Here's How I Think George Bush Jr. Could've Handled Iraq Better

"Actually, we had permanent bases in Iraq. A couple major ones, in fact. One in Baghdad and another at Al Assad Air Base. By proposing this, you essentially contradict your original argument and subsequent arguments concerning money - Futhermore permanent bases and operations require funding to sustain, funding to rotate personnel, funding for security, and funding to maintain, replenish, and utilize weaponry. Naval bases are not on aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers come from Naval Bases. When the conflict in Syria arose, we sent a few Naval warships to the Persian Gulf, and this made Russia get a little antsy. As a result, they sent a Naval warship to keep an eye on us. Prolonged presence in a small sea will eventually be protested. It raises eyebrows and makes surrounding countries of Iraq question the limits of our operations and influence." I have to give you this one. "Not a justifiable argument. Terrorists have civilian families which are considered non-combatants according the rules for the Law of War. Furthermore, the majority of terrorists are cowards who routinely blend in with the local populace and utilize innocent civilians in order to further their agenda. Let's use your logic, though. If you're in a bank and it commences to being robbed by a group of notorious, well-known bank robbers, more than likely you become a hostage in that scenario. Pretty much a hostage situation. Now if action is taken to subdue the bank robbers, and in the process civilians are killed by law enforcement personnel, by your logic the responsibility of those lost lives is on the bank robbers..not the action taken by law enforcement personnel. Really? No, absolutely not. If we blame the killing of innocents with drone strikes on terrorists, simply by the mere fact that they were around terrorists, it's preposterous to think the local populace, let alone the world, will find that an acceptable or justifiable. On top of that, we defeat ourselves. One minute we're telling the people of Iraq we are there to liberate them, help them establish a new government, and new way of life. While the words are coming out of our mouth, we're killing innocent people in their country with drones. Actions speak louder than words, and the bad actions always drown out any good we accomplish." Let's just say a murderer on the loose is running from the police. Suddenly he grabs a hostage, a young woman, and uses her as a shield. The police fire a shot, hoping to get lucky and hit the murderer instead of the hostage. However, the young woman gets hit. The policemen in this scenario would be doing what they have to do to get to the murderer, who, if they let him live, might murder more people. This may sound cold, but if you refuse to kill a certain terrorist because you'd also be killing 4 other people, and later that terrorist does a car bombing that kills 10 people, you should've killed him along with the 4 other people. The 9/11 Perpetrators killed 3000 people. I don't remember how many of them there were, so I'll just say there were 10 of them. Let's say that we could've prevented the September 11 Terror Attacks by drone striking each one of those terrorists, but four extra people, or even ten extra people, would be killed for each one of those ten terrorists. You end up killing 100 civilians in the process, but the deaths of 3000 people is prevented in doing so. I'd say this is the right thing to do, or at least a necessary evil. As for what the world community thinks, the world community hates Israel with a passion and yet Israel's still alive. I don't give a heck whether a bunch of Middle Eastern dictators guilty of mass murder think that we're inhumane. "So it comes down to money, and not morality or purpose in your eyes. Your proposal in starting this debate was what we could have done in the Iraq War. With each point you make, I'm showing you the answers and solutions are not that simple. Everyone has opinions, but those opinions are limited to the scope of information provided. The majority of Americans only have knowledge of the Iraq War based off what they saw on the Unless you had boots on the ground (and even then, that's not necessarily enough) or were in a position to see the "whole pie", you're making suggestions based on limited knowledge. When it comes morality, regardless of how the country ends up, failure to act in the present is not necessarily based upon what the common or theorized outcome will be. However, if you think the overall outcome is failure, why even present a alternative course of action? Why is this even a discussion for debate? I have an idea of what's not moral, though--Proposing limitations of how we do / do not act on the behalf of others based on what's most economical." The truth is, if we did what I suggest, Iraq would've fallen to Al-Qaeda. We did it the "right way" that cost trillions of dollars, and guess what: Iraq's still going to fall to Al-Qaeda. Staying in Iraq after Hussein was defeated was a waste of money that accomplished little. The only thing that truly lasted was the removal of all WMDS from Iraq, Millions of lives are saved from potential biological and nuclear weapon attacks that would've been perpetrated by Saddam Hussein. "The European Coalition would probably not want the headache. I can't say much about China, other than I can see them having more influnce in removing American dollar as the universal standard for buying and selling oil. They have recently proposed the idea. If it happens, the value of the dollar drops substantially. You get another Middle Eastern Dictatorship, then so much for the propoganda you proposed we share with them. Lastly, Amercian lives are intentionally sacrificed with the over-all idea of willingly handing over a country to another dictatorship. No. No. And No." All right then, I admit that letting Iran handle Iraq would be a bad idea. But Russia could, and would, because Russia's notorious for intervening in the Middle East. And even with their poor human rights record, they pay more attention to the international community and human rights these days than they did 20 years ago. Thank you for this debate, Jackthemarine86, and may the better debater win.