Andrew Flibbert Quotes
The initial [Iraq] war was won in about 6 weeks, but the peace was lost soon thereafter.
Andrew Flibbert, Political Scientist, “The Consequences of Forced State Failure in Iraq”, Political Science Quarterly, Spring 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In this remarkable quotation, the king whose own invasion by Iraq was only stopped by American troops in the Gulf War, tells the Arab world that the American occupation which was endorsed by the Iraqi government was illegal. Many others in the world and even many in the U. S. agreed about the illegality, but the King claims to be one of the major allies and supporters of the United States. What he says for Arab and Islamic consumption is different from what he tells American and other Western diplomats. See {620141} for another example.
The Vice President was one of the architects of and advocates for the Iraq War. To garner public support he (and the others supporting the war) claimed that Iraq had developed weapons of mass destruction and made a serious of predictions about the war. He was wrong on all counts. There were no WMDs, none were even being developed, and we needed hundreds of thousands of troops for a decade as we were not greeted as liberators but the vast majority of our casualties and deaths in Iraq came after the invasion was successful and the population showed very hostile to U. S. occupation and our governing policies.
The British had sent troops to Iraq expecting to be greeted by a grateful population who would then obtain relief from the warring factions which had destabilized the area. However, in a historical precursor to the George W. Bush invasion of Iraq, the British troops became the targets for all sides in the complex power struggle of the area. Hence Churchill’s description as an “ungrateful volcano”. At the time, the oil of Iraq had not been discovered and England was the world’s largest superpower.
At first reading, this quotation appears to have been made in 2013 with respect to the American-led Coalition in the Afghan War in 2013. But this was 133 years earlier. Little had changed.
