yea but the basic reasoning behind taking saddam out of power was sound... he was acting like he had wmd's and he certainly would have pursued them once he got out from under the sanctions.
iraq is a mess yea but so is a lot of the middle east which we haven't invaded. maybe the sectarian war that is going on now is enabled by the lack of a saddam dictatorship to hold things in place, but that doesn't mean the current mess is more dangerous than saddam would have been. there are elements in iran who want nukes and that was certainly one of saddam's supreme ambitions. we could have been looking at a nuclear arms race in the middle east for all we know. lets not pretend like these rivalries were invented in 2003... we would most likely be looking at a volatile situation either way. it's only guesswork which situation would end up worse overall. but since when is it good strategy to do nothing about a threat because another one will probably pop up later?
Saddam said he didn't have them and the UN inspectors overall backed that up, multiple allied countries were against the US invasion and considering the US's official stance is that the WMDs in question were not found, the reasoning of "oh well, he would have maybe pursued them" is not sound reasoning at all. We literally demolished a country and 200,000+ civilians died (and continue to die) because of "maybe" going by your reasoning.
Saddam was an insane dick, but he kept what the US considers enemies in check in Iraq since these same lunatics were a threat to his dictatorship. To insist that it would have been worse to not have invaded is a complete guess. By all accounts, he was not involved in the 9/11 attacks and invading Iraq turned out to be a cluster****. Those are facts we can see today, not guesses.
Don't you find it a little insane that the country which not only has the most (possibly second) nuclear weapons and is the only country to ever have used them in aggression is telling other countries "no, you can't have nukes"?
Speaking of "worse to do nothing". India and Pakistan both have nukes and they generally hate each other, why aren't you worried that the US isn't taking away their nuclear devices?
North Korea who routinely wags its little dick while making threats. No push for military action against them. Why?
he admitted the in trials that he was giving the UN inspectors the run around to make it appear like he was hiding WMDs. he was obligated to say he didn't have them to try to get out from under the sanctions but he also was keeping up the ruse that he secretly did have them to keep the iranians from spotting any weakness.
he was an insane dictator with an obsession with WMDs. the iranians are already pursuing nuclear technologies and there are factions that want the bomb. that is without saddam next door. you really think its a stretch that having him still in power would fuel that drive for nuclear weapons even further, and in return give him even more incentives to pursue his own nuclear ambitions? it's not as much as a maybe as you are suggesting. saddam without wmd's as part of his geopolitical power is a bit like the cold war without nukes.
no, i think it is to be expected. hypocritical, sure. but probably a safer bet than putting them in the hands of some rogue dictatorship.
because they already have nukes. that's the entire point. if saddam had nukes he wouldn't ever once have to fire them to see his geopolitical leverage increase.
Which did nothing to support the Bush cabinet's reasoning for war, the original point of the convo. So Saddam was shifty, he still didn't have WMDs and he wasn't involved with Al Qaeda or 9/11. Al Qaeda were his enemy, if anything. Bush later admitted that the majority of intelligence he built the war on was wrong. Which considering the amount of lives lost (and still being lost) is inexcusable.
Not impossible, no. But I could just as easily assert that if Bush didn't attack Iraq, we would have world peace right now or something via the butterfly effect. But your assertion is little more than dismissing the issue. ie "So what if we invaded Iraq based on wrong intel at best, outright lies at worst. The world is probably better off right now." "Probably" does not outweigh the current factual mess.
Glad you admit to the hypocrisy. And see below.
"if saddam had nukes he wouldn't ever once have to fire them" if that is the case, then your previous stance doesn't make any sense. ie we took out Saddam and wrecked Iraq because be might have pursued building nukes, but he never would have used them if he had.
sure. but i do think it is relevant that he was trying to give the very impression that they formed. it's a bit different from then conjuring up the claim that he had wmds out of nowhere based on their own agenda.
but i guess you are ultimately right, even i don't support the bush admin's emphasis on there being stockpiles of wmd's nor their hinting at his links with al qaeda.. i just think he was a well established and known threat that was going to have to be dealt with eventually one way or another. so my top priority isn't the integrity of the bush admin's propaganda campaign. the fact that saddam was taken out of power outweighs the bush admin's shadiness in my mind.
you don't think the world 'probably' being better off is a good reason to justify a war? i mean you can argue that point but its strange that you brush it off as if it doesn't matter. yea things are a cluster **** now... thing is they haven't not been a cluster **** in a pretty long time. if you want to blame sectarian war on the lack of a dictator to oppress them all then feel free. i think that issue was there long before either of the gulf wars.
two points.
1) yea he most likely wouldn't have used them. north korea most likely won't use them. but the situation between north korea and south korea and the situation between iran and iraq (if they were both nuclear) would be far more likely to produce an all out nuclear war than the united states or china or any other major world power having nukes will. because although they are cynical and selfish, they are not quite as desperate. imo north korea is probably the scariest situation in the world right now. if we could have some how prevented them from getting a nuke then i would say we should have done it. because why take the chance with these types of maniacal dictatorships having nukes?
2) the us has geopolitical interests just like any other country. giving saddam more leverage hurts the geopolitical interests of the US and its allies in the region. not to mention it makes his dictatorship seemingly permanent and gives more power to and oppressive, genocidal dictatorship.
Glad you agree on the BS that the war was sold on. Going to have to agree to disagree on "it was better in the end regardless of the truth" viewpoint. That is reckless thinking, imo.
I don't buy into the "world is probably better" mindset. I have no idea if it's better compared to something else (ie not invading Iraq) since I can't see alternate realities. I go with 'what I see now' and what I see now, it's a ****ing mess due to the US invading Iraq and taking out Saddam and his two whacky sons who were seemingly enemies with Al Qaeda and any religious zealot types.
Probably going to have to agree to disagree again as I'm all but done going in circles. But a couple points myself
-Saddam wasn't/isn't the only dictator in the world and Iraq in it's current state is a threat to the US and its allies.
-The US supported Saddam's rise to power cos of the Iranian revolution/the rise of the ayatollahs; he was a lunatic back then as well
i was going to leave it at that but one last thing i would say is that while i agree the sectarian war in iraq is a result of the intervention there in the more immediate sense, the rivalries which fuel them go back way further than that. in fact it was looked at as a predictable outcome by many even while the intervention was still only being considered. so there is the implication in this that in order for iraq to exist without this sort of 'crisis' there would have to be a permanent dictatorship like the one saddam had which was maintained by terror and brutality.
if this is the case then basically it seems like the question would come down to whether or not such a permanent dictatorship is possible and if so how it would be maintained. indications from the rest of the middle east (syria, libya, etc) currently give us a glimpse of how things go down when there is an insurrection from the people against such a dictatorship.
so with this in mind it seems like there are two basic paths iraq could have gone down, with or without the war. 1) saddam could have become a sort of perpetual despot and international nuisance similar to what we see with north korea today. 2) a long and bloody revolution which, if successful, almost certainly leads to the same type of sectarian violence which iraq is experiencing today. i am open to any other alternatives to these scenarios.
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Last edited by red g jacks on Sep 22nd, 2014 at 05:24 AM
Saddam was the one keeping the extremists in check in Iraq.
People blame him for the war for no reason.
He didn't have WMDs. The US invaded Iraq not for those but for financial/resource reasons.
US knew the sensitivity of the situation under Saddam's rule and took advantage of that. They made Saddam the fall guy/scapegoat.
The US, being the capitalist leech that it is, wanted to take control of oil and gas resources, like they always do when they colonize/invade other territories.
Unbeknownst to them, the repercussions would be far worse than they expected.
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"Farewell, Damos... Ash, Pikachu... And you. All of my beloved." -- Arceus
well, they didn't want him monopolizing said resources through his military. that was the major concern with the first gulf war. that he could basically take over a good portion of the oil hosting regions. they always want to shore up access for US companies, of course.
he didn't have WMDs at the time cause he needed to get out from under the sanctions. but WMDs were so central to his foreign policy that even when he was complying with the sanctions, he had to make it look like he still had secret stashes of WMDs to keep his enemies at bay.
Last edited by red g jacks on Sep 22nd, 2014 at 07:02 AM
As I said in another thread, secular dictators in the Middle East aren't the solution to Muslim extremists. In most cases their brutal repression of their people makes a potent recruitment aid for nascent groups like ISIS. Cruel groups like ISIS arise from cruel circumstances.
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“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
"The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singularly ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here."
Sad to see that average citizens are now taking it up upon themselves to fight off this plague of evil.
Instead of the world governments working together to destroy this evil force, all they do is add more evils to this world with their lust for greed and deception.
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"Farewell, Damos... Ash, Pikachu... And you. All of my beloved." -- Arceus
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