What price should the US pay for invading Iraq?

Lets assume (and all the signs are pointing this way) that the US and its "allies" were wrong to invade Iraq. What price should the US pay for this mistake? Is it paying a greater price for continuing with a faulty experiment in US imperialism as per the Bush doctrine than quitting now?

I think the "price tag" model isn't the one used by the executive branch when prospecting a country for military intervention. I think the more apt line of thinking is what is the return on the USA's investment if Iraq is invaded? The investiment being

1) conflict resolution in middle east
2) mobil base for miltary intervention of future conflicts in neighboring countries.
3) economical stimluation by producing a demand heavy defense industry
4) In the case of those with stock options and funds tied up in companies like halliburton--personal profit
5) stronger negociating position in the UN
6) veto power to countries outside of the UN with political influence on the middle east like China, or Japan.

The idea of measuring war in terms of "cost" is from my observations incongruent with the exectutive branch I have seen in every war since ww2. They aren't looking at as cost but as "investement strategy" and the "cost" as an investement capital and the gain as return on investement.

In another thread Amy said that we should be in Dafur and not in Iraq. We are not in dafur because their is no financial gain from annexing or leveraging dafur where as there is gain and in leveraging or annexing Iraq. I think as voters and citizens one of the greatest dis-services we do when viewing executive and congressional positions on war is to look at it from our own perspective instead of from the perspective of the policy makers playing the game from capital hill.

Bush and his administration should be charged, and punished, for fabricating (through willfull ignorance) pre-war intelligence, lying to the American people, and so on.

But in terms of "what should be done to America", nothing.

robtex said:

I think the "price tag" model isn't the one used by the executive branch when prospecting a country for military intervention. I think the more apt line of thinking is what is the return on the USA's investment if Iraq is invaded? The investiment being

1) conflict resolution in middle east
2) mobil base for miltary intervention of future conflicts in neighboring countries.
3) economical stimluation by producing a demand heavy defense industry
4) In the case of those with stock options and funds tied up in companies like halliburton--personal profit
5) stronger negociating position in the UN
6) veto power to countries outside of the UN with political influence on the middle east like China, or Japan.

The idea of measuring war in terms of "cost" is from my observations incongruent with the exectutive branch I have seen in every war since ww2. They aren't looking at as cost but as "investement strategy" and the "cost" as an investement capital and the gain as return on investement.

In another thread Amy said that we should be in Dafur and not in Iraq. We are not in dafur because their is no financial gain from annexing or leveraging dafur where as there is gain and in leveraging or annexing Iraq. I think as voters and citizens one of the greatest dis-services we do when viewing executive and congressional positions on war is to look at it from our own perspective instead of from the perspective of the policy makers playing the game from capital hill.

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Nice stockmarket analogy. Pity the investors wrote the prospectus and ignored the independent analysts advice.

The people responsible should be the ones to pay, whatever the 'cost' may be. The US as a whole, should pay nothing.

I'm in agreement with Luke Wolf. Just like GB (the English) cannot be held responsible for the faults of their Government.
An important point to note - all my English friends were against going to Iraq, protests where held (mass public - that is just in my small town) in all town squares and cities.

For those of you who say the country or the people in general should not pay the price, the leaders should, you are correct. But the country and the people will pay the price inevitably. Only the people can do something about it. That is why the recent mid-term results were encouraging. I reckon US voters partly expressed a view that the Iraq war is damaging them.

Oz

All American should be made to wear Burkas and Turbans for a year and to live in tents in a very hot desert. Their leaders should be cannibalised too.

Godlike said:

All American should be made to wear Burkas and Turbans for a year and to live in tents in a very hot desert. Their leaders should be cannibalised too.

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And this would help how? (keeping in mind I am not that opposed to the cannibal remark )

klubbhead024 said:

And this would help how? (keeping in mind I am not that opposed to the cannibal remark )

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Oh I don't know. I'm not American, thank Dawkins (God)! I just felt like saying some silly stuff above.

We already are paying, in terms of American lives, money, loss of support from other countries, creating a more dangerous and unstable situation in a part of the world that already hates us...

I think it would be very reasonable to look into what those in charge have done, though.

The larger engines of war should be banned. A soldier's standard-issue firearm should be a paint-ball gun; heavy artillery: the fearsome Daisy BB gun....

Aggressive, bellicose, right wing individuals should be afforded regular access to The Enemy and be allowed unrestrained liberty to wail away at him to their hearts content.

Meanwhile, we 99% who just want to live our lives, love our families, enjoy good food; Nature, amusing movies, music, art,and peaceful co-existence should be able to sequester the paranoid war-mongers in isolated communities where they could afflict each other to their heart's content without bothering the general population....

Ozzie said:

Lets assume (and all the signs are pointing this way) that the US and its "allies" were wrong to invade Iraq. What price should the US pay for this mistake? Is it paying a greater price for continuing with a faulty experiment in US imperialism as per the Bush doctrine than quitting now?

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I do not think from the perspective of US, invading Iraq is a mistake. The mistake is the failure of having a proper plan to secure the situation after completing the invasion.

Invasion of Iraq is a must. Iraq is on the verge of surviving the sanction imposed by the US led UN during that time, and other UN members were in the process of ignoring the sanction, and ready to do business with Sadam, for the oil etc, notably the Chinese, the French, the German and the Russian. Feeling threatened by the new development, US (and UK) has no choice but to go and invade Iraq to prevent the Iraq from being out of US influence and cooperated with the European Union led by German and France, and Russia, and especially in the long term influence of China in the middle east. So there is no mistake in invading Iraq from the strategy point of view, from American interest point of view.

So what is the price of this invasion? If the plan went well, US would have the Sadam (previously an ally of US, and listened and followed US directive all the time, until later near to Kuwait war) removed, and installed a new regime for Iraq, which will be hopefully appeared to be a democratically elected government by the Iraqi people, but actually those elected leaders will be mostly 'controlled' by US, and continued to do oil trading with US in the same way like old Sadam's day, and will keep the French, the German, the Russian and the Chinese out of oil from Iraq. That will be the ideal situation. However, the plan did not go as anticipated. The US managed to direct a play of election and formation of Iraqi new government with new constitution etc. However, although this new government is a good boy, listening all the while to the US, they threw tandom once in a while. The Shiite, the Sunni and the Kurds all are trying to make full use of the situation to strengthen their position in the Iraqi politics. They refused to actively participate in the fight against the insurgents. Instead, they are each trying to make use of different fractions of the insurgents to fight and weaken the other sides, hence leading to what is near to a civil war situation. The US have no solution. She does not want to support another dictator like Hussein from the Sunni Camp, she does not trust the Kurds, and anyway, the Kurds will not be able to control the whole of Iraq, and she is very suspicious of the Shiite, being very friendly with the Iran. So US has been playing the card of divide and rule, and hopefully a government will be inplace to represent the three fractions and with the removal of the 'insurgents' from Iraq. That is easier said then done. That is the dilemma the US is facing in Iraq. If US can maintain the situation of minimum disruption, with a sacrifice of less than a thousand US soldiers each year, with the insurgents more or less contained and without flaring up, that is what the US claimed as to have won the Iraq war. However, this was not the case, and that is what the ISG report conclusion: that US is not winning the war, meaning the situation is getting not better, and is progressing towards the bad side.
If US cannot contained the situation anymore, she will then have to seek the cooperation of Syria and Iran, and quietly the support from the French, the German, the Russian and the Chinese by agreeing to share a bit of the Iraq oil with them. This is why it is so difficult to convince G Bush to do, because oil money is too intimately intertwined with Bush Oil interest.

Basically, the death of a thousand soldiers each year, is a price worth paying as far as American interest go. The financial gain from the ability to control the Iraqi oil and prevent other nations from sharing is of paramount importance to US imperial stand.

What price should the US pay for invading Iraq?

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The price the U.S. and other nations have already paid in the form of thousands of deaths is already far too great!

IT'S TIME TO STOP THE BLEEDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!