Lessee, the USA invaded Iraq to save its poor citizens from the brutal oppression of its evil tyrant and his evil henchmen, right? Those really bad guys who tortured and murdered their helpless prisoners, right? But deposing the murderous madman put an end to all that, right? (Shut up about Abu Ghraib, that was just a few bad apples, you Saddam-lover!) And we’re cruising right along in the noble crusade – um, make that “noble endeavor” or something – to turn over the reins of power to the shining new democracy, a beacon for the entire region of moderation and peacefulness lighting the way from the darkness of terrorism to the light of harmony and justice and…
So we’ve pissed away over 2,000 American lives, God only knows how many Coalition and Iraqi lives, poured mega-billions of dollars into this fucking morass of quicksand, and for what? So more and more people can be killed and horrifically wounded? So the government we so proudly put in place can stay Saddam’s course?
How much more fucking horrible must it get before the people who got us into this disaster stop trying to sell it to us as a noble cause that’s still worth killing for?
I understand it’s cathartic to bemoan a dreadful situation, and I don’t begrudge you that… but what do you suggest?
I’ve read articles over the years that to totally suppress and nullify a hostile territory which continues to fight asymmetrical warfare requires a ratio of 1:15 soldiers per civilians. That’s why Germany poured 300,000 soldiers into Norway during WWII to ensure she had a continued safe supply of iron ore from Sweden via Norway’s ports. That was a lot of manpower.
Is that the solution in Iraq? Let’s see, 20 million people… that’s essentially an occupying force of over 1 million soldiers necessary to subdue the insurgency and even then, modern technology is still going to give the guerillas a distinct lethal edge.
So what’s your solution? Play nice? While the insurgents continue to kill schoolchildren every day with car bombs which accidentally hit school busses? Leave entirely? Almost certain civil war…
There are no instant fixes here. The last thing Saddam Hussein had on his mind was actually improving the net GDP per capita of his people. Hanging on to power was his only end game. My perception is that Iraq’s a shithole with top to bottom corruption in every facet of law making and law control. It’s a place with shit education, and hardly any concept of property rights or commitment to upholding the rule of law.
It didn’t use to be that way of course. In 1978 Iraq was, in relative terms, a very wealthy and middle class place. Gulf War One was 1980-1988. Gulf War II and Gulf War III basically turned the place into civilised black hole. It’ll take a generation for it to sort itself out. All 3 of those three events were unnecessary in the context of the Iraqi people having better lives. But it’s happened.
It’s sad, yes… but unless someone can come up with a better solution, it is what it is. I’d rather have the USA and Great Britain in Iraq than Russia or China thank you. For all their faults and corporate nepotism, I’d still trust Britain and the US to do a better job containing the torture problems than anyone else. If they pull out now, Iraq is simply going to become Iran Mark II with Kurdistan to the north, and a Sunni civil war for 10 years in the centre.
You have to remember that Allawi is a politician running for election in a few weeks and is looking to gain some Sunni votes. What better way for him to do this than to make some statements like this?
Let’s see what the evidence is in the long run, and not get too carried away by one politician’s rants.
I say we draft every congressperson who voted for the war. Then we institute a tax to just pay for the cost of the war so that we don’t pass the cost on to our children; the tax can be levied on any company that contributed to the Bush campaign in 2004 or that has received contracts in Iraq. Then maybe we throw the entire Bush administration in jail.
Actually, no need to be so brutally cruel to just the Jesus-loving warmongers. Just raise taxes to compensate for the war. Let’s go with a conservative estimate of $75B per year.
$75B divided by 150M American taxpayers (it’s less than that I know, I’m sure the IRS could give us some good numbers) gives us $500 a year.
It is, after all, the fiscally responsible thing to do.
Why can’t people get with the program? Communists are so 1950s. These days, it’s the evil liberals who want to raise taxes and sabotage the War against Terror.
You’ve kinda contradicted yourself there. As you’ve pointed out, Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the 70s, before most resources got diverted into wars, was a fairly wealthy place. It had a reasonable education and health system, a progressive position (for the region) on women’s rights, that kinda thing. I’m not saying this in support of the guy - the fact that he was oppressing his people and slaughtering many of them dramatically counterbalances any actual benefits. But he wasn’t merely focussed on hanging on to power, not for his entire reign.
Asknott, that Rolling Stone article doesn’t look particularly solid to me. It needs quite a few cites. There are also quite a few awkwardly-phrased references to the ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) that betray his lack of familiarity with it. For example, he refers to it as “Australian Broadcasting Corp.”, and “ABC”, rather than Corporation and the ABC, the actual usage. He refers to it as a massive media concern, when in fact it’s smaller, in each market, than most of the commercial radio and TV operators. It’s like referring to the “massive” PBS in the US. For some reason, these mistakes really grated on me.
I should have been clearer. I should have stated that while it’s true that Iraq was originally a relatively secular and wealthy place back in 1978, by March 2003 and after 2 debillitating wars, Saddam Hussein’s only end game was staying in power. Clearly, his goals by that stage had very little to do with repairing the damage that 23 years of acrimonious war mongering had managed to inflict upon his fellow citizens. Indeed, if he truly cared about the welfare and average per capita GDP of Iraq, he could have easily cut a deal with the United Nations to stand down from power, along with his cabinet, and then invited an unbiased UN body to enter and repair Iraq’s infrastructure without any warfare whatsoever. It’s a deal he could have easily organised - he could have invited all the WMD inspectors he’d wanted, and he could have got billions in IMF funds offset against future oil revenues. He chose not to do that however. He chose not to put the welfare of his citizens first. He chose to say “FUCK YOU WORLD” and hang on to power because THAT was the fun, not being a world class statesman who had his people’s welfare at heart.
Sure, President Bush did a fucking awful job justifying the reasons for going into Iraq. Absolutely worst PR job in history. He deserves to be lampooned from pillar to post for it. In hindsight, I would have much preferred that President Bush had simply called it exactly as I wrote above… namely, “We’re going into Iraq because there’s a guy there who’d rather let his country go to hell in a basket than do the right thing by his people. And that’s bad for the entire Middle East. Don’t like it? Fucking stop us…”
Just as a bit of interest, I’m almost certain that a cite exists here on the SDMB which stated that Iraq’s original 1978 GDP per capita was $17,500USD adjusted into 2003 figures if memory serves me correctly, and that by March 2003 it had dropped to just $1,500 per capita.
Is it awful what’s going on over there? Absolutely. Horrible, horrible stuff. But it’s wrong to assert that President Bush has created this problem. His choices have added to the symptoms, but the problem of Iraq goes back 23 years or more. It had become a case of lots of pain now, or lots of pain for lots of years. The problem was that Saddam Hussein ABSOLUTELY did not have the interests of Iraq at heart. Staying in power had become his sole reason for existence. As the figures above show, it was a country which hadn’t gone forward in over a quarter of a century. Just a deplorable situation all round in my opinion.
And I agree, the torture shit has to stop - right now.
You know… as sure as I am of my arguements, sometimes I have to concede that other people make points which are hard to disagree with. It’s just plain sad anyway you look at it. You had a country which is the cradle of civilisation, which was relatively wealthy and secular and middle class and pretty OK with women’s rights and all that sorta stuff and then BAM… 25 years later the whole place is fucked. Education systems… health care infrastrucutre… commitment to the rule of law… property rights… all of it down the gurgler. It’s JUST. PLAIN. SAD.
Would civil war have taken place if Saddam had just kinda died of natural causes? Perhaps not. Perhaps the brutality of the secret police might have kept that in check. Would the poverty and high infant mortality rate continued however? Almost certainly, and I doubt that Saddam’s successor would have been anything other than “meet the new boss, same as the old boss…”
You can’t crush a country’s collective wealth the way Saddam did without massive civil unrest manifesting itself in some form or another.
