No -- seriously -- what was beneficial about the Iraq War?
To whom? I am sure it was beneficial to many people, both at the time and even now, in hindsight.
As a whole, that war was a mistake in my opinion. And I was against it at the time and I think Powell was hesitant-at-best and in an extremely difficult political and professional position.
But I do believe that many of the decision-makers at that time believed that getting rid of Saddam and liberating Iraq was going to result in a better life for generations of Iraqis to come. Others were concerned about oil. Others were financially vested in the military industrial complex.
Similarly, I think Truman believed that annihilating Japan was good for America and, arguably good for many subsequent generations of Japanese. I think FDR decided it was worthwhile to kill millions to win WW2. Just as many other powerful decision makers, politicians and military leaders have made decisions for centuries. But they may have had ulterior motives. Certainly people within their administrations did.
And you can cherry pick each of those decisions and countless others and, depending on your perspective and how it impacted your life (or your ancestors’ lives) you may well have a point of view that makes it seem obvious that the right call was made, or not made. And others can differ. But that use of hindsight and bias is not fair to the decision makers, in my opinion, and tends to yield a hypocritical viewpoint.
The benefit of hindsight is a really powerful weapon often wielded by people who’ve rarely made important, difficult decisions to condemn others after the fact.
I am sure many Iraqis condemn Powell. Many probably praised his actions at the time and many likely still do. Many today condemn most of our past leaders, all of whom had flaws and made some terrible decisions but who, as a whole, made decisions that resulted in Townie’s upbringing in Winston-Salem to differ markedly from the upbringing of Iraqis during the same time frame (and after). I guess that is a platitude now. But is it untrue?
Powell seems like a clear “better-than-most” type of leader and politician to me, and I think that if those types were more universally praised (despite their flaws and shortcoming and bad decisions) we’d have more of them interested in actually leading, which would make the world a better place as a whole. That’s not calling for whitewashing, but it is calling for an attempt to look at the situation objectively without the crutch of hindsight.
Carry on. I’ll try to not come back.