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How much did the Iraq invasion contribute to today's terror climate?
- Thread starter Jack Remington
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I don't think that trying to uncover cause and effect and put events in a historical perspective is removing culpability or blame from the direct actors. In another context, it's perfectly valid to convict and sentence a person of murder but also to look at the influences that shaped that person's life so that we as a society can learn from experience and reform the environment that youth grow up in to maximize their chances of becoming productive members of society instead of criminals.
vietnam
truman giving the go-ahead to cross the 38th parallel
marshall forcing Chaing Kai-Shek to agree to cease fire allowing Mao to regroup and rearm in manchuria
Fallout-NL
Member
If we're lucky.
The Albatross
Member
Thank you for only quoting the first two sentences and leaving out the rest of my post and especially cutting out the very next sentence where I wrote "the invasion of Iraq certainly contributed to ISIS," or something along those lines.
Also, I appreciate your mangling of my longer post to make a trite, yet irrelevant, analogy to the criminal justice system.
While I stated that the Iraq invasion certainly contributed to the situation that we have today, I don't think that it is as simple as a "cause and effect." The Iraq invasion is certainly not "the cause" of Islamic terrorism ("the effect"), to use your words. A contributor, yes, but so are the half dozen other events I mentioned in my post, and thousands more. But when you reduce these to a "cause" and "effect" it's another form of orientalism, as if actors in the middle east have no personal agency other than being a reaction (or foils) to the West.
Nealand Liquor
Member
Of course it it. When a terrorist university is created what do people think the graduates will do?
The Albatross
Member
Vietnam was certainly worse, as far as "horrible foreign policy Olympics" go.
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
The Iraqi government weren't puppets so much as the US didn't even know who they were propping up there. They literally would take almost anyone. No idea what they were doing. Of course the guy the US went with ended up being the crazy antagonist that they were hoping to avoid.
But we tried to create puppets. That's the problem.
The Albatross
Member
Who forgets that Bin Laden was in Afghanistan...? The Taliban harboring Al Qaeda was one of the primary reasons for going to war in Afghanistan.
Beyond that, though, the Middle East wasn't "mostly peaceful" prior to the Iraq invasion... unless we're taking a salaciously broad view of what constitutes "peace." Afghanistan had been in continued conflict since the fall of the Soviet Union, Israel and Palestinians were in open conflict with the First Intifada, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and there was a region-wide war (and that only followed an almost 10-year-long war between Iraq and Iran), Lebanon had just emerged from a decades long civil war, there were two civil wars in Yemen over ~10 years, there was open warfare in Iraq between northern Kurds and Ba'athists throughout the 1990s, the second Intifada started in 2000, the US had open hostilities with Saddam Hussein including a bombing campaign in 1998 or 1999, and, of course, prior to the IRaq War, the US, 4 other Western countries, and a handful of other actors, declared war on Afghanistan in 2001.
This isn't peace or "relative peace."
Further, arguing "relative peace through dictatorships," probably shouldn't be a peace worth striving for. It's very Kissingerian, though, who once said (paraphrasing) "I would rather have order without liberty, than liberty without order." And it seems true, as today the Middle East seemingly has neither.
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
Not true. The US really wanted minimal influence in the creation of their government, which was a mistake.
The big mistake was al-Maliki. The US just couldn't find anyone else, and they had no idea he'd go after Sunnis behind the US's back, which escalated the violence and antagonism with the US.
I still feel the war wasn't the best thing. Then you look at al the lies. But I still think getting rid of Saddam was a good idea. It's not like he was a nice person, he killed millions.
But everyone went in there with out a clear plan of what to do when Saddam was gone. Which is why we have the problems today.
But everyone went in there with out a clear plan of what to do when Saddam was gone. Which is why we have the problems today.
Disagree. Everything you mentioned was resolving itself. Saddam was actually repairing his relationships. Yemen was stabilizing, Lebanon was stabilizing, Algeria (North Africa) was stabilizing.
The bombing campaigns in Iraq then were US created over the same false pretenses.
The Middle East was getting better but then an unnecessary invasion happened. It created chaos that ultimately led to what we have now.
Your entire argument is based on there is dictators. My response is so what? There has been dictators for millennia.
Disagree and you just contradict yourself in your second paragraph. You admit that America stuck someone there.
The Albatross
Member
To your last sentence, that's actually not my argument at all. That was your argument, I was saying that your argument is Kissingerian, which is fine if that's what you want to model it on.
My argument was that there was no relative peace, and your fantasy that the world was "stabilizing" is bizarre. How short of a window do we need for your "relative peace" throughout the region? A few days? A few weeks? There were active wars throughout the Middle East throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s.
I'm not justifying the invasion of Iraq or Western involvement in the Middle East, but your statement that "You can argue that the middle east was in relative peace until the invasion of Iraq," is flatly false. You can't argue that because there was no "relative peace."
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
No.
The US were not writing their constitution, or putting their own puppets in place. They were looking for Iraqis of all denominations to fairly represent the people of Iraq.
What they got was a government that was oppressing Kurds and Sunnis, shutting them out of fair representation- which was exactly what the US was trying to avoid. Consequently, we have the situation we have now. Al-Maliki, who the US backed even though they didn't know him (nobody else wanted the job or was a good enough candidate), is one of the root causes of ISIS.
If you research this topic, you'll see that it's not as simple as you think.
fatigues_gasolini
Member
The dollops podcast i feel gives the best explanation of how the bush administration and the people put in charge completely fucked that country and the region for decades.
Not by a lot. Yes isis wouldn't have existed if not for the Iraq invasion, but isis grew out of al Qaeda, which existed well before the invasion. In general, ISIS, nusra, al Qaeda, they're just the flavor du jour of a trend that started with the Iranian revolution. Military Islamic hardliners jamming their fingers in the side of the West. Religious hooliganism in order to scare decadent kaffirs. The terrorists of the last strikes don't even originate in the middle east.
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
Al-Qaeda is an enemy of ISIS, and the groups who ended up forming ISIS were fighting alongside the US against Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
What are you talking about? ISIS was an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Iraq before it broke away from Al Qaeda in 2014.
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
No. The Sunni insurgents in Iraq are the primary founders of ISIS, and they hate Al Qaeda to the point that they fought alongside the US Military (paid off, but still) to kill Al Qaeda in Iraq.
WayneMorse
Banned
This may not be a popular opinion, but to be honest if you value a safe world the world would've been safer with Saddam still in power than the current Iraqi government. The fact that US government were able to get away with alleging that a secular pan-Arab nationalist dictator collaborated with radical Islamists like al-Qaeda shows how fucking stupid a lot of people are.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
i think ISIS in and of itself existing or not is sort of irrelevant -- we've had groups like Al Qaeda, boko haram, etc well before they were established.
i think it was only a matter of time before we had a "tech savvy, well-propagandized" terrorist group. I guess you could call it a 21st century terrorist group.
the war in Iraq accelerated that, and made it have a better structure due to the ex-Iraq military.
i think it was only a matter of time before we had a "tech savvy, well-propagandized" terrorist group. I guess you could call it a 21st century terrorist group.
the war in Iraq accelerated that, and made it have a better structure due to the ex-Iraq military.
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