Iraq Still A Big Mess

Dozens die as anger spreads over Iraq army raid on protest camp

 

Yes. Arabs kill Arabs.. Muslims kill other Muslims.. Shia hate Sunnai.. and between all of that the palestinians
are dancing in parties like they f..king don't care. They really don't care.
I'm sure that with all the Tragic events , Still NOBODY MISS SADDAM HUSSAIN !!

 

I miss the idea that peace is not best achieved by invasion of external forces.

 

I do too but in certain cases doing that is the best of a lot of bad choices.

 

In this case it was WRONG! The US has unnecessarily wasted far too many precious resources in terms of men and money, to accomplish nothing except create more chaos. It was a very bad decision. It was the direct result of the EXTREMELY BAD and STUPID decision to put George W. Bush in the position of President of the United States. So many more qualified people, and yet the people of my country made this very bad choice. It is truly very, very, sad. The world has been left in such bad shape. It is truly pitiful.

 

Then the path to that point has had numerous occasions where the wrong decisions have been made. For war and invasion to be able to be argued by some as the best choice only points to how low we have set the bar. Having done that once, we should be doing more to never have set the bar that low again.

 

I think that sometimes such things are necessary. However, in this case, it certainly wasn't, and should be condemned in the strongest terms. Subsequent to the invasion, what the US did to Fallujah in particular, was abominable. This was a very bad omen for the future of civilization.

 

100% in agreement.

 

Again I would argue that the necessity of amputating someone's foot that has got frostbite would be better dealt with by a pair of furry boots in the first place. I'm not looking to oversimplify the vast interlinked network of economics, ideological politics, geo-politics, energy management etc. to warm footwear. But my experience of international affairs would suggest the wheels of dispassionate commerce go round just as easily selling boots as they do selling prosthetics.

 

Violence should always be the last resort when solving disputes. However, there are times, when it is necessary. In this case with Iraq, what you had is a group of arrogant ignorant people, led by Dick Cheney, cheered on by the likes of William Kristol, who basically hijacked the defense mechanism of the United States of America, and used it to prop up their underlying, imagined insecurities, in order to make space for the expansion of their arrogant egos. It's quite a shame that so many lives were sacrificed on this wicked alter of ignorance.

 

What would you have done to ensure Iraq complied with the various ceasefire terms, none of which he had adhered to and also, did not simply out wait the world and then begin his wars again?

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What would have been your choice?

 

What Saddam did to Iran, Kuwait, his own people was a bad omen for civilization and had to be shut down. On average this gent killed ten thousand of his own people per day and was responsible for the deaths of over a million people. His antics after he signed the truce were all geared to outwait the UN and then begin again as he admitted to Piro;

 

My choice is to work on prevention.
How did Saddam get into power? It can be traced back to unrest over western imperial influence, the inability of internal factions to work together to prioritise the country over advancement of their own power and a growing Arab nationalism in response to the chess board mentality of the Cold War.
In short, not enough was being done to improve the lives and living conditions of the people of Iraq by either their politicians or by external politicians (US, Europe, USSR). Friendly politicians were more important than the politicians the people of Iraq needed. These necessary politicians may have been West or Soviet friendly but also may have been nationalists. The point is, even with some potential crossover, the wrong subset of leaders is encouraged and in my opinion is still encouraged.
IMO it is still more important to countries' international affairs to have politicians/business leaders that agree ideologically or commercially, than it is to have the right influence to serve the best interests of the people of the country. Aiding and abetting artificial mechanisms of power and politics that lead to situations where d*ckheads (a universal constant) are able to more easily abuse their position of power can lead to resentment and compressed change which manifests in a variety of ways including extremist and despotic political systems.
I do not believe that many of the economic or political decisions made between countries is necessarily in the best interests of the people of those countries and where one country has the upper hand in regards to bargaining power, the benefits for the people of the other country can be even less.
I would put mechanisms in place that see enough of the right people in power making good decisions for their own populace and propped up by international exchanges that recognise the welfare of any people is tied to the welfare of all peoples. That is generally what I would do. That would reduce the influence of extremist groups and the frequency of bad people being able to manipulate the system to gain power.
Invasion and war is a failure by all concerned parties to live up to the responsibility to the welfare of the people of a country.
Lest we forget.

 

1) The shot callers and those that exist outwith the democratic sphere, even if they speak in an American accent are not loyal to, nor do they care about the US. That is fact number one.

2) They have not wasted their money, they have simply used people's wealth, and when that was not sufficient, they would take loans with international banks, that will further plunge future generations of Americans into high taxation. For them, this was not a spend, it was an investment, with other people's money.

3) Yes, they did accomplish things, you are merely looking at it from the POV of a normal person, not them. What did they accomplish? They gave the war industry a boost, I am sure that suits those that have investments in those. Their actions permit them to have dominion over Iraq's water supply, people forget that to a certain state, water is almost, if not more of a commodity, than oil. They also proved that they can tell the mass anything, even the lamest of tales, and the mass will accept it, in the most part. That encourages them to do it again.

 

So in other words, you didn't have an alternative action.

 

True. Ignoring or not understanding any information that is contrary to what you want to hear, there is no alternative.

Therefore the alternative would be:
1. not invade.
2. as per the rest of my post.

In other words you don't have an alternative argument?
At least I'm open minded enough to phrase mine as a question.

 

Let me put it like this, we were told we needed to invade Iraq to get rid of WMDs, there were none there. We were told we needed to invade Iraq to get rid of the presence of Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda was not there. We were told that we needed to invade Iraq to stop Saddam's nuclear weapons program, there was none. It was all fairy tales.

 

Ten thousand people per day? WOW!! That would mean that he killed 3,650,000 people per year. He was in office for more than thirty years. So in thirty years he killed 109,500,000 people. Those are some pretty astounding numbers.

What the US did to Fallujah was cold blooded and cruel.

SOURCE

 

as long as they're just killing each other and leaving their neighbors alone, life is good.

 

And yet the West did nothing about Pol Pot who was a genocidist in every sense of the word. In fact America went as far as actively supporting the Khmer Rouge. Then there's Rwanda, the Congo-both of which resulted in millions of dead. What did we do? Nothing...so why was Iraq the exception?

 

I understand exactly what you are saying and it is indeed noteworthy. I thought about it from that angle years ago. Here are some of my thoughts about it.

The people that led the US into Iraq, did so under the influence of greed. No doubt about it. However, that greed distorted their vision, and made them actually think that they were actually doing what was best for the people of the US, when actually they were not. I have talked about, in other threads, how greed can distort a person's vision. It makes people think they are doing right, when they are actually doing wrong.

The people who led the US into an invasion of Iraq, did not anticipate some very profound negative effects that have been detrimental to their and the rest of the world's long term interests.

1. It has exponentially increased the hatred of the US by the people of the Middle East who see the invasion of Iraq, coupled with US support of Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinian people ,as evidence that the US is an arrogant, tyrannical power that cares nothing about them.

2. It has given support to the advocates of a violent strain of radical Muslim fundamentalism that has enabled them to recruit people to their cause. This support is in many places, and it's influence in Chechnya was recently felt in Boston. It will be very difficult to contain this threat as the US cannot occupy the whole world.

3. It strategically set the US off balance because it has had to unnecessarily commit enormous military resources to that region of the world.

4. The US has been able to finance such adventures because of the ability of the Federal Reserve to print unlimited amounts of money. Otherwise, no one would buy those bonds that are used to finance such activity. The Fed is able to print money because of the reserve currency status of the US dollar. However, especially after the financial crisis of 2008, the world is moving away from using the US dollar as reserve currency. This means that the US will find it increasingly difficult to fund these types of adventures in the future. Therefore, the one trillion dollars that was spent on this adventure, was not put to it's best use, and will be sorely missed.

5. They did Iran a favor by getting rid of a big problem for them. It will likely result in some sort of future Iran/Iraq alliance based on their geographical proximity and Shiite ties.

6. Because of all of the above, it has strengthened China's position in the world. The US is out of position, off balance, and has expended precious resources that China can leverage to it's advantage.

In addition to all that, it really strained our relationships with many of our allies who correctly saw this as a very bad move.

Therefore, although I see what you are saying, I would put forward that it was actually detrimental to their longer term interests to have invaded Iraq in this way.

 

Even if you see the world like that, the US was better off leaving Saddam in power.

 

"...what the US did to Fallujah in particular, was abominable."

Taxcutter says:
Stomping pro-Saddam thugs was abominable? Maybe to pro-Saddam thugs. Nobody else.

 

Where were you when Pol Pot was in power? Oh yes, financing his genocide.

 

That was Jimmy Carter and his Dem-dominated Congress.