Now that the latest Islamic bogey men are running Blitzkrieg across Iraq, resulting in the almost certain re-involvement of the West in this region after its fruitless, protracted search for the infamous, O.J.'s “killers” -like “WMD’s”, isn’t it high time we re-assess the U.S. and co.'s hegemonic modus operandi and why it always seems to take such an ad hoc shape, seemingly lacking any foresight or planning?
It’s an accepted fact that powerful nations, cultures and conglomerates thereof will disseminate their particular ideologies and wares throughout the planet – the Romans did it, the Ottamans, British, U.S. …even China are making similar overtures now, both aggressively and through ‘softer’, economic means. It’s human nature. However, it’s one thing to spread ‘the good word’, but something else entirely to enter these places without any discernible flowchart as to how these regions will be ‘converted’ and left in a stable, changed state once the troops have returned home.
How much longer can ‘we’ continue to, what oftentimes essentially constitutes, invading these nations and doing so without following through and re-establishing and stabilising their societies to more reflect our own? Iraq specifically: What kind of “training” did the ‘democracy brothers’ give these guys – a three-day short course?! Their armies are literally running away and the country is being left to ultra extremists. The very premise his heehaw eminence, George W., invaded the place on in the first place! Is this… irony? :dubious:
Either we do this democratic dissemination thing right or we do not do it all. Either we expunge all resistance to the notions we’re imposing upon a given nation - if this means prime-time-unfriendly carpet bombing of mountain ranges, so be it - or we let them wallow in their god-worship, autocracy or whatever yoke of oppression they might be lathering under.
Surely this half-assed, cobbled together approach to playing ‘world police’ has to end if we’re ever to make any actual, forward progress and gain respect as First World nations that use their relative ascension to accomplish good. As distinct from just running amok like bulls in a china shop – a reputation which we’ve all but been branded with now.
I seriously doubt the US is up for more adventurism in the Middle East. The military industrial complex may be keen to go back but no one else is and I cannot see how they make the case this time around.
What you are calling for would require the near-total genocide or expulsion of the local population, and replacing them with Americans. “Prime-time-unfriendly” is a massive understatement.
And us going there and trying to massacre them into agreeing with us is more oppressive than anything they do to themselves not less.
We aren’t interested in doing good; we’ve never been interested in doing good. We’re just interested in spouting noble sounding rhetoric while we stomp all over people weaker than ourselves.
Overly broad brush strokes. I am not a strong supporter of U.S. imperialism, but much of it has done more good than harm. South Korea is obviously a huge success story. The U.S. has defended several other countries from hostile takeover, e.g. Bosnia. Even the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup d’état in Iran led to a period of prosperity, not equaled after their 1979 revolution until recently.
One needn’t agree with self-interested U.S. interventions to acknowledge that, in many cases, they provided stability and enhanced global security.
The 2003 Invasion of Iraq was an aberration, a warning of what can happen when the U.S. government is run by naive ideologues without adult supervision.
Overthrowing democratic governments like in Iran is never a good thing for anyone.
And look how badly it all worked out in the end. The 2003 invasion was not an aberration. It was in terms of immoral, unwise, incompetent and downright self-defeating interventions of various stripes pretty much par for the course.
Read what I wrote, not what you wish a strawman wrote so that you can argue against it.
Many many Iraqis, both Shi’ite and Sunni, enjoyed life much more under Saddam than they do now. Similarly the 1953 coup brought 25 years of stability and prosperity to Iran. Strongmen are … strong. (And I don’t need to be reminded of how heinous Saddam was. That was well known to those of us on the rational side of the aisle way back when Cheney and Rumsfeld were supplying arms to Saddam.)
For your comparison of Iraq and Iran (“interventions … pretty much par for the course”) to be sensical you must think the 2003 invasion of Iraq ushered in 25 years of prosperity and stability like the 1953 coup did for Iran. Did it?
Americans fought in Iraq for nine years after the invasion. That is not a three day course in democracy. It is hard to create a democracy in a nation without a democratic tradition and it is doubly hard in Iraq where Sunni, Shiite, and Kurds are all shoehorned together in one place. There is no blueprint or obvious plan. Plus the enemy always gets a vote in every war plan. There are thousands of terrorist fighters in Iraq, they either need to be co-opted or defeated.
It is not all up to Americans, the locals have agency. America could have done everything right and it would still be possible for Iraqis to squander it or we could have done everything wrong and they could have made it work anyway. They are trying to build democratic institutions in a country that was a brutal dictatorship for years, over a population riven with deep ethnic and religous divisions.
As has been pointed out Iran had a good twenty five year run under the Shah and then collapsed into theocracy. There is no way to know if this is the start of a Syrian style civil war or the growing pains of a new nation.
But only after that pesky, uncompliant fledgling democracy put that troublemaker Mossadegh into power. Can’t have somebody who won’t do as he’s told, can we?
I have and I see no straw. Your view of Iran is nonsensical and premised on the assumption that a democratic Iran controlling its own oil would not have been prosperous. I bet it would have been more prosperous. And probably with a whole lot less of its citizens tortured and killed. And of course, all without an Islamic revolution.
I’m sure the people tortured and murdered just loved all that “prosperity”. And it was responsible for the creation of the Iranian theocracy.
They bring tyranny, bloodshed, suffering and poverty. Lots and lots of rape and torture; we’ve always been fond of promoting those to control “insurgents”.
It was never about democracy at all; America has always been the enemy of democracy outside its own borders. It was about imposing an American-created regime on the Iraqi people whether they liked it or not, which is completely the opposite of democracy.
What we did do is help send the message to Iraq and everyone else in the region that “democracy” is just a code word for mass slaughter, chaos, destruction, and a foreign-imposed regime. We’ve done an excellent job of discrediting the word.
The Iraq war was probably a mistake, but there is a time-limit on how far into the future fault can be assigned.
The blame for the current trouble in Iraq lies mainly with the Iraqis – it’s their country if they want it to be stable and prosperous they have every possible to pursue policies and further cultural changes towards that goal. Supporting Islamic fundamentalism or ethnic strife is not it, but if they chose to do so anyway it’s their choice and their own fault.
Secondary blame lies with the international jihad movement and international sponsors and enables – mainly of the Gulf states and Turkey. The fault which can be ascribed to the USA lies mainly in the support it has given to “rebels” operating in Syria, and perhaps a bit for the silly isolationist policies towards Iran.
I was NOT arguing unequivocal support for the 1953 coup. I was suggesting that IT MADE SENSE from the standpoint of U.S. self-interest or in terms of global security.
I wanted to contrast that with the 2003 Iraq invasion which was pure idiocy even by (especially by) the standards of those who might have supported the 1953 coup.
The insurgency will fail. They just captured upwards of $500 million from the central bank in Mosul. That much money will not be used to finance their military operations. No one, no matter how faithful, is immune to being corrupted by greed. Half the control structure will line their pockets and end up on the beach in the South Pacific.