Quote:
Originally Posted by BOfH
Maybe not GW himself, however, there were those in his administration that planned around that idea, i.e. Wolfowitz. Bear in mind, that up until 9/11, a sizable chunk of intelligence and foreign policy officials were still in Cold War containment mode, especially after more recent actions in LATAM and Afghanistan. My understanding is that the invasion of Iraq had been in the works for some time, even before 9/11...
|
I think you are conflating the various iterations of "containment" as practiced during the Cold War with the policy of "containing" Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
I also believe that your understanding of American grand strategy after the collapse of the Soviet Union is either deeply flawed or badly conveyed in this thread. If a "sizable chuck of intelligence and foreign policy officials were still in Cold War containment mode," then why did the United States pursue a number of policy objectives--including the expansion of NATO--that would have been untenable ten years earlier?
I also think you're overlooking the debate over the efficacy "containing" Iraq during the Clinton presidency. This debate reached a high point in 1998 when a number of interested parties sent an
open letter to President Clinton from a number of interested parties, Congress passed the
Iraq Liberation Act (a breakdown of the House vote is available
here), and
President Clinton laid out how his administration would support that law.
Penultimately, unless you wrote your previous post under severe time constraints that prevented you from developing your argument (and providing sources), I think your understanding of the pre 9/11 planning for an invasion of Iraq might benefit from significant refinement.
But most of all, I think you need to develop a better understanding of the concept of "sphere of influence" and how your ill-considered usage of that term does not square with the stated intentions or actions of the Bush administration, nor with the planning and execution of military operations, nor with the subsequent reconstruction of Iraq.