kimstu - I’m also not a fan of unilateral decisions. The war on Iraqi soil was clearly spearheaded by the United States but it included many nations. Most significantly GB. It’s also not a single issue war as is often described (not firing in your direction).
We have a real problem with terrorism that was already spinning out of control before 9/11. I’m not interested in blame games because they usually quagmire into political sound bites and that aside, I’m more interested in dialogue.
I thought we should have driven home to Baghdad the first time for the simple reason Saddam is ruthless and has demonstrated a thirst for power. He is on record as trying to develop nukes and has spent billions in the process. You’ve mentioned the tragedy of thousands of dead Iraqis in this war. The reason we didn’t go to Baghdad in G1 is because the last days of the war was a total blood bath.
The 10 year festering of fundamentalist dogma brought the same people back for a repeat attack against the WTC. And it was as if the event never happened. The UN basically wanted the United States to continue it’s presence in the Mid East to keep Saddam at bay. This is bad for 3 reasons: the US continues to take hits for occupying the area, Saddam could continue to pursue his weapons research, and Iraqi’s would continue to be oppressed. If the US leaves then the situation reverts back to Saddam and his desire for conquest. That destabilizes the region and the world’s energy supply is again threatened. Iraqi oil isn’t needed but the rest of the region’s is. And the time to deal with a crazy dictator with a nuke is BEFORE he builds it.
I’ve watched the situation since Jimmy Carter and I’m hear to say, in all honesty, that I am open to suggestions. I have gone over a lot of scenarios and most of them are ugly. Forcing Saddam out and nudging Iraq into a stable democracy solves many problems with (IMO) the least bloodshed. With a stable Islamic state that is predominated by Shiites it is logical to assume the internal struggles in Iran will foment into a similar democracy. The Shia youth of Iran have demonstrated a dislike for the oppressive religious climate. Having a successful neighbor that encompasses many of the Holy sites and leadership of your religion is a real enticement for change. I consider this an important aspect of the war. It is also the main reason religious factions are probably fighting so hard to prevent.
IMO, religious dogma is a far more deadly weapon than any hydrogen bomb and if it is not brought under control through democratic ideology, the crap is going to hit the fan.
I said I wasn’t going to play the blame game but if George-1 had finished the war this wouldn’t be happening now and 9/11 might not have happened at all. He also had a chance to back the Shia’s and the Kurds in a civil war but chose not too. The question George-1 faced was horrible. Should he cut down 200,000 more people or go for a stalemate and hope for the best. He chose stalemate.
Now THAT sir, is a sensational post. I’ll be back shortly to flesh out a few of those fantastic points you made there Magiver.
Suffice to say, thank God, after all these months of partisan US politics threads, It’s great to see a discussion regarding Iraq (and all of the peripheral issues) which might actually be rewarding.
Hmm. Before the war, Iraq was one of the most secular countries in the region. There is a large chance that it might become an Islamic fundamentalist country now. This helps how?
The reason we didn’t go to Baghdad in GW 1 was that Baghdad was not an objective. Bush the elder and Powell had things extremely well planned. It might be true that not invading Iraq was one of the ways we built a real alliance for GW1, I don’t know. The problems they foresaw are now obvious. Bush the elder was quite in touch with reality, unlike his son.
And one correction about the UN. The UN has no troops - they always come from member nations, and are in member nation uniforms, with UN isgnia and perhaps hats. I got to see the UN presence in the Congo up close and personal. There are a few UN security guards, but that is the sum of the armed might of the organization.
Yeah, right. How’s the weather in fantasy land? Do you see Cheney there often?
Are you really so completely, totally unaware of the events of the past year or so? That everything you’re saying has been pretty thoroughly debunked, and that you and Cheney are the only ones despereately clinging to this clueless nonsense?
Certainly, you sounded authoritative about that, but I’m not sure your reasoning is totally correct. I’ve seen interviews with Tariq Aziz where he stated quite openly that Saddam Hussein was absolutely terrified of the 1991 Coalition driving all the way to Baghdad. Saddam had precious few assets left by the end of Gulf War '91 - and he’d also set Kuwait alight and tried to drag Isreal into the shitfight - so he knew he was gonna get his teeth punched in. And yet, the drive stopped at the border. I suspect we’ll never know the true reasons, and personally I don’t want to speculate as to why the drive stopped where it did.
Now that I agree with. Obviously, the WMD issue has proven to be a dreadfully embarassing fallacy, but the fact remains that Iraq was a country in a time-warp stalemate. Saddam Hussein had come to love the role of being the Middle East’s “giant middle finger” to the USA, and it was bizarre in hindsight. His country was going further and further down the tubes but the adulation kept going further and further throught the roof. Remember all those incredible parades of Saddam worship etc. Ultimately, for mine, those displays had far more to do with saying “Fuck You USA” than they did with genuine love for Saddam himself. So Iraq was in a bind. It had 22 million people effectively trapped in a propaganda balloon. The Iraqi economy was going further down the tubes each year, and yet somehow Saddam managed to convince the Iraqi people that he was still “The Man” (indeed the only man) in all of the Middle East who could tell the USA to go and get fucked. How do you fix a situation like that? Seriously? To be honest, I truly think that THAT is the real reason behind the 2003 invasion - and in many respects, it might have been a more honourable sales pitch with hindsight.
Good point. Blame games just alienate people, and I’ve seen too much of that recently here. Disregarding the Israeli/Palestinian shitfight which is effectively location based, my feelings on Fundamentalist Islamic Terrorism are this - man, that’s an idea we’re fighting - not just a recognisable army somewhere out there in a battlefield. When it comes to fighting a philosophical position, ultimately, the only way you can beat it is to pull the rug out from underneath it’s powerbase. In my opinion, Islamic Terrorism is spreading primarily in places where you have lots of poor governance, and poverty, and corruption. Those are the fertile soils where you find countless “angry young men” to do your bidding. The thing is, we here in the West like our lifestyle, and on balance, we are a more peaceful people I think. But it’s also true that our quality of life in the Western World has also been built in many instances by exploiting those who couldn’t defend themselves, or their natural resources. And that isn’t a good thing. The Western World basically has to pay to bring the Third World up to speed, and it’s going to take at least one generation to achieve that goal. Lots of Universities, and free schooling etc. All over the world. THAT is how you fight an idea.
Well I’ve often said the US is damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. All things being equal, better that you be damned for at least trying to do the noble thing (if possible). Personally, Pakistan is the greater scare for mine. It’s a nuclear power with as much political stability as a bowling ball balancing on a fence.
I’ve watched the situation since Jimmy Carter too. And it’s been interesting to say the least. Apparently a few years back, according to mp3.com, Iran was the 4th highest downloader of mp3’s in the world! I always loved that stat. Over 60% of the population is under 25. And they’re very well educated. In effect, Iran is reinventing itseld from the inside out. But we have to help Iraq do the same thing. Illiteracy rates in Iraq have soared these past 10 years I’m told. Despite the Bosnia type cultural clash overtones, the real goal is to improve education standards across the country for mine. And as we’ve seen in Iran, that took 20 years minimum - in a stable environment.
See above…
We all have 20/20 vision with hindsight. The task before us now is what it is. The Western World effectively has to give the Third World shitloads of money - without any strings attached. Essentially, it’s in our interests. I’m talking about building all the civil institutions and economic infrastructure etc for the Third World to be strong players on the world stage.
Was it GB-1’s decision or was it the UN’s decision?
IMHO, had GB-1 pushed on toward Baghdad the UN would have grumbled but ultimately followed along. This in itself would have saved the lives of thousands of Iraq’s citizens which were then mowed down by Saddam. But as you say, hindsight is always 20-20.
The liberal dream is for US soldiers to get into a position wherein liberals can denounce them as evil, no matter what they do. If US soldiers go out and impose civil order, then liberals can denounce them as “oppressors”. If US soldiers see to their own protection and make civil order secondary, then liberals can denounce them as not doing their proper duty. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but so long as liberals get to damn US soldiers, they’ll be happy.
Are you talking about the demonstrations in Iraq before the war? If so, are you of the opinion that they actually represented what people there believed?
Those ‘demonstrations’ were phony. Saddam’s agents would go to a crowd and just start picking people out. “We need a display of love for Saddam. you, you, you, you…” And of course the people would go, “Oh yes! I love Saddam! Death to America!” Because everyone knows what happens if you say, “Look, I’d love to demonstrate today, but I’ve got my wash on the line, and my favorite show is on and…”.
I too would love a solid, honest discussion of the war on terror. However, I do not think it is possible on this board. Any attempt to speak seriously of this just results in half a dozen boorish posters coming out of the woodwork to hurl insults.
Oh I totally agree Sam. But you know something, I remember visiting Communist Yugoslavia in 1980 as it was back then under the last days of the Tito regime. I recall having some “polite but forceful” conversations with some locals about the differences between the Communist system, and the Western World. The people I spoke to were highly intelligent and respectful. And yet, even to me as a young 18 year old, it was pretty obvious that the people who I was speaking with had spent the last 20 years or more in a propaganda bubble. In short, EVERYTHING American was bad. Purely on principle.
But if you got 'em away from the “America represents the Western World” angle, then they started getting on shaky ground, because Europe and Australia and Canada were part of the rest of the world too, and it was harder for 'em to paint those countries too as being part of Satan’s armpit.
My point here is the real danger for mine is the propaganda bubble. You can manipulate an entire population if your media control is absolute - and arguably it’s the one major flaw in Vladimir Putin’s resume at the moment… in so far as the Russian major media apparently is back to their old “State first” media tricks.
Anyway, I digress. Getting back to Saddam… what I reckon he USED to do was he essentially tapped into the latent desire for Arabs to have a sense of nationalist pride on the World Stage. You have to remember, it’s a part of the world which was largely borderless less than a 100 years ago. Nationalism really only works once yu have a defined piece of turf under your feet. And Saddam used to try and tap into that in his demented, despotic way. The problem was, the total lack of free press prevented any comment whatsoever on the fact that he was driving the country to ruins in every way.
Okay, looks like we’re in agreement. I was baffled after those attacks last week when crowds started demonstrating against the Jews, of all people. Propaganda takes a long, long time to overcome. But it can be overcome. Look at Iran - for a long time, the only thing they heard was that America was the Great Satan. But the young people in Iran are now among the most pro-US populations in the Middle East. They’ve used the internet and satellite communication to learn the truth, and that is resulting in a backlash against the rulers who lied to them for so long.
This process is happening in Iraq as well. Our best defense there is the rise of a truly free media.
Boo Boo Foo- Suffice to say, thank God, after all these months of partisan US politics threads, It’s great to see a discussion regarding Iraq (and all of the peripheral issues) which might actually be rewarding.
Thanks, I feel the same and appreciate the same. I no longer argue with people who don’t want to interact. What’s the point.
Voyager - The reason we didn’t go to Baghdad in GW 1 was that Baghdad was not an objective. Bush the elder and Powell had things extremely well planned. It might be true that not invading Iraq was one of the ways we built a real alliance for GW1, I don’t know. The problems they foresaw are now obvious. Bush the elder was quite in touch with reality, unlike his son.
Not according to interviews with the people involved. There were a number of Frontline programs on GW-1 and there is no question that removing Saddam was a goal of GB-1 (based on the interviews).
Boo Boo Foo - I’ve seen interviews with Tariq Aziz where he stated quite openly that Saddam Hussein was absolutely terrified of the 1991 Coalition driving all the way to Baghdad. Saddam had precious few assets left by the end of Gulf War '91 - and he’d also set Kuwait alight and tried to drag Isreal into the shitfight - so he knew he was gonna get his teeth punched in. And yet, the drive stopped at the border. I suspect we’ll never know the true reasons, and personally I don’t want to speculate as to why the drive stopped where it did.
I’ve seen a number of interviews that said the same thing. Saddam expected the worst and was probably confused by what happened. It led him to shrewdly bargain for the use of helicopters just after the first war and we fell for it. That’s what he used against the Shites in the South to stop the uprising.
That has nothing to do with why we didn’t drive to Baghdad. The end of the war was a complete turkey shoot. The retreating Iraqi Army was caught out in the open on the few main highways out of Kuwait. Imagine an LA freeway at 4:30 exposed to A-10’s , assault helicopters and Herc gun ships. A single A-10 is capable of firing 60 armor-piercing shells per second. Basically every vehicle lined up on the road was shredded and every soldier running was gunned down. The argument to end it revolved around the perceived world opinion of slaughtering a retreating army. I can’t really argue against stopping such an event.
Boo Boo Foo - I’ve watched the situation since Jimmy Carter too. And it’s been interesting to say the least. Apparently a few years back, according to mp3.com, Iran was the 4th highest downloader of mp3’s in the world! I always loved that stat. Over 60% of the population is under 25. And they’re very well educated. In effect, Iran is reinventing itseld from the inside out. But we have to help Iraq do the same thing. Illiteracy rates in Iraq have soared these past 10 years I’m told. Despite the Bosnia type cultural clash overtones, the real goal is to improve education standards across the country for mine. And as we’ve seen in Iran, that took 20 years minimum - in a stable environment.
That’s a very interesting statistic. Saddam had the 3rd largest standing Army Before GW-1 and yet he was outflanked by an advancing army of electronic cultural exchange. It was not thrust upon the people of Iraq, they sought it out. This falls back on what I said about Iranian youth and the exposure of freedom through the expression of thought. It is a significant development in the events that will shape the region.
Islamic conservatives rigged the recent Iranian election to screen out progressive candidates. Their Council of Guardians disqualified nominees for supposedly being indifferent to Islam or questioning the authority of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. One week after the election Iran wants to end nuclear inspections. No surprise to the world. I think the genie of freedom is out of the bottle and Khamenei is trying to consolidate power internally. It won’t work. The Berlin Wall was pulled down by it’s own people, not by warring nations. Time and human tide will prevail.
Unless Al-Sistani delays the proceedings again, the Iraqi Council will vote on an interim constitution on March 8th. It should be interesting to see what page it gets in the newspaper.
I can believe that they hoped that the army would rise up and depose Saddam after he got his ass whupped. I can believe that we stopped attacking retreating troops after the massacre. Would I don’t believe, and would like to see a cite for, is that there was any plan for our troops to go to Baghdad. I watched with great enjoyment the recap of the war by Stormin’ Norman at the time, and didn’t see anything that would oppose the view that the stated objectives, of removing Iraq from Kuwait, were not the real military objectives.
The U.S. did not go into Baghdad in the first Gulf War for the same reason it almost didn’t go this time - concern for ‘world opinion’ and fear of alienating the arabs.
The U.S. had to agree to some pretty stiff conditions to be allowed to use bases in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. There was no mandate to go on to Baghdad, because that was the specific agreement before the war.
Plus, there were those in the administration who felt that the U.S. was not prepared to govern the country.
SS:Propaganda takes a long, long time to overcome. But it can be overcome. Look at Iran - for a long time, the only thing they heard was that America was the Great Satan.
Unfortunately, we made that characterization easier for the Iranian Islamist hard-liners by first supporting the oppressive regime of the Shah, and then by supporting and supplying Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. Anti-US propaganda is much harder to eradicate when the US really is doing something that hurts the people being propagandized.
And although I agree with you that pro-democracy internal regime change takes a long time and is best served by the slow overcoming of propaganda, it’s a little surprising to hear this coming from a conservative. A year ago, pro-war conservatives were bitterly denouncing the “failure” of a mere decade’s worth of UN containment policies to produce a democratic alternative to the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and declaring that it was unthinkable to wait any longer before launching an invasion to rescue the Iraqi people.
On the other hand, a whole quarter-century of theocratic rule in Iran has also failed to produce a democratic alternative, but here conservatives are pointing proudly to a few reforms and some pro-US sentiment on the part of young Iranians and saying it’s an indication of the slow but inexorable triumph of democracy. (Meanwhile, of course, extrajudicial killings, torture, and other human rights abuses, as well as apparent Iranian support for anti-US Iraqi militants, continue unabated.)
God knows I’m not suggesting that we should repeat in Iran the mistakes we’ve made in Iraq, nor do I want to encourage hawks like Richard Perle in advocating it. I think that slow internal change encouraged by diplomacy and freedom of information is likely to be much more successful and stable in the long run than regime change achieved by military conquest and occupation. I’m just a little startled at how suddenly conservatives seem to have learned patience.
This process is happening in Iraq as well. Our best defense there is the rise of a truly free media.
I agree; unfortunately again, the Coalition Provisional Authority seems to have largely abandoned its commitment to fostering a free media in Iraq, resorting instead to a broad policy of censorship and restrictions on Iraqi journalism. (Admittedly, as the second article notes, there was a dilemma built into the situation from the start: “For the [Iraqi Media Network], that meant serving as a model for a free press while at the same time ensuring that anti-American and pro-Baathist sentiments did not flourish on air. And it’s between that rock and a hard place that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the American-orchestrated transitional body running postwar Iraq, ran into trouble.”) You can’t suppress mischievous inflammatory propaganda and encourage a “truly free media” simultaneously.
Just for clarification, Sam, you mean we almost didn’t go into Baghdad this time before we made it a mid-term election campaign issue, then presented our case to the United Nations, then attempted to submit it to a vote there, then created a pale shadow of a “coalition” in order to do it practically unitlaterally, correct?
Because everything I understand about this latest adventure indicates that Baghdad, and the unseating of Saddam Hussein’s power there, was the primary objective of the war, and it appears as if it was an objective only one week after the attacks of September 11, 2001, if not before–if you believe Paul O’Neill.
I’ll tell you why I didn’t have anything to say about that tragic event. It’s because I was expecting it. For months now it has been apparent that al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist terrorist groups have been busily at work fomenting civil war in Iraq. This happens to be something al-Qaeda is particularly experienced with, having done virtually the same thing in Afghanistan when the Soviet Union invaded. Create civil unrest, direct the ire toward the unwelcome occupiers, run them out of town, and then take over with a hard-line fundamentalist totalitarian regime.
I sincerely hope someone will convince me I’m wrong, but the graffiti on the wall tells me I’m not. And it’s not as if a vocal minority of observers right here haven’t been saying exactly that for, oh, about a year now.
SK: *For months now it has been apparent that al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist terrorist groups have been busily at work fomenting civil war in Iraq. This happens to be something al-Qaeda is particularly experienced with, having done virtually the same thing in Afghanistan when the Soviet Union invaded. Create civil unrest, direct the ire toward the unwelcome occupiers, run them out of town, and then take over with a hard-line fundamentalist totalitarian regime. *
This is the same sort of thing their Central Asian branch offices are engaged in, e.g. in cooperation with the Islamist Movement of Uzbekistan.
What is especially depressing to me is that we in the US gave these organizations their start, back when we were arming and training them as the brave mujahedeen and anti-Soviet “freedom fighters” of Afghanistan. (Note to self: remember not to support radical religious extremist guerrillas in the belief that “the enemy of my enemy must be my friend.”)
Just to clarify and correct slightly, al-Qaeda didn’t take over in Afghanistan, the Taliban did and the Taliban’s real rise to prominence ( which was more tangentially related to al-Qaeda’s, though the two were certainly allied and al-Qaeda benefited from their success ) occurred after the Soviet withdrawal and was more of a Pakistani ISI baby, than CIA ( who largely lost interest after the Soviet withdrawal ). The Taliban’s real popularity began when they became the alternative to the extremely disfunctional post-Soviet government and was cemented after a couple of key victories that caused mass defections to their side ( an almost exact parallel to the tide that threw them out - yesterday’s allies are not infrequently today’s enemies in Afghanistan ).
Of course the CIA was responsible for disproportionally funneling aid to the fundamentalist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose Hezb-i-Islami faction was not only the single biggest instigator of the breakdown of the post-Soviet coalition government, but also one of the bigger sources of defectors to the Taliban cause, indirectly feeding CIA arms and expertise into the Taliban ranks. Not to mention that now, in post-Taliban Afghanistan, Hezb-i-Islami and the Taliban appear to be allied and Hekmatyar is on an American “most wanted” list ( yesterday’s enemies et al. ). In that the criticism of the CIA is wholely justified.
Tamerlane: *Just to clarify and correct slightly, al-Qaeda didn’t take over in Afghanistan, the Taliban did and the Taliban’s real rise to prominence ( which was more tangentially related to al-Qaeda’s, though the two were certainly allied and al-Qaeda benefited from their success ) occurred after the Soviet withdrawal *
Thanks, I should have been more clear about that. No, the US didn’t directly arm and train members of the Taliban itself, much less al-Qaeda. What I was driving at was that the militant Islamic extremism that later gave rise to such groups got a big boost from our support for the anti-Soviet mujahedin in Afghanistan.