The War on Iraq

[wesaynothin]

O.K., since this is such a bloody big topic, I figured I'd just post a little bit on it, since no one (surprisingly) has yet. We obviously all have our own opinions on this war, so please put them below.

 

NO FLAMING!!!!!

 

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I personally think this war has gotten way overblown, and, actually, always has been. Though I am an American, I truly think that the USA has not done anything truly helpful to other governments for the past 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years, outside of what private orginizations has done. Though I havent been alive through those time periods, any outside whatever I have heard of has been a disaster and got us into a lot of trouble. Look at Korea. Capitalism Vs. Communism, Us Vs. the bad guys, Freedom Vs. Evil People, my a*s. We go into every country that doesn't agree with us and fight them! what is the point of that?

 

Oh well....

[Switch]

well... the iraq war is starting to look a bit like the whole WOMD thing was a bit blown out of proportion. but its good that they removed saddam, it just seems they were ill prepared to take control of the country (they were expecting the war to take a lot longer) and thus soldiers have been killed in this guerilla warfare thing. no offense to the americans but i agree with u wesay, "oh we're the great holy nation smiting evil" and all that stuff starts to get kinda annoying. :P

[Marxist ßastard]

Blown out of proportion?

[The_Reaper]

Unfortunatelly you have to prepare for another Vietnam! :(

Well America was really useful in the first and second WW, but lately America seems to have nominated itself Police of the World. You can´t solve everything by invading other countries, and you can´t make other people govern their countries the way you want!

In Iraq you did a good job by removing Saddam, but (quoting Laurence Fisbourne) "some people are so connected to the sistem that they´ll fight to protect it". By removing Saddam you´ve done well but the moment you invaded Iraq you became The Invading Force and most iraqis will fight to remove you from their country.

Also by bypassing the UN America as only destroyed it´s reputation.

[Switch]

yeah it hasnt done much for their reputation

 

also as far as im aware the US was damned unhelpful in the first WW, they just waited in their country while UK troops got slaughtered then came in at the last minute to help out :P

[ThetaOrionis01]

There was/is just so much wrong with this war, it's hard to know where to begin...

 

First of all, the legality of it. The US & UK plus hangers on went into Iraq without a clear UN mandate, arguing that existing UN resolutions re weapons of mass destruction gave them the right to do so. From the beginning, the whole argument hinged on the existence of these weapons, even though the weapons inspectors indicated that they had found no proof, IIRC.

 

Then there was the whole affair about falsified intelligence reports - Iraq was meant to be capable of launching weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. A lot of misinformation was being spread about these elusive weapons, so much so that as far as I am aware a lot of people were not aware that Iraqi missiles had a maximum range of...can't remember exactly, but I think it was about 250 miles...and that includes the range in excess of what they were meant to have. Oh yeah, and they also had 3 scud missiles capable of a range of 600 miles. Well, it's a long time since I last did geography, but both the US and the UK would appear to be more than 600 miles away from Iraqi territory...

 

 

Then there was the whole axis of evil/terrorism link. Has anyone established a connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein yet? AFAIK bin Laden was meant to refer to Saddam as 'the atheist Satan'. Hardly closest friends then.

 

When the public failed to buy into all those reasons the focus of the campaign changed - no longer was it a fight to protect the rest of the world from terrorism or Iraqui weaponry, but it became a crusade to remove an evil dictator from power and liberate the Iraqi people from oppression.

 

No problem with removing evil dictators from power...but - there seem to be double standards at work. Evil dictators who are 'friends' of the US are ok - evil dictators who oppose US interests are part of an axis of evil. Also, a lot of people seemed to forget conveniently that during the Iran/Iraq war Saddam Hussein received money, and AFAIK intelligence and military aid from the US and the west. For that matter, bin Laden was also funded by the US during his time with the Mujaheddin fighting the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

All a bit messy...

 

Then of course - where are those weapons of mass destruction? If you were a despotic dictator under attack by a superpower, would you not use any weapons at your disposal (especially if they could be launched within 45 minutes!) to inflict maximum casualties on your attackers? Frankly, if such weapons were found tomorrow, my first suspicion would be that they had been planted there to vindicate the US and UK governments.

 

Then there's the question of Iraq's future - bringing in opposition leaders who had not set foot in the country for decades and are out of touch with everyday live, denying the UN a meaningful role....

 

I think it sets a dangerous precedent for the rest of the world...along the lines of 'do what the US says...or at least make sure you have nukes if you don't'. Can any country who doesn't agree with US foreign policy feel safe now?

 

I think in the end the US and the UK will be judged by what happens in Iraq in the next few years - whether they are prepared to spend the billions of dollars needed to rebuild Iraq, and whether they have the determination to persevere with bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. Or whether it will turn into another Vietnam - the US and the UK unable to cope with guerilla attacks (AFAIK more soldiers have died since the official end of hostilities than during the war) and unwilling to commit the resources needed.

 

For the sake of the Iraqi people I hope that they do a better job than they did in Afghanistan.

[Shakkara]

I read somewhere (sorry no link at the moment, will look for it later, might be rumours though) that the entire war was planned BEFORE the elections!

 

Anyway, I still have this article from one of my backup cds about Iraq and its history:

 

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October 1, 2002

 

Letter from London

 

A History Lesson on Iraq

 

By Philip Knightley

 

(LONDON, Aug. 9, 2002) -- Before Tony Blair joins the new crusaders trying to impose a "regime change", a Western "settlement" on Iraq, he should at least look at the historical facts that explain the rise of nationalist leaders such as Saddam Hussein. And while he is at it, since he is good at empathy, he might try looking at Britain through Iraqi eyes.

 

Seen from Baghdad, the British have bombed and invaded their country, lied to them, manipulated their borders, imposed on them leaders they did not want, kidnapped ones they did, fixed their elections, used collective terror tactics on their civilians, promised them freedom and then planned to turn their country into a province of India populated by immigrant Punjabi farmers. Small wonder that the author Said Aburish said to me recently: "If you think Saddam Hussein is a hard man to deal with, just wait for the next generation of Iraqi leaders."

 

In view of Saddam's ruthlessness in dealing with the Kurds in Iraq, his war with Iran and his invasion of Kuwait, it is hard to conceive that there are younger Iraqi leaders who believe Saddam has not been tough enough, and that, although the United States has the most powerful armed forces in the world, Americans do not have the stomach for the sacrifices an all-out war in the Middle East would entail.

 

These young Iraqis take the Islamic long view of history, which suggests that the Middle East never favours the foreigner and always takes its revenge on those who, like the British and Americans, insist on seeing the region through their own eyes.

 

We need to go back to the First World War, when Lawrence of Arabia and Winston Churchill were imposing the first regime changes on the Middle East, to see how we have reached the situation we face today. In 1919, the recently concluded war had made everyone realise the strategic importance of oil, and in any future major skirmish a secure supply of oil would be an essential weapon. Britain already had one source: British Petroleum, owned in part by the British government, had been pumping oil at Masjid-i-Salamn, in Iran's Zagros Mountains, since 1908. But it was not enough.

 

So even before the peace conference began in Paris in 1919 some underhand oil trading took place. France, for example, gave Britain the oil-rich area around Mosul in Iraq, in exchange for a share of the oil and "a free hand" in Syria. Unfortunately, Britain had already promised Syria to the Syrians. It was obvious to the smarter Arab leaders that guarantees of freedom and independence made during the war by Britain and France in return for their support against Germany's ally, Turkey, would now mean nothing.

 

This was confirmed at the peace conference when the oil companies pressed their governments to renounce all wartime promises to the Arabs. The oil companies saw only too well that oil concessions and royalties would be easier to negotiate with a series of rival Arab states, lacking any sense of unity, than with a powerful independent Arab state in the Middle East. Ironically - in that President George W Bush now leads the new crusaders - the only country to protest at the betrayal of the Arabs was the United States.

 

A commission set up by President Wilson warned that independence for states such as Palestine, Syria and Iraq, should be granted as soon as possible. And the idea of making Palestine into a Jewish commonwealth should be dropped. The report was ignored, even in Washington, and it took a further two years for the Allies to finalise their carve-up of the Middle East. The Arabs were stunned to learn that the whole Arab rectangle lying between the Mediterranean and the Persian frontier, including Palestine, was to be placed under mandates to suit the foreign policies of Britain and France. The Arabs had simply exchanged one imperial ruler, Turkey, for another, the West.

 

Revolution began almost immediately. The Iraqis tried to kick us out by raiding British establishments and killing British troops. The British army retaliated with collective punishment, burning to the ground every village from which any such attack was mounted. Lawrence of Arabia wrote to The Times suggesting, with heavy irony, that burning villages was not very efficient. "By gas attacks, the whole population of offending districts could be wiped out neatly, and as a method of government, it would be no more immoral than the present system." The grim truth was that something along these lines was being considered.

 

Churchill, then Secretary of State for Air and War, suggested that the RAF should take on the job of subduing Iraq: "It would ... entail the provision of some kind of asphyxiating bombs calculated to cause disablement of some kind but not death ... for use in preliminary operations against turbulent tribes." In the end the RAF stuck to conventional high-explosive bombs, a method we are still using today.

 

When Churchill appointed Lawrence to clear up the mess the Middle East had become, Lawrence began by offering to make Feisal, the man he had chosen as military leader of the Arab revolt, King of Iraq. The problem was that there were several other candidates.

 

The most popular was an early version of Saddam Hussein, the nationalist leader Sayid Taleb, who had gained popular support by threatening a nationwide revolt if the Iraqis were not allowed to choose their own leader. Our solution was simple. We kidnapped him, and dispatched him on a RN destroyer to Ceylon.

 

By the time Taleb was allowed to return, Feisal had been elected king by one of those suspiciously high majorities - 96.8 per cent. The regime changes continued. In Jordan, we made Feisal's brother Abdullah king, and provided him with money and troops in return for his promise to suppress anti-Zionist activity. Their father, Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca, the man who had started the Arab revolt against Turkey, was offered £100,000 a year not to make a nuisance of himself. And that was that. Britain regarded this as redemption in full of her promises to the Arabs. The Arabs, particularly the Iraqis, did not see it that way. They have been in revolt ever since.

 

Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979 on a platform of Arab unity and resistance to Western influence in the Middle East. He continues to have a following in the Arab world because he is seen as one of the few Arab leaders prepared to stand up to the West, particularly the United States, whose interest in the area is comparatively recent. (The British Arabist, St John Philby, father of the notorious KGB spy Kim Philby, negotiated a deal between the Standard Oil Company of California and the Saudis, and commercial production began in March 1938.)

 

Whether we accept that Saddam Hussein poses a threat or not, and whether this threat is so great that we can justify attacking Iraq again, we should first ask the crunch question: if the new crusaders defeat and occupy Iraq, what then? A United Nations mandate, something like that imposed on the country after the First World War, allowing the victorious army to remain in control of the conquered land? Or perhaps a new "Feisal" inserted as a token ruler of a reluctant population?

 

Either course spells disaster. The cynical disposition of other people's countries and their leaders - no matter how frightful they may appear to us - will surely bring a bloody reckoning. That great Arabist Gertrude Bell once warned that the catchwords of revolution - equality and fraternity - would always have great appeal in the Middle East because they challenged a world order in which Europeans were supreme, or in which those Europeans and their client Arab leaders treated ordinary Arabs as inferior beings.

 

And so a new cycle of anger, frustration and bloodshed will begin because 800 years after the crusades there will still be foreigners occupying Arab lands.

 

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Anyway, isn't it suspicious that not just the oil fields are defended, but also that the ONLY ministry not bombed to the ground it the Iraqi Ministry of oil? And that the newly appointed minister of oil is a total stranger that lived in the UK for 8 years IIRC...

 

It's obvious what the motives behind this are.

[wesaynothin]

Uhhh... yeah, what Shakkara and Theta said

[Mojlnir]

I find the war highly suspect for the reasons that Theta and Shakkara have given. I find it very hard to believe that Iraq had any serious WMD capabilities, let alone those that were capable of threating the US/UK or being deployed in less than 45 minutes. Coling Powell, when shown the information he was to present to the UN, threw it on the floor and said "This is bullpoo! I'm not reading this." Unfortunately, he did read it.

Anyway, we have the aftermath of an illegal, greed-driven war that was purported to be of the highest humanitarian concern. Well, tell that the thousand of Iraqis without power, sewage services, clean water, food, jobs, or decent medical care. The US has an ugly track record all around the world, including the Middle East: supporting Saddam against Iran, supporting Osama and the Mujahaddin against the Russians, supporting the brutal Al-Saud regime in Saudi Arabia, the CIA sponsored Beruit bombing in 1985, etc, etc, etc. And it's not just the US who ran amok in this case, the Brits had their hands in the cookie jar as well. Starting way back with the Colonial Empire, it's collapse and partitioning up to the current day, they are just as dirty as we are. Our countries have combined (along with Theta's "hangers on") to create a nasty and self-sustaining situation.

Something stinks, and its not the sewage in the streets of Baghdad.

[ShinJiOh]

well, i suppose it's fair to say we all hate our countrys' politicians.

Being an Australian, we had to follow the US to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now we're on the hitlist for all those terrorists.....

 

We're all gonna die

 

and what about the Chinese wanting to overtake Taiwan..........

the americans helped the Taiwanese against restrictions, because the chinese are communist....... i may be wrong. :ph34r: