of forced raid growth.

That's what happened to the Soviet Union. It did turn them into an industrial power from an agricultural nation, but at huge cost. I simply don't believe the Russians will have much power."The Russians have a talent for misrule," I read somewhere once.

There is some innovation going on: Brazil's ethanol, India's high tech, China's manufacturing. The latter two have even turned in a real space program.It's more symbolic than actual innovation, and if all they're doing is copying stuff from the Russians, then it's truly a waste of money. The real problem, for me, isn't that they're gaining but that we're slipping.

Our next-to-last bubble was founded on a real innovation, the Internet. We had a land-rush and got the prime spaces: Google, eBay, Amazon. But our last bubble was built on nothing at all, trading houses to each other and booking it as profit.

No innovation, except new ways for the finance companies to profit from the shell game. We've got several perfect opportunities, but we needed to be planning for them for decades, training students to be excited about science and engineering. I'm terrified that a generation of "teach the controversy" has left us incalculably dumber and incapable of innovating any more.

3 I think it was a necessary evil. I believe, as many do, that the Iraq war was as much about oil as it was about shaking up the international network of terrorist supporting nations (although there were components of both). However, the oil component was not about the greedy good ol' boy oil profit motive that many believe, but rather reducing the ability of a union of those who control most of the oil production upon which the US is currently dependent from using it as a weapon against us.

Let's take a look at the history of the situation. Saddam Hussein made no secret of his designs on Kuwait. It is what the first gulf war was about.

Having control of Kuwait would have given Hussein, who was openly hostile to the US, 80% of the oil production capacity of the region plus control of a major shipping port along with the major influence among other regional oil producers that would come as a result of that position. If you think the recent fluctuation in oil prices was bad, can you imagine a world in which suddenly the US could not buy middle eastern oil at any price? Frankly, I believe that the US really had little choice and I, for one, am glad that the Bush administration took the action necessary in spite of the major damage it did to public opinion of Bush personally as well as his administration.

I only hope that the next administration is not naive enough to destroy the progress that has been made and makes the stimulation of our domestic energy production industry on order to achieve energy independence as quickly as possible a cornerstone of it's economic policy.

I think it was a necessary evil. I believe, as many do, that the Iraq war was as much about oil as it was about shaking up the international network of terrorist supporting nations (although there were components of both). However, the oil component was not about the greedy good ol' boy oil profit motive that many believe, but rather reducing the ability of a union of those who control most of the oil production upon which the US is currently dependent from using it as a weapon against us.

Let's take a look at the history of the situation. Saddam Hussein made no secret of his designs on Kuwait. It is what the first gulf war was about.

Having control of Kuwait would have given Hussein, who was openly hostile to the US, 80% of the oil production capacity of the region plus control of a major shipping port along with the major influence among other regional oil producers that would come as a result of that position. If you think the recent fluctuation in oil prices was bad, can you imagine a world in which suddenly the US could not buy middle eastern oil at any price? Frankly, I believe that the US really had little choice and I, for one, am glad that the Bush administration took the action necessary in spite of the major damage it did to public opinion of Bush personally as well as his administration.

I only hope that the next administration is not naive enough to destroy the progress that has been made and makes the stimulation of our domestic energy production industry on order to achieve energy independence as quickly as possible a cornerstone of it's economic policy.

4 Sorry, I forgot to articulate one obvious but very germane point, the connection of oil to our financial well being. It is my opinion that our current economic crisis can be directly attributed to the meteoric rise in oil and gas prices in late Q3 and early Q4 of 2008. I suspect that rise was totally artificial with the intent of influencing US public opinion around election time.

I believe the fact that the world economy popped like a party balloon was an untended consequence.

Sorry, I forgot to articulate one obvious but very germane point, the connection of oil to our financial well being. It is my opinion that our current economic crisis can be directly attributed to the meteoric rise in oil and gas prices in late Q3 and early Q4 of 2008. I suspect that rise was totally artificial with the intent of influencing US public opinion around election time.

I believe the fact that the world economy popped like a party balloon was an untended consequence.

" "What do you think about the war in Iraq?" "Do you think the United States has to be "t" again before many Americans admit that we are in a war with terrorists" "General war question. The United States has been at war with one nation or another almost 50% of the time...

Explain why the United states used the atomic bomb ito end the war in the pacific.

Do you think the United States has to be "t" again before many Americans admit that we are in a war with terrorists.

General war question. The United States has been at war with one nation or another almost 50% of the time...

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.