grammatically, i’m still not sure what this means.
would do one…what?
would do intervention?
would do AN intervention…?
who would?
Me either.
English is not my favorite language, but that utterance is grammatically and syntactically meaningless.
about a million or so Iraqi casualties in a country of what I think like 20ish million… Ya I’m sure they really appreciated us going in there, causing the death of 5% of their population, building a massive permanent military base there, writing their constitution, stealing oil through contract by force, forcing other business obligations on them, and the infrastructure still is about as reliable as nothing, Ya real paradise there now. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!! America, Heck YA!
The US’ military department is called the “Department of Defense”, not the “Department of Spend Our Time And Treasure Eradicating Dicks From The Planet”. Considering the total number of dicks on the planet today, spending trillions to give each one a dirtnap is eventually going to add up to some real money.
When the ramp-up to the invasion was happening, I justified my support because WE were responsible for the mad-dog Hussein. In my opinion at the time, it was our responsibility to put the cur down.
But, I had no idea how incredibly irresponsible our tactics would be.
I was wrong.
We should have stayed with sanctions and focused on Afghanistan.
Whatever can be said about the invasion, much of the killing afterward was part of a civil war of sunni’s against sjiites. Which Saddam had suppressed before.
It was 200,000 casualties (the million number comes from just one study against several others) and most of whom were caused by Iraqis themselves.
Those people died in the chaos that followed the invasion and the destruction of Iraq’s government and much of its infrastructure. You are quibbling over who pulled the trigger as if that made a difference. It doesn’t. The fact of the matter is that those people would not have died if there had been no invasion.
They certainly did.:[
Of course the invasion was a good thing. Saddam was a monster.
But I rather suspect you’re more interested in the decision to stay after Saddam’s execution. That was a mistake; we should have let the Iraqis sort it out themselves.
I doubt it: just an English speaker unable to parse what you’ve written.
Iraq was an unmitigated disaster. When the history books are written (short of some US conservative revisionist history writers) it will go down as a folly as great as Vietnam. US bodycount aside, squandering world support (“Nous sommes tous Américains” - Le Monde, 9/13/2001), further inflaming the region, creating a crucible for new extremists, destroying a country’s infrastructure, eliminating any moral authority the US had, diverting attention and resources from Afghanistan, triggering the London and Madrid bombings, hyper-polarising US politics, alienating historical allies, the indirect effect of motivating Iran to upscale its defenses, the vastly increased influence of Iran in Iraq - and so many more. Add allowing a nascent civil war to foment.
Even I learned as a kid in O Level history that if a fractured nation is kept under brutal repression, sudden removal of that oppressor will lead to internal strife - look at the Balkans. The transition has to be done slowly and sensitively to avoid civil war. All of these potentials were subjugated to the whims of a few individuals working to a fucked-up ideology - it’s all there in black and white, people, and has been since before the damn fool war commenced; I was persistently trying to get people to read the PNAC documentation on these boards, like a broken record. Again I repeat: read those documents. Look at the signatories. Look at the dates.
Coulda shoulda woulda? Who knows what would have happened without the invasion. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps revolution. Perhaps Bin Laden would have been captured earlier. Perhaps Perhaps the Arab Spring may have reached Iraq and been like Libya not Syria.
It’s very difficult to admit that there are “evil” people in one’s own regime; especially a democratic one. Rumsfeld needs to stand alongside Kissinger, and Blair needs to take his place on the rostrum too.
This post should be framed. A very cogent summary.
Nitpick: “folly [at least] as great as Vietnam” seems more accurate, unless malice is distinguished from folly.
Frankly I’m surprised anyone can ask OP’s question, let alone expect a Yes answer. (And have we forgotten that non-existent WMD’s were allegedly the only reason we went to war at all?)
Lets not forget, it also tells us all we need to know about the UN, the UNSC and international not-law-at-all - it’s not fair to include the ICC in this.
Just the biggest pile of bogus window-dressing-for-imperialism bullshit in, quite literally, the history of the word. The UN makes FIFA look clean.
And just for the record I’ll repeat the same point: There is NO HINDSIGHT - this is still happening now. Today. Unbelievable arrogance.
Looking out my window and thinking of Irak makes me feel strong relief that nobody found the motivation to throw massive amounts of money and lives away getting rid of Franco. To toss some money to internal groups, exiles, etc. yes; but nobody bombed us to get rid of the Evil Dictator.
While I know that doing unto others what you wish they’d do to you doesn’t always work, I don’t think it’s ever acceptable to do unto others what you’d never want done unto you. I certainly wouldn’t want to be bombed, and who cares whether they’re doing it “for my own good”.
funny, no one–not even the hard right–wants to discuss that anymore. the first and foremost reason even the staunchest republicans want to give for why the war should have happened was to 'save the people of iraq from saddam." which was a total and complete afterthought.
the whole WMD thing was against everyone’s judgment, no? even to the extent of making the war illegal…? back then it was about saddam’s tie to 9/11, too. humanitarian rationel wasn’t contrived until well after we became unable to procure any wmds…
even back when this was first gearing up, i took such affront to the concept of “we’re in this to save people because america cares!” really? we sure don’t care about any of the genocidal african nations, and we sure didn’t care about the kurds back when they really needed us. it’s just…aggravating.
caused by Iraqis themselves because we destroyed the governing infastructure of their nation and replaced it with fuckall.
when the looting started, Rumsfeld is quoted as telling commanders “not to get involved.” we dismantled their police and military and did nothing to police an anarchy we created.
so, yes. they killed each other–and we let them. how can you make a case “we cared about them” when we didn’t give enough of a flip to do anything to prevent this…? and don’t try to say it was “unforseeable.” officals were warned WELL before the ground invasion that we needed a massive upscaling of troops. Shinseki went before congress and spoke with experience from Bosnia et al and said “with the kind of ethnic tensions in this nation and the problems what will arrise, we need a ground force of several hundred thousdand.” Wolfowitz said no. Rummy said no. Rummy said ‘no our problem.’ both arrogantly dismissed the warning.
oh, but you know what we DID do immediately upon ousting the entire government of Iraq? we got some shell execs in there to take over the oil wells.
it was the first order of business.
we let them pillage the national museum, we let several banks be robbed in the oder of billions of dollars, we set idly by and watched a civil war unfold, and we self manifested an insurgency by de-ba’athicating the Iraqi military–a military who, ON CAMERA, came to the head of ORHA Col Hughes awaiting an overture, ready to help, ready to work, and against the advice of everyone, were sent away. fired. angry, armed, and unemployed.
as much as you can say iraqis killed each other, we allowed that vaccuum of power so they could do it. and we did nothing to stop. odd how we can go depose a dictator because “we don’t want him killing his people” yet let all his people kill each other…logic this out for me…?
Yup, he pretty much laid it all out.
Even at the run-up to invasion, a couple of us middle aged female clerical employees at my job in a field far from “defence” (as Little Curtis likes to spell it) thought the WMD argument was bullshit. Just more Shrub idiocy, with the goal of making money for his cronies/puppetmasters.
And people are still dying. I believe our OP is in The Netherlands. From last year:
Truth.
It’s also quite interesting to look back through the archive here and remind yourself of the gung-ho, WMD believers and general Bush believers that were so numerous on this board in the build up to the attempted acquisition of Iraq..
Not to mention all those wonderful jokes about cheese-eating surrender monkeys, surrender fries and how the French didn’t stand up to Hitler and here they are being cowardly again, etc, etc.
Oh, happy days.
While I’m a trifle embarrassed about my histrionics (though they were a little understandable. I promise you, I was absolutely beside myself with impotent anger at the time, as were many others all over the world), I think it might be instructional to have a look back at this thread I started when it was clear that the war had become inevitable. ETA: particularly enlightening, I hope, for those who were children or adolescents during the lead-up and the invasion.
Interesting to note that from the con side, it was generally accepted that Saddam indeed had some viable chemical weapons that may be used against invading troops.
Interesting also to note that from the pro side, it was felt that there would be “no bloody urban warfare”. The other thing that stands out from the pro camp is that the war was vaguely inevitable - that the US’s hands were tied in some fated manner due to Saddam’s continued bad behaviour and that it wasn’t really their fault that they had to invade. And of course there are others who insinuate an Iraq-9/11 link.
What a clusterfuck.
i was in my early 20s when the ramp-up was coming on. i remember getting into a big debate with a friend (who was at the time more liberal. he is still liberal as ever, i just faded from my more centrist youthful ideals. as louis ck says, ''i can no longer be optimistic. i know too much about life").
i argued that bush was our elected *american leader *who was making a what had to be a bona fide case for war based on what *HAD *to be honest intel.
i said something what still seems totally logical: that he must know something we do not. and that we should trust them. because we put them in that position because we had faith in them.
i was a card carrying republican, idealistic, with full faith in my government.
bush obliterated that, and by the time the second election came around i was rabidly political and debated every conservative i could. i would yell at my dad. i would debate online all night. i cannot tell you how many times people said “yeah, well–bush is keeping us safe, at least. i mean, there’s not been another attack on US soil since 9/11, just as he promised.”
using a line from the simpsons, i 'd rebut: “by that logic, you must think this rock repels tigers. i mean, look–there’s no tigers around.”
once we started descending an ever-increasing laundry list for ‘why this war was necessary,’ skipping reason after reason as they failed to pan out, manifesting new ones as need arose…it was impossible not to lose any last shred of faith.
like i said before, there’s clear ulterior motives we can only speculate on–not the least of which is abundantly clear: *massive *corporate greed.
i had hoped there was still some poorly communicated but sincere moral rationale, but after watching Iraq for Sale, it’s hard not to see the clear financial standpoint of the war.
we ordered national guard members to destroy any disabled vehicles and to buy new ones at the tax payer’s expense. this means flat tire? set it on fire. dead battery? burn it.
they had workers in iraq bulldozing into massive bonfires pallet loads of brand new computers and equipment that tax payers paid for to “rebuild” because “they were the wrong products.”
not to mention how we charged some several hundred bucks a load of laundry to have a corporate source wash troop clothes (in one case a private felt this was ludicrous and took to doing his own laundry to avoid the taxpayer’s waste, at which point he was reprimanted and ordered to use the laundry service).
and REALLY not to mention the full-blown over-charging to the tune of billions by these corporations.
and then there’s the soul-crushing human toll–the truck drivers who were looking to do their family right by going to Iraq seeking this “easy money,” getting hazard pay in an “essentially non-violent environment” to drive convoys for KBR (at the time Halliburton was a subsidiary, so connect those Cheney dots) only to go and die. not die in any glorified way, but to die because of gross negligence…sent on convoy runs without armored panels or flak jackets or military escort on roads during “black outs” when no US military would be dumb enough to go out due to the PROMISE of ambush.
it’s heartbreaking to hear the survivor’s harrowing tale of listening to their buddies die over the CB. to paraphrase, the line was something like, “these men didn’t give their lives in service of their country. these men had their lives stolen–taken away from them as they screamed and burned in agony.”
it made me bawl to hear that.
clusterfuck is just such an understatement. i would say this war is a highlighted and underlined emancipation of all the worst things wrong with america.