Posted on 08/19/2014 3:50:49 AM PDT by Kaslin
We have been at war with Iraq for 24 years, starting with Operations Desert Shield and Storm in 1990. Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that year, the propaganda machine began agitating for a US attack on Iraq. We all remember the appearance before Congress of a young Kuwaiti woman claiming that the Iraqis were ripping Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The woman turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and the story was false, but it was enough to turn US opposition in favor of an attack.
This month, yet another US president - the fifth in a row - began bombing Iraq. He is also placing in US troops on the ground despite promising not to do so.
The second Iraq war in 2003 cost the US some two trillion dollars. According to estimates, more than one million deaths have occurred as a result of that war. Millions of tons of US bombs have fallen in Iraq almost steadily since 1991.
What have we accomplished? Where are we now, 24 years later? We are back where we started, at war in Iraq!
The US overthrew Saddam Hussein in the second Iraq war and put into place a puppet, Nouri al-Maliki. But after eight years, last week the US engineered a coup against Maliki to put in place yet another puppet. The US accused Maliki of misrule and divisiveness, but what really irritated the US government was his 2011 refusal to grant immunity to the thousands of US troops that Obama wanted to keep in the country.
Early this year, a radical Islamist group, ISIS, began taking over territory in Iraq, starting with Fallujah. The organization had been operating in Syria, strengthened by US support for the overthrow of the Syrian government. ISIS obtained a broad array of sophisticated US weapons in Syria, very often capturing them from other US-approved opposition groups. Some claim that lax screening criteria allowed some ISIS fighters to even participate in secret CIA training camps in Jordan and Turkey.
This month, ISIS became the target of a new US bombing campaign in Iraq. The pretext for the latest US attack was the plight of a religious minority in the Kurdish region currently under ISIS attack. The US government and media warned that up to 100,000 from this group, including some 40,000 stranded on a mountain, could be slaughtered if the US did not intervene at once. Americans unfortunately once again fell for this propaganda and US bombs began to fall. Last week, however, it was determined that only about 2,000 were on the mountain and many of them had been living there for years! They didn't want to be rescued!
This is not to say that the plight of many of these people is not tragic, but why is it that the US government did not say a word when three out of four Christians were forced out of Iraq during the ten year US occupation? Why has the US said nothing about the Christians slaughtered by its allies in Syria? What about all the Palestinians killed in Gaza or the ethnic Russians killed in east Ukraine?
The humanitarian situation was cynically manipulated by the Obama administration -- and echoed by the US media -- to provide a reason for the president to attack Iraq again. This time it was about yet another regime change, breaking Kurdistan away from Iraq and protection of the rich oil reserves there, and acceptance of a new US military presence on the ground in the country.
President Obama has started another war in Iraq and Congress is completely silent. No declaration, no authorization, not even a debate. After 24 years we are back where we started. Isn't it about time to re-think this failed interventionist policy? Isn't it time to stop trusting the government and its war propaganda? Isn't it time to leave Iraq alone?
Excellent point
Appoint a military governor to rule Iraq until we decide that Iraqis are capable of self rule (no time table).
Take the oil fields an use the $$$$ to fund the occupation plus a little for the cost of the war.
Insurgents face summery execution if captured alive.
Any all uprisings against US rule are put down with overwhelming force via US air power or artillery. Ground troops for "mopping up" only.
Only allow approved friendly media into Iraq.
Put ordinary Iraqis to work building infrastructure.
Put former military Iraqis to work doing LE.
Insure equal rights for women and an education for girls.
Insure religious freedom for all
Allow Kurds to mostly govern themselves until an all inclusive government can the formed.
Make sure everyone that works/goes to school etc, has food and clean water.
The carrot, you play ball with the US you have plenty to eat and a few bucks in your pocket.
The stick, You oppose the US and you die, period, no exceptions.
I do commend you for being honest, though. I contend that the U.S. military has been functioning as the de facto armed forces of powerful royal families in the Middle East for years. This is why, for example, the role of the Saudi royals in the 9/11 attacks has never been objectively assessed.
God Bless them all.
Well, you can blame the peanut farmer from Georgia for all of this. It’s because of him that we have trouble with the mooslims
Removing Saddam has been disastrous for the entire region. His removal for payback for Scuds fired on Israel in the first war; nothing to do with US or regional security.
No, "we" didn't all. It was a dangerous time to oppose war fever at FR without being banned, but a small number did their best to walk that narrow line.
Is that a joke? The Middle East has been a turbulent, unstable region since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.
Amen, brother.
Oh yeah you’re right.
Then Dummy screwed up the renegotiations when he wanted to pull the remaining forces out.
Thanks for the correction.
The whole disaster that was the so-called “Arab Spring” opened my eyes to the fact that trying to bring Democracy to the Arabs was a fool’s errand, and that despots like Saddam, while they are bad guys, are par for the course for the Arab world, just as the case with Assad.....But the alternatives are even worse.
um yeah sure
invading a neighboring state over disputed historical territory claims and totally blowing off any shred of credibilty still retained by the UN was certainly not destabilizing to regional security
and the Saudis and other Gulf States (upon whom most of the free world, NOT just the US, depends for energy, and whose oilfields and coastal ports could have also been claimed by Saddam) were quite OK with it - surely Saddam’s invasion wouldn’t have set any precedent for other rogue states if it had not been challenged
major sarc
The SCUD statement (blame the Jooooos) is one of the dumbest accusations I’ve heard since 1992
According to estimates, more than one million deaths have occurred as a result of that war.
If Paul means a million casualties or civilian deaths, then the estimate that came up with that figure, that published in Lancet magazine, has become a byword for poor research methodology and is nearly universally recognized as inadequate and wildly inaccurate.
The US overthrew Saddam Hussein in the second Iraq war and put into place a puppet, Nouri al-Maliki.
One difficulty is that for all the noise made about "nation-building" among neocons and others, we actually did allow Maliki and his government sufficient autonomy to refuse us the ability to keep combat units in place, which is a major reason why we were unable to respond the the ISIS offensive. If he's a puppet, he's an awfully poor one.
What we accomplished in Iraq and in Afghanistan as well was to remove two state-level support sources from Islamic terrorism. That continues to be the case despite the current chaos in Iraq, which is trending the other direction, and despite whatever we can call the 0bama administration's "policy" in Afghanistan. That is what we've "accomplished in Iraq".
It is highly disingenuous for Paul to measure our success by our inability to produce peace in the region, something that has never been present going all the way back to ancient Sumeria. That wasn't why we invaded and it isn't something any reasonable person could expect.
See 17.
In the islamosphere, stability is a relative concept. We had some then. Now we have a shiitestorm that didn’t have to happen. I bet Mr. Netanyahu wishes he could put the clock back twelve years, even if he can’t say so in public. So do I.
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