Destroy a Country

Hmm.. I think you misunderstood my post. Which, in retrospect, is understandable, as my response to the post I quoted somewhat misunderstood what Ellie had said.

I do not believe that liberating the people of Iraq was the reason for going to war. I brought up strategic importance (a major factor being oil reserves) as a differentiating factor between a country like Iraq, and a country like Rwanda.

However, I did misread Ellie, so when he (or she?) said "you can't dispute that", my actual answer would be no. I don't dispute the notion that liberation of the Iraqi people was not a major motivating factor.


The rest of my post deals with the idea that the US has "destroyed" Iraq. In order for you to make this case, you would need to actually show that the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam Hussein's rule, than they are under the current occupation.

I think that would be a very difficult case to make.

Often, the best argument that people make for such a case, is citation of casualties suffered in Iraq since the fall of Hussein's regime. This, I believe, is a false argument. It seems to ignore the fact that things were pretty ugly in Iraq prior to invasion.

So, you see, I'm certainly not suggesting that liberation of the Iraqi people was reason to go to war... and indeed, I'm not even trying to justify the war by suggesting that it was ok to invade because they had oil. The reason for mentioning oil, was to point out the primary difference between Iraq and other regions in similar situations.

But that justification, and indeed whether the war was justified at all, is a separate issue from whether or not the Iraqi people are better off now than they were prior to invasion.

So, do you believe that the Iraqi people are worse off now than they were under Hussein's regime?

EDIT: made a typo that would have led to even more misunderstandings.

Ok, so lets accept that the improvement of their condition was at least a factor, and not try to rank it in order of importance. I put it way down almost out of sight personally, and you seem almost to agree.

But I have more to point out, I am afraid. I fear that people who rely on these before/after comparisons never consider which starting point to take, and generally look at the Iraqi's situation just pre this war. When they had already been ground down, had their infrastructure deliberately wiped out, been regularly bombed at will for years, and been subjected to sanctions denying them, for instance, parts for water treatment plants, on the pretext that pipes and pumps could make wmd's. You may claim that this desperate situation was Saddam husseins fault, in a sense, but it was not his WISH. It was not in his plan for the Iraqi people.

I would like to suggest a different starting point for the comparison. A time when the state of Iraq was what its government wanted and intended. Just prior to the invasion of Kuwait.

I have read an independent international report (was it WHO) on the entire region accidentally completed a month or so earlier.

The section on Iraq is pretty surprising. High employment. Universal free health care. Best infrastructure in the region, with clean water to almost everyone and good sewage disposal. Religious tolerance exceptionally high, with good relations between the different religious groups. This country was singled out as a shining beacon to those around it. It was set to become an role model to the Arab world, approaching european standards for its population.

I know you don't want to hear this. I know it smells like another load of lefty apologist junk. But you see, which is the symptom, which is the cause ? This document had a big effect on my opinion, not the other way round.

Accept just for the moment that this might be true. It casts a new light on US attitudes. Could this country be allowed to succeed ? It was thinking of pricing its oil in Euros, and it had tons of it. It was set to be hugely rich if it stayed peacable.

Ah, you say, but nobody forced him to invade Kuwait and bring it all on himself.

You may be absolutely right. But there is just a little niggling doubt about how that came about. There are reports (I think there is an insider book) suggesting that the US Embassy was approached for "permission" for the invasion, and that it was given the "nod". Remember we created Saddam, secretly armed him, and used him to attack Iran. Shifty nods and chats at the embassy, and encouragements to attack another country, had happened before.

I can't really know, but it is just possible that in attacking Kuwait he fell into our trap.

As for all his monstrous behaviour. We selected him, and empowered and armed him because he was a pretty unscrupulous amoral criminal type. But is it not possible that, like a cornered rat, he grew worse as his position became more desperate? Maybe if the Kuwait invasion had never happened he would have improved rather than worsened?

Certainly his government was doing well on the material plane up to that point, and seemed to have care for its population as measured from their material circumstances.

What exactly we conclude from all this I don't know. Except that whoever is at fault it is not the Iraqi people. Remember we conjoured Kuwait out of thin air and invented a (pretty disgusting) monarchy for it, simply to block Iraq's sea access, and keep it weak. I believe we have the cabinet papers to prove it.

Its all so much more complicated than our rulers would have us believe, isn't it?
How much of this were you aware of, Roland?

So you see, Iraq really has been utterly destroyed, from an exceptionally fine starting point, and the Iraqi people were being treated well by their tyrant, at least in some respects, if we go back just a bit further, to before we started hitting them.

I'm sorry Ellie, like I explained to the other guy, that one statement you quoted of mine was based on me misreading your post.

EDIT: mid as well respond to you, since you went to the trouble of writing that.
Although, in response to the good issue you bring up of when to decide the "starting point" of the comparison, there are two issues that must be looked at here.

First of all, even prior to 91, life was not nice for many Iraqis. Hussein ruled his people with an iron fist for decades. If you were Sunni, it was great. They had one of the most progressive countries in the region (indeed, the most progressive, not counting Israel).

However, if you were Shiite, or Kurd.. then you were kind of screwed. If you disagreed with the regime... you were kind of screwed. If somehow Hussein thought you were a threat, you were kind of screwed.

Let's be realistic here. Hussein idolized Stalin, and modeled his style of rule after him. Stalin is not the best role model.


Aside from that, it's hard to use pre 91 Iraq as a starting point for recent decisions anyway. The first gulf war was pretty much supported by everyone. There was no disagreement in the UN concerning it. There was no disagreement in the middleast concerning it. Everyone pretty much said, "Yep. That's bad. Gotta stop that."

So, when making a decision in the current situation, we can't really go back in time 10 years, and reverse actions that were taken then.

Have you not watched the news? Have you not even seen what little the media shows of what we have done to Iraq? Have you not seen the pictures of Iraq before the first war? Do you not realize how bombs work? The military is not a clean solution. You send people with guns, bombs, and tanks for one reason. You wish to destroy and kill. We are taught in the military that at the core of who we are, we must be stone cold killers to save our lives and the lives of those we fight with. I don't care how many loaves of bread a person holding an M-4 hands out. That M-4 has one puprose, and that is to kill. If you paid attention to Iraq, we have killed people on 2 out of 3 sides of the issue. We were fighting both the enemies of Saddam, and the soldiers of Saddam. Why were his enemies against us? Why would someone we were supposedly freeing be so angry at us that we have to kill them before they kill us? There are other ways of fixing a country than going in blowing it up, and then taking several years to rebuild it. If you have ever been through a hurricane, you know how devastating it is to loose everything you own and face the daunting task of rebuilding your life. Imagine a force such as America that has the capability of being far more destructive than any hurricane. People have lost a great deal in Iraq, and if you think otherwise you apparently have been living in a cave. If you think the government is better, look at the fact that a democracy was already put in place by England when it was released. Keep in mind that alot of issues such as the treatment of women are being taken a step backward by the new government.

I must admit that I'm a bit confused here, as you're the second person to mention pre 91 Iraq.

Are you suggesting that not just the recent gulf war, but also the one that took place in 91 were both unjustified?

I certainly have seen the destruction in Iraq. However, I've also seen the destruction that Hussein himself delivered upon his own people.

Hey Ellie, I have to ask...

Since the US put Saddam in power, was it the US backing Saddam that brought this country to new heights? Would they have had such success if the US had not? Do other countries in that region enjoy the same?

Should we not really go back to before Saddam was 'installed'?

I am not supporting the war, so please don't take it as such.

Thank you for the links Lecktor. I do not remember much (if any) of this. Again, at the time, my main interest was drinking, but still, I think I would remember something of these. Maybe that goes to say someting about my past drinking habits...

You're welcome, I would say happy reading but .. it's not.

I don't really know. I guess iraq was becoming so rich that there was enough cash to satisfy the material greed of its leaders many times over and still improve the lot of its people. I hesitate to conjecture that SH might have had a bit of good in him when things were going his way.

Perhaps the question about when to start our comparisons is best answered by "what will the iraqis be thinking back to". My guess is that they see some correlation between the loss of the good times and the times when we began to get openly involved in their affairs. If that is so, it won't be helping their attitudes to us.

But you see, we created that problem. If you track back to cabinet papers, letters etc from when the modern Iraq was created, it was designed to be ungovernable except with an iron fist. To suit the Uk and France, I think it was..

The deliberate ignoring of tribal and religious boundaries, the cutting of the kurds in three, the blocking of the sea access by creating Kuwait. It was all totally deliberate. Divide and rule. Prevent any unified opposition to the alien power arising. Play them off against each other.

As we see being proved again now in the present. The forces of fragmentation reappear once Saddams fist is removed. Only such a man could have held it together. The vigorous suppression of opposition which you bewail was the only thing which could do it.

How would the US government now respond to real physical opposition, rebellion, and attempts to secede at home in the USA ? Wouldn't there be bullets ? More disappearances into Guantanomo ? An extension of the definition of terrorism ?

I am NOT saying SH was an ok guy. Just that he, or someone like him, may have been made inevitable by the way Iraq was set up.

Whose iron fist is in the field now, trying to hold it together ? And how well are they doing ?

And now its even worse. The Shias and the Kurds have all the oil. If they can get some subdivision going they can leave the Sunnis to starve in the middle. Revenge at last.

Why do you think the constitution is causing so much trouble? Its all about oil. Only a tightly-nit fully integrated single state will give the people in the middle anything but abject poverty and humiliation.

Thats why the people in the middle needed their own dictator in charge in the first place. They were potentially in deep trouble otherwise.

I'm not trying to go back and change anything. I'm just trying to understand, get a bit of honesty into the rhetoric, and hoping that we can all start making better decisions.

Though I don't really know what we can do. It would bankrupt even us to replace for the Iraqis everything they had which we have destroyed, and to pay them western-levels of compensation for the people we have killed (and pensions to the fourtimes greater number we must have maimed). They may imagine it in their fantasies, but damn sure we don't. And can't.

Maybe we should get out and let them fight out their civil war, and split their country up. But the Sunnis will fight to the death because they have everything to lose. And whose fault it is will be humiliatingly obvious.

dirty bomb bad

depleted uranium good

dirty bomb so bad, Jose Padilla is locked up for 3 years with no trial despite being a US citizen

and depleted uranium is harmless, all the luekemia is just a coincidence. Iraq is now happy fun land and no longer needs power as everything glows at night. We saved them on their energy bill

right

Hey Kool Aid!

Eh. In my mind the war in Iraq was inevitable, no matter who was in office. The politcal cost to the party in office, if Saddam used his WMDs on the US was far greater than the political cost of an upopular war of liberation.

And the war in Iraq is hardly about controlling oil production, that could be more easily done through other means, and really the current US troop deployments and mission roles are NOT the best and most effective way of ensuring control over the oil production. A war to control oil would be rational, and militarily feasible (assuming of course, it was politcially justifiable). No the war in Iraq is pointless and silly in my book becaus eit ignores a core truth that is common through out the history of armed conflict: occupying armies armies are not tools of nation building. The dangerous thing about the Iraq war is not that it is some kind of american oil grab, but rather it just confirms that morer blood is shed ignoring a lesson in history.

Hey Jake, have you read this: http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

there is the answer to Iraq and Afghanistan

funny, how the neo-cons drew that up far in advance of 9/11 (read the date, and check the website that it comes from, and the names of the contributers. It is widely reported this is the work of Cheney himself, although his name appears nowhere on the document. It is also reported that this has been around in several different fors for years)

buy, they got lucky there didn't they. They got the war on 2 fronts handed on a silver platter

There were no WMDs. They were eliminated through diplomacy.

~Ulrika~

The month of October had some of the highest casualties since beginning of the war with over 95 bibles reported destroyed.

~Ulrika~

****************** hug *********************

Thats the one, Mulch. I lost the link.

I know it sounds melodramatic, but unless a person has read that, it's almost impossible for them to have an informed opinion.

Its open admission of how the population would be deceived and manipulated is a revelation.

We are living through the nightmare triumph of its authors.

I'm amazed this is actually distributed

its like "Mien Kempf" for the new century

But lets admit that, just as the thoughtful german needed to pause on reading Mein Kampf, so need the thoughful american pause at this plan to seize unending world domination in his/her name.

The question has again to be asked.
"if this is really what it takes to preserve me and my children in our relative wealth and prosperity, and fend off the starving and deprived of the planet, is it worth the moral cost ?"

Two questions really. "is there no other way" and "can I live with the moral implications"

Exactly what the germans faced - you're right. Not the same plan - but the same dilemma.

You see, thats the most terrible thing. For Americas children, with no concern for everyone elses, this might just possibly actually be the best course of action.

Though the implementation sure looks disastrous at the moment. But is it ? Maybe its going exactly to plan. A potentially rich and unfriendly power is in ruins and in chaos. Maybe its to be kept that way for as long as possible, while bleeding it of its resources with semi-abortive reconstruction projects awarded to western contractors. Finally leaving it a whitened wreck with debts to us that will take 50 years to pay, mopping up their oil earnings until they start running out.

And meanwhile the Arab nations have been shown what will happen if they get uppity.

Job done.

How can we know ?

Sure. And those that weren't were eliminated during the threart of a build up. But the analysis is not made based on wheter the WMD's are there. It is made on the speculation of a worst case scenario. What if the WMD's were there, we did not invade and Atlanta got Dirty bombed? Whatever party was in the white house would be dead politically after such an event.

Part of the process in america, is that after the fact the media reports what it does and they want to say see no WMD-bush lied, the war is unjust. Yet these decisions are usually made peering inot the fog of what might happen, without the benefit of hindsight.

So I think that whomeever was in office, Iraq would have been invaded. A beter president would have done so with a coalition and a plan that did not involve turning Iraq into and american democracy.

What scares me about bush is not the decisions, but the policy.

And Mulch, I think Iraq. and Afganistan are two different issues. Afganistan is as much about Indian and Pakistan or China-Russia-khazakstan than it is about presidential ego. The us has been looking for a way inot central asia since the 1860's. Now we are there.

I would ask do we really deserve to be kept in wealth and prosperity if it requires us stepping on everyone else to maintain it?

On whose backs does our gluttony ride?

What gives us that right? Bigger guns?

Is that the ideal that we represent now. All Men are Created Equal (unless they are outside the United States)

And if we as citizens support such a plan, what is to stop the capitalistic concentration of wealth and hoarding of resources from being used against US citizens if we achieve the objectives?

Our recent history is hardly re-assuring

It is chilling, just chilling.

Don't worry, everything will look up for all humans if we can find some extraterrestrials to oppress. Aside from that, I'm sorry to report that it's human nature to oppress others who have oppressed others or could oppress others, or are not actively oppressing others (and thus, a prime mark for exploitation).

=(

In addition to what you said above, steal an Election, that helps too.

My cousin, a Master Sergent in the U.S. Army says he has seen far more American deaths than what George Bush is claiming. He thinks between 7,000 and 25,000 U.S. Troops have been killed not 2000