is this a real thing that is actually happening?

[Geronimo]

Yes, if you consider who the 'US' actually is...

It's certainly not the people anymore. No, it's the mega rich in charge the military industrial complex that enriched itself over Iraq. So making Iraq a more dangerous place and encouraging more terrorists in the process - means they can keep on piling high the weapons and enriching themselves...

The people actually in charge of the US are laughing all the way to the bank like parasites on the backs of the soldiers they send to die and get maimed there - and the US public is too stupid to realise they're getting used in this way.

The ultra rich almost certainly would have preferred the invasion not have occurred, at least in hindsight. More ultra rich are likely to have had reductions in profitable opportunities and revenue as a result of the war than the reverse. Of course, being ultra rich they would easily make obscene profits regardless of how the confrontation played out so I'd imagine they acted in accordance with other diverse motivations.

Do you really believe that the ultra rich couldn't engineer much larger defense spending world-wide if they saw it in their interests to do so? Global defense spending as a proportion of GDP is no where near it's historic high. It clearly could be much higher. Why would the ultra rich fail to increase military spending to its highest possible levels if that was where their profit potential lay? Perhaps other drums beat the path to war than simple profit-seeking behavior.

[Al B. Sure!]

Marines are already there.

[PLATO]

Even though I imagine most here mainly remember my opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I really only adopted that stance when it became clear that it would not be possible to secure NATO, let alone UN, endorsement of and involvement in the war.

I accepted that if there was strong evidence that Iraq was producing WMDs and was in defiance of multiple UNSC resolutions that some sort of military response might be the least evil of the available options.

I did not and still do not recognize such a military option as somehow intrinsically immoral and at the time I was very frustrated with all of the opposition to UN involvement in an action against the Iraqi government that seemed rooted in that idea. Even in hindsight, I find the idea that exercise of military force is always a crime is very destructive and I certainly don't think those opponents to action against Iraq have been vindicated by subsequent events in the slightest. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Given that even someone such as myself who ended up opposing the Iraq war before it began can persist in thinking that it was appropriate (even in hindsight!) to consider military intervention against Iraq in 2003, I'd hazard a guess that it's still not hard to find morons (especially the morons in fact) who backed the toppling of Saddam who don't feel stupid now.

It's nice to see a voice of reasoned thought.

I still believe that the invasion of Iraq was both a good idea and legal. I still believe that the followup to the invasion was absurdly stupid in the way we handled it...and for that I place most of the blame at Rumsfeld's feet (although W is ultimately responsible as CIC). If we had handled victory the correct way, then Iraq could be today a very stabilizing force in the ME. The very, very poor job we did with Iraq after the invasion must bear responsibility for the events of today...regardless of what Tony Blair thinks is "credible" or not.

[DinoDoc]

I still believe that the invasion of Iraq was both a good idea and legal.

Why was it a good idea?: An Unnecessary War? (Long)

[Sava]

You mean people like sloww, Ben, Dino, the Kuci runts etc...

YOU NAME NAMES!

[Sava]

Why was it a good idea?: An Unnecessary War? (Long)

Ugh! My thread is in danger of being Sava-ed to death.

Why do people even bother responding to you (Sava) in serious threads?

The more things change....

[Sava]

Oh man, I forgot how irritating I used to be.

[Ben Kenobi]

The very, very poor job we did with Iraq after the invasion must bear responsibility for the events of today...regardless of what Tony Blair thinks is "credible" or not.

If Obama hadn't cut and run, I don't see why any of the blame can be put on Bush. Obama's been in 6 years now, what has he done on this file but bleat about cutting and running?

[Uncle Sparky]

Quote Originally Posted by MOBIUS View Post



You mean people like sloww, Ben, Dino, the Kuci runts etc...

I spy an incorrect consonant.

May I request a new 'sound's like' smiley?

[C0ckney]

the problem that those who say iraq wouldn't have been a mistake if there had been a proper post war plan is explaining what that plan would have been. it is of course a very easy argument to make 'if things had been better planned, they would have gone better', until you get down to the details. it comes from a lack of understanding about these places; the historical and political contexts and the inability to ask fundamental questions, like: why is iraq even a country? what holds it together? (the answer to this one was until 2003: a strongman with an iron fist and a strong party infrastructure) to list but two examples.

there is also the issue of balancing giving the people a say (or at least, the illusion of a say), as in creating a democracy, with western interests in the region. so for example the option of a federal iraq, dividing iraq along ethnic and religious lines, with a weak central government had to be balanced against the fact that southern iraq would be strongly influenced by its co-religionists in iran. this is in fact what is likely to happen following the latest upheavals, which is no doubt a source of delight and not a little amusement in tehran right now.

[C0ckney]

The very, very poor job we did with Iraq after the invasion must bear responsibility for the events of today...regardless of what Tony Blair thinks is "credible" or not.

i really hope to see the day when tony blair is tried for war crimes. or brutally murdered; i'll take either to be honest.

[kentonio]

the problem that those who say iraq wouldn't have been a mistake if there had been a proper post war plan is explaining what that plan would have been. it is of course a very easy argument to make 'if things had been better planned, they would have gone better', until you get down to the details. it comes from a lack of understanding about these places; the historical and political contexts and the inability to ask fundamental questions, like: why is iraq even a country? what holds it together? (the answer to this one was until 2003: a strongman with an iron fist and a strong party infrastructure) to list but two examples.

Not really. There were very clear and obvious mistakes made which can be very easily identified. The attempted de-Baathification of the country was a ridiculous mistake, capped off by the mindblowingly stupid decision to disband the army and disallow former Baath members from holding new positions. That one **** up cost countless thousands of lives and probably doomed the whole thing from the start.

On your second point though..

there is also the issue of balancing giving the people a say (or at least, the illusion of a say), as in creating a democracy, with western interests in the region. so for example the option of a federal iraq, dividing iraq along ethnic and religious lines, with a weak central government had to be balanced against the fact that southern iraq would be strongly influenced by its co-religionists in iran. this is in fact what is likely to happen following the latest upheavals, which is no doubt a source of delight and not a little amusement in tehran right now.

I think this is the main problem, that we wanted a regime that suited us, rather than the needs of the Iraqis. Ironic considering we were the ones who laid down the borders in the region of course. We wanted a country we could continue to use as a pawn against the perceived enemy of Iran, whereas keeping Iran as an enemy never made any damn sense.

Perhaps this should have been the time when we stopped caring about keeping Iraq together as a coherent single entity and supported the Iraqis own decisions on what they wanted. If that meant a new Sunni state, a new Shia state and a new Kurdish state, so what? And if that Shia state ended up merging into Iran even at some later date, again so what? It's time we stopped trying to control the shape of other peoples worlds.

[Sava]

'Used to be'...

[Sava]

online killings

ISIS has nothing on me WRT online killings. Just in the past two days, I've killed over a thousand enemies in Just Cause 2.

[Felch]

I was smart enough not to post any opinions about the Iraq War (that I recall) being busy smoking pot and not giving a ****. My opposition to it though was rooted in our refusal to loot and pillage. If America invaded, intent on stealing the oil fields and leaving the native population to starve, that would have been awesome. We could have had cheap gasoline, and by staying out of cities, kept casualties to a minimum.

**** invading a country just to rebuild it. That's for chumps.