Iraq war

Urban Space said:

That's exactly why we're out there! Oil! Bush tried to drill in a Canadian National Park! That's how desperate we all are! Now we're having a go at Iran, who also have a lovely stock of oil. Apparently they're not allowed nuclear technology when we, the western world have been using it for ages! Who are we to dictate what they can and can't do!

I think Iraq needed someone like Saddam to sort the country out. But haven't we now imposed our democratic system on them?

Grrr! :x!

Liam

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OK, Liam. Are you ready for a friendly rebuke?

1) The cost of the war to the US is far more than any oil profits realised by US companies. While the oil supply may have factored into the equation, I think it's quite unfair to imply oil is the motive when there's not a shred of evidence to support the claim. Plus, many thousands of families and friends have lost loved ones in this conflict.

2) Life runs a lot easier when we demonstrate respect. It's President Bush, not Bush.

3) The president tried to convince the government to allow drilling in Alaska (which is part of the US, not Canada). There are huge oil reserves under the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. The issue has been one of conservation versus need for fuel, not profits or national sovereignty.

4) Iran tried once before to build nuclear weapons. Israel set the program back years by bombing the facility. Now, the president of Iran has called for Israel to be wiped from the face of the map and is belligerently ignoring calls to stop building nuclear weapons. Should we just stand idly back and watch?

5) Iraq didn't need a ruler who gassed and otherwise killed hundreds of thousands of his own people.

I'm convinced that, when history judges the Iraq war in one hundred years' time, it will be seen as a pivotal point in the history of the Middle East. By then, the entire region may have seen many decades of democratic rule.

Urban Space said:

:lol:! I stand corrected! Lesson learned !

Liam

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I need correcting on many things, so please take the opportunity when I need it!

My perspective is a little different, not only because I live in the US but because I travel extensively (I returned this morning from Peru, and I'm off to Suriname over the weekend). I've learned never to believe the media when it comes to a country's reputation. There's no substitute for visiting the place.

- For example, Venezuela is getting creamed by the media right now, but it's capital (Caracas) is a modern and attractive city.

- Vietnam, though regarded by some as a strong economic nation, is just plain awful. Every building looks like it's about to fall down.

- Many people are too scared to travel to Israel because of everything they hear on the news. I've been there many times, and it's a very safe place.

- France is ridiculed by many English-speaking countries. While the French do have a tendancy to say non rather a lot, it's a great country.

- When we first came to the US, we were warned never to go out alone because it's not safe. I've never once felt unsafe here in 20 years.

The list goes on and on. Of course, I'm a natural contrarian anyway, so I challenge everything. I do worry, however, about the power of the media in influencing popular opinion.

Liam, as your life and career progress, I hope you have the opportunity to travel. It's one of the best educations in life.

MacMyDay said:

I do recall him recently denying the existence of the Holocaust too. Not the most intelligent idea when the United States don't already take to your regime too kindly.

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He has also stated that the EU should relocate all Jews to a new homeland in the heart of Europe. He also stated publicly that he hopes Israel's leader dies.

None of us wants war. Chamberlain didn't want war, but ignoring the Nazi threat didn't help. I'm sure that Churchill didn't want war, but he did what was needed to defend freedom. Sometimes, there are occasions when world leaders must have the guts to face reality and to make the tough decisions.

Despite the heavy criticism that the US and Britain have faced, I do believe it took guts to go into Iraq. It's no surprise that many of the countries with supporting troops in Iraq are from countries (e.g., Poland) whose people formerly lived under an oppressive regime themselves.

Iraq was an appalling piece of US opportunism. We were deliberatetly missled by Bush and Blair about the reasons for invasion which was only about the strategic oil and military interests in the region.

My objections against invading the country are mainly about the cynical lying that Bush et al did about WMD and links to terrorism and their ultimate intentions than about the plain stupidity of pissing off the entire region and making the terrorist threat worse.

They treated us as fools, if they'd been honest I might have found a reason for supporting it - but they just lied.

cjd said:

My objections against invading the country are mainly about the cynical lying that Bush et al did about WMD and links to terrorism and their ultimate intentions than about the plain stupidity of pissing off the entire region and making the terrorist threat worse.

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While intelligence does appear to have been sorely lacking, I don't believe that leaders deliberately misled us. What if the intelligence had been right, they did nothing, and WMD were used against Western targets? Could they take that risk? Decisions are not always black and white; they involve probabilities and scenarios and instinct. In this light, the justification for some actions will always look suspect to some.

I don't think for one minute that the terrorist threat is worse. The number of attacks are far less than we could have expected after 9/11. Elections have been held in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian territories. Even Saudi Arabia is toying with limited democracy. In the end, democracy will allow individuals to play an active role in government and to address those miseries that force those without hope into terrorism. Hope is a wonderful panacea.

What does concern me is the increasing number of people who believe that, if we just leave them alone, terrorists will suddenly become loving and law-abiding citizens who'll leave the West alone. Nonsense! If they had their way, they'd bomb Israel out of existence, wreak havoc in Western cities, and impose their medieval systems of cruelty and suppression on more and more cowering populations. I'd rather take the battle to them than face heightened terrorism on our own doorsteps.

Sadly, it's no longer the world we once knew.

I think it's too simplistic to ask are you for or against the war.

I was born in Baghdad, Iraq and still have family there.

The reason I think it is difficult to answer is because if one is against the war but against saddam what is the answer. Maybe an uprising.

In 1995 I went along with my family to Amman, Jordan where we reunited with my grandfather and other relatives who live in Iraq. There I was relaid the story about the first gulf war in 1991 from eye witnesses. I was informed that Iraq in 1991 was on the verge of an uprising and that people were revolting against the regime. Apparently the regime was being weakened but with the help of American army helicopters, the regime obtained information about possible pockets of insurgences and wiped them out. This was done by a helicopter hovering over the position of opposition rebellion and moving out when the regime's army got this message and attacked.

So really America did not want Saddam over thrown by his own people. Unfortunately we are in this mess now of a war which could have been avoided if the Iraqi people had been given a chance. They did not have outside support. Democracy in Iraq is not ideal for some outside countries because the majority want to integrate religion within it. This is seen as unfavourable by Western countries and thus democracy will never really be attained there...until the balance of power and technology is shifted.

Eiman,

You're very qualified to speak on this topic, and I sincerely hope your family in Iraq will ultimately benefit from what's going on.

Do you think that the new Iraqi constitution, which espouses freedom of religion, equality of opportunity for women, and so on, will prevent a religious majority from imposing harsh laws on the population? Will it defend the religious minorities in the country?

It may surprise some people but the religious establishment in Iraq do not recommend an Iranian style ruling. The people of Iraq are not the same as the people of Iran.

I have lived in England most of my life so I cannot claim any qualification on Iraq. But I can only inform you of what my eyes and ears have witnessed.

For example, the era before saddam there was a lot of tolerance amongst all religions i.e. christians and jews. We visited holland shortly after our trip in Jordan and got in touch with our long lost Iraqi Jewish friends (neighbours of my grandfather and good friends). They had to leave Iraq when Saddam came into power. When I met them I was struck at how much similar in culture we were that each others religions didn't really matter. To top it off we all met in a 'Christian Iraqi' restaurant .

There doesn't seem to be a inter religious problem between them. The problems of Iraq, I think, comes from outside interference. The terrorists that are attacking that country seem to come from outside the country as far as I am aware. The crimes that take place within Iraq are due to the fact that Saddam set free a million or so criminals from the prisons to cause chaos.

Women in Iraq have always been the 'luckiest' in the middle-east when it came to jobs and education. So there is no issue there. Most of my mother's generation have graduated to at least a BSc and work for most of their lives...in fact Iraq in the 70s was way ahead of many countries in this respect including western countries. At one point the Iraqi dinar was stronger than the british pound!

But that was then this is now. If Iraq IS left to it's own people i.e ideally terrorists and foreign invasion left then Iraqis can get on with rebuilding their country the way they see fit. As it is America cannot leave because I think there has been planted the seed of conflict and it does need serious policing.

I have to say I dont know why we invaded Iraq.

Before the war the question "why Iraq, why now?" was asked but, in my view, never really answered.

It seemed an ideal time to not invade Iraq as we were meant to be busy going after Bin Laden and trying to establish stability in Afghanistan at the time.

(both jobs we've made a complete horlicks of)

I've long been of the opinion that, if you're trying to get me to do something that is genuinely in my best interests, you simply have to show me the reasons why I should do it.

And a corollary of that is, if someone gives me false reasons why I should do something, it's probably because there aren't good reasons.

Now, it was quite clear to me that the reasons our government gave us a bunch of reasons, none of which quite made sense and none of which answered the "why now" question.

Steve doesn't believe that "leaders deliberately misled us", but I can't agre with him on this. I remember Rumsfeld declaring that not only were there weapons, but "we know where they are".

I would call that deliberately misleading.

In his drive to get parliamentary support for the war, Tony Blair, in outlining the weapons that Iraq "had", quoted a report that pre-dated the Gulf War in 1991 (but failed to mention his date of his source).

Now, some may believe that Blair thought that the weapons Iraq had around 1990 was a strong indication of what they'd have in 2003 despite the fact that Iraq:

- had the crap bombed out of their military 1991
- underwent years of UN weapons inspections which catalogued massive dismantling of their weaponry
- had years of sanctions while time degraded their capability.

Personally, I find that hard to believe.

As far as I'm concerned, it's not a question that the UK government lied to make a case for war.

If it looks like a dog, smells like a dog and barks like a dog, it's a dog.

Criminal courts use the phrase "beyond reasonable doubt" and I'd say it's way beyond.

Now, what I'm curious about is why they lied to us.

Pre-war, it seemed to me, as Steve has suggested, that the war was going to cost a lot more than the US/UK might save in oil prices.

However, it has been suggested that the industrial emergence of China could have seen Iraqi oil heading east rather than west in the coming decades. So, perhaps that argument isn't as simple as I first thought.

I find it hard to believe the invasion had anything to do with the happiness or freedom of the Iraqi people, as that hadn't been much of a concern to us in the way we applied sanctions to Iraq.

Nor has our desire for democracy or human rights directed our relations with the Saudi government or led us to action against Mugabe regime.

(also, the suffering of the Iraqi people only became a reason to go to war when all the other reasons started to look threadbare).

So, I'm still confused about the whole thing.

So, I'll throw it open to the group: why Iraq, why 2003?

Steve

PS

It's no surprise that many of the countries with supporting troops in Iraq are from countries (e.g., Poland) whose people formerly lived under an oppressive regime themselves.

Looking at opinion polls in the Eastern European countries, shows little public support for war. Maybe people who had recently lived under foreign oppression are against occupying other countries?

From CBS on 6th march 2003:

"In Latvia, 81 percent were opposed to military action in Iraq.

In Hungary, a Gallup poll showed 82 percent oppose military action “under any circumstances.” In the Czech Republic, 67 percent are against military action.

Public opinion in Poland is perhaps the most pro-American. Fifty-two per cent say Poland should back the U.S. politically, but 63 percent oppose sending Polish troops to help."

easyasit said:

We went in without the UN agreeing. The USA and Britain are not the policeman of the world, that is why we have the United nations.

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The same UN whose senior leaders made millions of dollars in personal profit through the oil-for-foor program that it administered. The same UN that has Libya chairing its human rights team. I agree that we should listen to other nations, but should we become subject to such a corrupt organisation?

easyasit said:

This is a strange decision to make especially as the rulers of the Sudan and Zimbabwee are just as bad if not more so. Yes we decide Iraq is to benefit.

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True, they are. Shame on those in the UN who did nothing to prevent the death of over a million people in Rwanda and watch while millions more are murdered in the Sudan.

The Middle East is a different kettle of fish. It's not to say that African lives are cheaper, because they should not be viewed that way. A conflict in Africa will remain local; a conflict in the Middle East would become global. I suspect this is one reason that Britain and the US decided to go ahead without UN approval.

dagr said:

...there is certainly greater terrorist activity in Iraq, mainly against Iraqis

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The numbers dying today are a small fraction of the number killed under Saddam's rule. Of course, those deaths were never reported on the nightly news. Also not reported on the news are the number of schools opening, the number of new hospitals, the size and effectiveness of the Iraqi army, and so on. This leads me to believe that the media has an agenda.