$2 trillion for that war. Next time let’s cure cancer(s).
Correct, no one said it would be easy. True we would likely not have succeeded, but millions more would be cancer survivors.
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Wikipedia has a pretty good summary.
Saddam was, without any doubt, an at-times brutal tyrant. Yet not only was Iraq vastly more stable and peaceful under his reign, but so too was the entire Mideast. That war set off a chain reaction of events that led to a complete destabilization in the Mideast and created a fertile ground for extremist groups to recruit, operate, and generally thrive.
So I don't think so. Like in most contemporary wars, the only real winners are the arms dealers, and the people getting rich off death and destruction.
I'm sure it's his real name, but it still sounds made up.
Basically, Iraq went straight to hell, and whatever minorities etc. didn't flee got murdered.
I interpret it as something along the lines of Saddam Hussein's government caring about having a strong or at least functional country enough that they only wanted to kill Kurds and Iranians.
Baathists are better than sectarian madmen, and I suspect we'll see some kind of idiot outcome in Syria as well.
It's never a bad idea to create a power vacuum by overthrowing a dictatorship and then utterly fucking up your occupation and handling of the peace.
It's not clear if any invader and occupier could have handled that part well, but it is absolutely clear that the ghouls running the Bush regime were completely incapable of it. That those architects are still part of civilized society, and didn't spend the rest of their worthless lives breaking rocks with their teeth in a chain gang never fails to boil my blood. They put the lie to every principle of freedom and liberty that western democracies claim to stand for.
Similar horrors were inflicted on Libya by the Obama administration in particular and NATO in the general, but they were smart enough to not even sully their hands with making any effort to occupy and nationbuild after the fact. And guess what happened? Also ISIS and also a decade of civil war, and while it's died down a bit, there are still violent clashes between warlords and a humanitarian disaster nobody gives two shits about going on in the background.
Under Qadaffi, Libyans weren't free. But they weren't hungry, either.
The "weapons of mass destruction" was kind of used as a pretext because they didn't believe such an argument would win popular support. It's somewhat abstract and rooted in a kind of ideology rather than pragmatism. They also genuinely believed that Saddam did have weapons of mass destructions, but just couldn't prove it. They would be found after invasion. Just a little white lie in the meanwhile.
That's really all there's to it. People get all cynical about "freedom and democracy", but that really was the goal, as a kind of "enlightened self-interest". After 9/11 this only became more acute: with the middle east part of the liberal hegemony, there would be no more Al-Qaeda (or they would be severely weakened).
Because they lied about the pretext, there was little to no broad discussion about any of this so they just operated in their ideological echo chamber. There was no one to really point out this entire notion was perhaps well-intentioned but also rather misguided and ignorant (to say nothing of the execution, which was profoundly misguided and ignorant).
Think of that the next time you drive through Arizona on I-40, avoiding the potholes, debris, and life-threatening disrepair.
I-40 runs a scant 2,556 miles from Barstow, CA to Benson, NC.
The Iraq invasion was wrong, but the occupation was worse.
Hindsight is 20/20, but as consequences go I think that making a mockery of the UN in general and it's sanctions and weapons inspection in particular was something that had far more nefarious consequences. Most of today's stability issues in the middle east are caused by Iran financing and supporting terror groups, which isn't something that Saddam Hussein would counter. Worst case scenario, Saddam's post-normalization rule would double down on this playbook. Gaddafi's fate and Israel's handling of Iran shows that this blend of terrorism is only curtailed by going after the source.
But yes, I broadly agree with you. Although I'm somewhat sceptical you can do this kind of state-building imposed from the outside in the first place though. But if you must do it, then the way the US went about it was clearly the wrong way.
It can't create regime change out of nothing, despite what it's detractors and its own propaganda might claim.
If you prefer to live in the psychological simplicity and safety of "neocons do evil because they're {evil,greedy,powerhungry,...}" or whatever then you're free to do so. But at that point you've also disqualified yourself from serious discussion.
It's not easy to give cliff notes, because there's too much to say. But in general, this was at the time when the USSR had still only relatively recently fallen and the US was not only essentially the king of the world, but had 0 meaningful competition for said claim. The goal of PNAC, and of the US political establishment, was to take this scenario, expand it, and perpetuate it. So the primary point was to prevent the rise of any other power and to essentially dominate the world primarily through being seen as the unquestioned premier military power, which would entail dramatic increases in military spending, regular demonstrations of power including preemptive and unilateral attacks on other countries if necessary, and so forth, wrapped in a tidy package of 'spreading democracy and freedom.'
Most famously they acknowledged that all of their goals would be quite difficult without, in their own words, something like a new Pearl Harbor: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor." 9/11 happened less than a year later, and everything went into overdrive, a trend that continued long after Bush was but a fading memory.
[1] - https://archive.org/details/RebuildingAmericasDefenses
I really think we're still recovering from the damage caused by Bush administration.
Not really. He was oppressing Iraq and ruling it with a cruel tight grip, but any regime change takes decades to normalize. You don't just replace a nation's political class overnight and expect to a) not have pushback, b) the successors having it easy or hitting the ground running.
Any serious observer could only agree. Colin Powell has much for which to answer, just for a start.
Oh come on. To whom in 2025 could you possibly expect to sell this nonsense excuse for an unbroken record of catastrophic neoconservative failure? Do you steal candy from babies also?
Furthermore, it's not as if though cruel grips can't grow back with another hand.
Project 2025 is this generation's equivalent and will be equally as successful.
Just another example of hubris. Then he got re-elected, which still blows my mind.
So maybe the reason was just the desire to clip those wings?
But he was holding it together. There might be a case for removing him, but note that nobody ever made that case without resting it on total fabrications. Because, while he was “bad” in a moral sense, there was no case for the war that could be made using the actual truth.
Is there any historical, legal, or strategic precedent that would make this even remotely feasible? And given the likely short political shelf life of the current U.S. administration, would any of this outlast the next four years anyway?
If our votes, even those of our elected representatives, are so easily manipulated, then what's the point?
My question isn't entirely rhetorical. I'm hoping someone can talk me out of that conclusion.
Are you sure you explained the thought process, or you just explained the justifications and the propaganda in support for a plan that had different purposes? Because of course if you need to convince an entire country (including its politicians and intelligentsia) to start a war, handwaving things such as "democracy", "domino effect" and spreading fears about WMDs is an obvious strategy.
Edit: I say subtle in the sense that those being manipulated are not particularly aware of being manipulated.
He was both a horror and a blight on a long spanning intelligence effort that intersected with the storied history of Anglo interaction with the "Musselmen" empire.
Long story short, you can't without a Muslim perspective.
I'm not sure I understand this. If mass murder, propaganda, war crimes, atrocities, torture, money laundering, drug & people trafficking, etc aren't literally evil - just 'normal Western capital' stuff - then what do you call evil?
There has never been a representative democracy. Not in the US, not anywhere. So it’s impossible to say whether it’s a goal that’s with pursuit.
The idea that one ever existed is also a fairy tale to be clear. This is the most globally “representative” system ever, if for no other reason than for the existence of global mobility. Despite global border protection, if you’re determined enough you can get anywhere. Truly.
People will argue in a mealymouth way about whether any form of democracy is functional and “best of all bad systems” is typically the masters level refrain.
It’s worth thinking beyond 20th century concepts like states
The original statement is that 40 infants were murdered during the Oct 7th massacre and infants were beheaded, no number given. This somehow mutated into the claim that all 40 murdered infants were beheaded so the claim could be ridiculed.
see comments of hacker news threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20800031
Turns out, if you come in with guns and start making demands the people will hate you. And you need the people. The people aren't just the dudes living in a country - they are the country.
It effectively eliminated Israel’s most significant regional threat and dismantled a key unifying figure for the Sunni Arab world.
Unlike other Sunni regimes that had largely aligned with American and Israeli interests, Saddam remained defiant.
The publicly stated reasons for the invasion—WMDs, democracy promotion, and anti-terrorism—were largely smokescreens meant to pacify public opinion, obscure the true motives, and keep people distracted and divided.
Then again, certain governments continue to act like we were still in the XIX century so "might makes right" (Russia, Israel, China, Morocco, Turkey...). If one is not ashamed to be in such an esteemed company, everything is possible.
> Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
> This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
> Develop and deploy global MISSILE DEFENSES to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world.
> Control the new “international commons” of space and “cyberspace,” and pave the way for the creation of a new military service - U.S. Space Forces - with the mission of space control.
They really just kept at it, huh. Although this part is interesting:
> The Joint Strike Fighter, with limited capabilities and significant technical risk, is a roadblock to future transformation and a sink-hole for needed defense funds.
Wonder why it wasn't cancelled then? Change of mind, or just too many greased palms?
The us was not going to invade Iran or Saudi Arabia. Fighting militias is difficult.
Having troops there allowed to get the enemy (jihadists) where it was, so troops would serve as a lightning rod.
Iraq was probably the place that was the easiest to invade without to many consequences, where nobody would cry about Saddam going away.
I'm trying to see what strategy it was, of course geopolitics are ugly.
They're not, you're simply misinformed. The US and Germany have been. Countries like Ireland, Spain and Scotland have not. A lot of others have been somewhere inbetween, often as weakly-held beliefs. It's been very low on the list of priorities for people in country like Belgium, they might have been nominally pro-Irsael, but without caring particularly much. Now that Israel has been genociding for a year, except for those first two almost every Western state is largely pro-Palestine.
Unless you're purely talking about governments instead of the populace, but that makes no sense in this context of talking about social media.
We quickly get into the "communism was never implemented properly" type of argument too. Sure a theoretical benevolent dictator might be better than a flawed democracy, the problem is that it never happens in real life
Democracies are all flawed but theocracies, monarchies, oligarchies, &c. certainly aren't better when it comes to cult of personalities and serving their own tribes
“Palestinians didn’t kill as many babies or do as many rapes as people say they did” does not cut as deep as you seem to think it does. The Oct 7th atrocities were atrocities, in the fullest sense of that word.
Both of them knew how to work the DC machine, but neither of them were ever bothered by little things like "facts". I don't think we'll ever know what they really believed.
Say the guys who were implicated and facing public humiliation or even punishment. Meta has already paid billions of dollars in fines and settlements because of this, so all these people not covering their asses would actually be surprising. But if you look at the raw evidence uncovered during the senate hearings, there is no doubt that it had a major effect on the election and beyond.
Heh you got a good point. People seem to expect way to much from their form of government and get desillusionized when it is not magic.
Like, join a party and see how the sausage is made.
They've tried twice already, the second time the Canadians (/British at the time) burned down the White House: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington
It's not and I didn't write, nor intend that.
Educated voters are a pre-condition for democracy and without that, democracy fails. It's similar to how market knowledge is a pre-condition of free markets as otherwise markets favour the biggest trader.
And Bush still destroyed it with ease. The idea that the USA couldn't annex Canada by force is just silly.
We'd fight, and slit your throats in the dark. But there are some of us who'd just roll over, or welcome you with open arms. Just look at the morons in Alberta talking USA annexation -- they're probably 10% of the population. That's enough for a Quisling regime.
I was in the offices of WNET/Channel 13 in Manhattan the day the news began moving among insiders that an invasion of Iraq was imminent. All these middle aged producers were stoked. If that was PBS you can only imagine what the vibe was like everywhere else.
Of course within a week people like this and their reporters were basically competing to get “embedded” with invading troops and tell an approved story. Wild times.