Iraq War 10 Years On

[Locksmith]

Another great loss brought about by this war was the belief in US "superiority".

The higher moral grounds (as opposed to China, Russia, Iran etc.) based on rethorical values such as human/civil rights, freedom, a fair legal system, transparency, the rule of law, democracy etc etc were certainly eroded in the eyes of the world.

The US lost its undisputed edge here, and risks to lose the title of "champion of the free world".

I'd say the schizofrenic stance of US foreign policy may have become more apparent too as it kept working steadily to bring down secular dictators (Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad) while supporting religious freaks who export Jihad and who are at least as potentially harmful and are even more opposed to our Western values (Saudi Arabia, Bahrein, Qatar).

If an Islamic Caliphate ever emerges from the mess in the Middle East, the mullahs will have plenty of reasons to thank the US.

Anyway, while trillions of dollars were spent without significant positive results, there was also a great loss in terms of "soft power", which is a fundamental element of leadership.

 

[GameTheory]

...when thousands of American troops are dying every day and more are dying maybe even as we speak you tell me: how can you enjoy " the good life? " ROME IS BURNING, SON...

 

[tenderman100]

Comparing Lincoln, FDR and Ike to people like Cheney and Romney, does not warrant a thoughtful response.

You are intellectually dishonest, a particularly distasteful trait in an educated individual.

If your knowledge of American military history is remiss, perhaps you might consider joining your local community college for a couple of courses in American history.

My god, Lincoln, who famously struggled with the moral questions of sending young men into battle to die. FDR, who resisted entry into the second world war until the homeland was invaded, and then IKE, a distinguished career officer who actually learned something from his tenure and passed along perhaps the most ominous warning in US history; the unchecked growth of military industrial complex.

Two republicans and a democrat. Three examples of real leadership in difficult times. Chicken-hawks? Perhaps you don't understand the meaning of the term.

Well done Tenderman.

By the way, I support mandatory military service for all citizens. We all serve, or nobody serves. You being the hawk you are, perhaps its not too late to stop by your local recruiting office for a tour of duty with your local National Guard unit. I would be happy to write a letter in support of an age waiver in your case. I'm sure they could use an educated man such as yourself in a support role such as public affairs. Trade in your px-whatever for a Marine PFT?

Hey, all of you can say you "bitch slapped me" or whatever, I could give two shits. I have more brainpower in one CC of my gray matter than most folks on here have in their entire craniums.

The fact is that those who use the term "chicken hawk" are logic challenged because the definition is simply this -- that unless someone actually GOES in harm's way he has NO RIGHT to send others in harms way.

Is that the definition, or not? If it is, then my three examples ARE chickenhawks.

Meanwhile, if Bush and Cheyney agonzied over the deaths of Americans, does that exempt them from this label?

Also, think about scale. Lincoln hitched his wagon to Grant, who was a notorious waster of men. Bush freed 25 million, an entire nation, from a hideous dictatorship, at a much much lower cost.

As for Eisenhower, ever hear of the Huertgen Forest? A complete and total waste of men and treasure to no particular strategic end. And how was the end game of the Battle of the Bulge played out? Instead of simply staying put and letting the surrounded Germans waste away, Ike decided to uselessly slog it out one day at a time to shrink the pocket, as thousands more Americans died. But, hey, that's OK...Ike looked smart in his jacket, even after he fucked Kay Summersby.

Would you bang?

I call bullshit on all you high minded righteous types.

 

[GameTheory]

OMG this thread is bringing back memories

 

[LostGringo]

Comparing Lincoln, FDR and Ike to people like Cheney and Romney, does not warrant a thoughtful response.

You are intellectually dishonest, a particularly distasteful trait in an educated individual.

If your knowledge of American military history is remiss, perhaps you might consider joining your local community college for a couple of courses in American history.

My god, Lincoln, who famously struggled with the moral questions of sending young men into battle to die. FDR, who resisted entry into the second world war until the homeland was invaded, and then IKE, a distinguished career officer who actually learned something from his tenure and passed along perhaps the most ominous warning in US history; the unchecked growth of military industrial complex.

Two republicans and a democrat. Three examples of real leadership in difficult times. Chicken-hawks? Perhaps you don't understand the meaning of the term.

Well done Tenderman.

By the way, I support mandatory military service for all citizens. We all serve, or nobody serves. You being the hawk you are, perhaps its not too late to stop by your local recruiting office for a tour of duty with your local National Guard unit. I would be happy to write a letter in support of an age waiver in your case. I'm sure they could use an educated man such as yourself in a support role such as public affairs. Trade in your px-whatever for a Marine PFT?

Hey, all of you can say you "bitch slapped me" or whatever, I could give two shits. I have more brainpower in one CC of my gray matter than most folks on here have in their entire craniums.

The fact is that those who use the term "chicken hawk" are logic challenged because the definition is simply this -- that unless someone actually GOES in harm's way he has NO RIGHT to send others in harms way.

Is that the definition, or not? If it is, then my three examples ARE chickenhawks.

Meanwhile, if Bush and Cheyney agonzied over the deaths of Americans, does that exempt them from this label?

Also, think about scale. Lincoln hitched his wagon to Grant, who was a notorious waster of men. Bush freed 25 million, an entire nation, from a hideous dictatorship, at a much much lower cost.

As for Eisenhower, ever hear of the Huertgen Forest? A complete and total waste of men and treasure to no particular strategic end. And how was the end game of the Battle of the Bulge played out? Instead of simply staying put and letting the surrounded Germans waste away, Ike decided to uselessly slog it out one day at a time to shrink the pocket, as thousands more Americans died. But, hey, that's OK...Ike looked smart in his jacket, even after he fucked Kay Summersby.

Would you bang?

I call bullshit on all you high minded righteous types.

"I have more brainpower in one CC of my gray matter than most folks on here have in their entire craniums."

This, from a man of self-proclaimed superior intellect.

 

[Captain Ahab]

Comparing Lincoln, FDR and Ike to people like Cheney and Romney, does not warrant a thoughtful response.

You are intellectually dishonest, a particularly distasteful trait in an educated individual.

If your knowledge of American military history is remiss, perhaps you might consider joining your local community college for a couple of courses in American history.

My god, Lincoln, who famously struggled with the moral questions of sending young men into battle to die. FDR, who resisted entry into the second world war until the homeland was invaded, and then IKE, a distinguished career officer who actually learned something from his tenure and passed along perhaps the most ominous warning in US history; the unchecked growth of military industrial complex.

Two republicans and a democrat. Three examples of real leadership in difficult times. Chicken-hawks? Perhaps you don't understand the meaning of the term.

Well done Tenderman.

By the way, I support mandatory military service for all citizens. We all serve, or nobody serves. You being the hawk you are, perhaps its not too late to stop by your local recruiting office for a tour of duty with your local National Guard unit. I would be happy to write a letter in support of an age waiver in your case. I'm sure they could use an educated man such as yourself in a support role such as public affairs. Trade in your px-whatever for a Marine PFT?

Hey, all of you can say you "bitch slapped me" or whatever, I could give two shits. I have more brainpower in one CC of my gray matter than most folks on here have in their entire craniums.

The fact is that those who use the term "chicken hawk" are logic challenged because the definition is simply this -- that unless someone actually GOES in harm's way he has NO RIGHT to send others in harms way.

Is that the definition, or not? If it is, then my three examples ARE chickenhawks.

Meanwhile, if Bush and Cheyney agonzied over the deaths of Americans, does that exempt them from this label?

Also, think about scale. Lincoln hitched his wagon to Grant, who was a notorious waster of men. Bush freed 25 million, an entire nation, from a hideous dictatorship, at a much much lower cost.

As for Eisenhower, ever hear of the Huertgen Forest? A complete and total waste of men and treasure to no particular strategic end. And how was the end game of the Battle of the Bulge played out? Instead of simply staying put and letting the surrounded Germans waste away, Ike decided to uselessly slog it out one day at a time to shrink the pocket, as thousands more Americans died. But, hey, that's OK...Ike looked smart in his jacket, even after he fucked Kay Summersby.

Would you bang?

I call bullshit on all you high minded righteous types.

"I have more brainpower in one CC of my gray matter than most folks on here have in their entire craniums."

This, from a man of self-proclaimed superior intellect.

I don't see how a superior intellect can be that partisan.

In any case, I was a very young man when the bombs dropped in Iraq and was outraged at the lack of anti-war effort on the part of the Democrats. I was pushed more to the left as a result of the war and became quite an activist.

As of now I view the Iraq Wars as my Vietnam. It was a controversial war that, in the very least, could have been avoided with the 20/20 lens we have now. Whether if it was justified or not will be debated until the end of time.

I know for a fact that my confidence in the U.S. government, politicians, the capitalist system, and American foreign ventures for altruistic reasons has been shattered to the point of non-existence.

 

[LostGringo]

You will excuse me for using a quote from Wikipedia, but as this is "term", as opposed to a "word" - a definition from such as source will have to suffice. I find this definition satisfactory for my use of the term "chickenhawk", with the emphasis on "strongly supports war", yet "actively" avoided service. Cheney was a "chickenhawk" (and a pussy) because he was a hawk and draft dodger. (Bush was not a "chickenhawk", as he served in the Air National Guard as a fighter pilot. Flying an F102 is serious shit and I don't look down at anyone who volunteered for hazardous duty whether I agree with his politics or not.)
I have never heard any respected historian refer to Lincoln, FDR or IKE as a "hawk". All of these individuals were discussed in the Basic School, that I attended following commission as a 1st Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. Perhaps you should submit a scholarly effort to the Corps educational command so that their roles in American military history may be reflected more accurately. I would be happy to provide an address for submission of your research efforts. In addition, with regard to "actively" avoiding service, I don't recall these former Presidents being referred to in this manner, but again, perhaps you know more than the Corps does. I also don't recall any of these former Presidents being tagged as "chickenhawks" in the company of a group of highly motivated professional military officers. Trust me, if they were suspect the responses would have been savage.

A few sentences about the Battle of the Bulge is a rather pathetic attempt at describing IKE's FITREP for his tour as Supreme Allied Commander, don't you think?

And, as we are in the company of gentlemen who enjoy having sex with as many women as possible, I'm somewhat perplexed that would assail IKE for banging a nice looking woman in a war zone.

Chickenhawk (also chicken hawk and chicken-hawk) is a political term used in the United States to describe a person who strongly supports war or other military action (i.e., aWar Hawk), yet who actively avoided military service when of age.
The term indicates that the person in question is hypocritical for personally dodging a draft or otherwise shirking their duty to their country during a time of armed conflict while advocating that others do so. Generally, the implication is that chickenhawks lack the moral character to ask others to support, fight and perhaps die in an armed conflict. Those who avoid military service and continue to oppose armed aggression are not chickenhawks.
[edit]Origin of the term

In political usage chickenhawk is a compound of chicken (meaning coward) and hawk (meaning someone who advocates war, first used to describe "War Hawks" in the War of 1812). The earliest known print citation of chickenhawk in this sense was in the June 16, 1986 issue of The New Republic.[1] An association between the word chickenhawk and war was popularized several years earlier in the 1983 bestselling book Chickenhawk, a memoir by Robert Mason about his service in the Vietnam War, in which he was a helicopter pilot. Mason used the word as a compound oxymoron to describe both his fear of combat ("chicken") and his attraction to it ("hawk"), a slightly different use of the term which nonetheless might have inspired the current usage.[1]
Previously, the term war wimp was sometimes used, coined during the Vietnam War by Congressman Andrew Jacobs (D–Indiana), a Marine veteran of the Korean War. Jacobs defined a war wimp as "someone who is all too willing to send others to war, but never got 'round to going himself".

 

[Derpface200]

Hahaha, I love how everyone in this thread is talking about history without mentioning a very important point. America put Saddam Hussein into power in the first place despite knowing that the Ba'ath party was full of dick wads.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2694885.stm

James Akins, Former US Ambassador to Iraq circa, said "I knew all the Ba'ath Party leaders and I liked them."

"The CIA were definitely involved in that coup. We saw the rise of the Ba'athists as a way of replacing a pro-Soviet government with a pro-American one and you don't get that chance very often."

"Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us".

"The CIA were definitely involved in that coup. We saw the rise of the Ba'athists as a way of replacing a pro-Soviet government with a pro-American one and you don't get that chance very often.

"Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us".

This happy co-existence lasted right through the 1980s.

When the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran in 1979, America set about turning Saddam Hussein into Our Man in the Gulf Region.

Washington gave Baghdad intelligence support.

President Reagan sent a special presidential envoy to Baghdad to talk to Saddam in person.

The envoy's name was Donald Rumsfeld.

America did some pretty stupid shit back in the Cold War, but putting Saddam fucking Hussein in charge of a country has to take the cake. Well, aside from putting former Nazi party members in charge of the Iranian monarchy back in '53 but that's a different story.

 

[Captain Ahab]

What I find interesting is that back in the 80s when Saddam WAS actually using chemical weapons on Iranians, Kurds, and his own people, when he really did use weapons of mass destruction, what was our response?


WE SUPPORTED HIM.

Um, yeah.

We increased our support. One example is U.S. agriculture businesses that wanted in on Iraq since his use of chemical weapons torched arable land.

They got the okay.

Now all of sudden, flash forward to 2003, Saddam is a bad guy and the U.S. wants him out.

The Bush administration and much of the establishment intelligence community assumed the weapons we sold him were still there and used it as a pre-text to invade.

But dadum, dadum, no weapons. Wolfiwitz, Rumsfeld, Bush, Powell, etc were left with their mouths stuffed with feet.

The "surprise" was no surprise since Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei, the former a U.N. Weapons inspector, the latter the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, heavily disputed the claims made by the Bush administration and said there were no weapons of mass destruction. This was documented in numerous articles written by dedicated journalists pre-invasion.

But yeah, the administration didn't give a shit.

They wanted dinosaurs blood. Facts be damned.

I find it funny how so many "pro-war in Iraq" people cite the numerous reasons why it was good for Saddam to be taken out, after the fact that the main argument was shot to shit.

Simply saying someone is a bad dictator is not enough of a pre-text to invade a country. There are atleast half a dozen huge human rights violators who are heads of state we could invade and oust in order to "make the world a better place."

Hell, there are dozens of human rights violators we support that we could make the world a better place by not supporting *coughs Israel*

Oh well, rant over.

As the Jews say, Never Forgive, Never Forget.

 

[InternationPlayboy]

I find it funny how so many "pro-war in Iraq" people cite the numerous reasons why it was good for Saddam to be taken out, after the fact that the main argument was shot to shit.

Simply saying someone is a bad dictator is not enough of a pre-text to invade a country. There are atleast half a dozen huge human rights violators who are heads of state we could invade and oust in order to "make the world a better place," hell, there are dozens of human rights violators we support that we could make the world a better place by not supporting *coughs Israel*

Agreed. And anyone saying that we are lucky that we got him out when we did or he'd still be in power today, and that he would be a serious threat to our nation, is a joke. Saddam was only somewhat of a political threat, but military threat, not a chance. Please, we spend more on our military budget than the next 13 countries combined. Saddam was a threat the same way Kim Jung-Un is a threat. They aren't, they just like to act like they are. If either one of those countries tried to go to war with the united states on our turf, it would be a joke. They wouldn't even make it half way across the Pacific. Do I think Saddam was a mother fucker? Yes. Are there bigger mother fuckers on this planet? Yes. Do I think we should invade their countries? No.

 

[hazara]

Bush freed 25 million, an entire nation, from a hideous dictatorship, at a much much lower cost.

 

[InternationPlayboy]

Bush freed 25 million, an entire nation, from a hideous dictatorship, at a much much lower cost.

This is what I was thinking. I went looking for some stats about what the Iraqis thought about the war, and even though most Iraqis were against it (Duh!), still close to 75% said that they thought it was worth going through the war to get Saddam out of power.

 

[The Pirate]

What I remember the most from this was what lead up to it. The US sending their lackey Colin Powell into the UN with fabricated evidence. The "Source" CIA used was an Iraqi engineer who had never seen the mobile labs that Iraq was supposed to have, he just simply wanted to get rid of Sadam. But the US, like the jews after WW2, had a cart blanche in the eyes of the world to do whatever they wanted after 9/11 and with the Texan at the steeringwheel he spent his chance well. Price: Thousands of US soldiers dead or seriously injured, Colin Powell/Georg Tenet sacrificed. I still ask myself how Clinton could be impeached for sticking a cigar up a young ladies vagina and lie abt it, while Bush walked away with unjustified blood on his hands leading his nation into a war based on lies.

Ah, and then there is Haliburton and Cheney, the biggest motherfucker in US politics next to Karl Rove. Memories.

 

[porscheguy]

Hahaha, I love how everyone in this thread is talking about history without mentioning a very important point. America put Saddam Hussein into power in the first place despite knowing that the Ba'ath party was full of dick wads.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2694885.stm

James Akins, Former US Ambassador to Iraq circa, said "I knew all the Ba'ath Party leaders and I liked them."

"The CIA were definitely involved in that coup. We saw the rise of the Ba'athists as a way of replacing a pro-Soviet government with a pro-American one and you don't get that chance very often."

"Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us".

"The CIA were definitely involved in that coup. We saw the rise of the Ba'athists as a way of replacing a pro-Soviet government with a pro-American one and you don't get that chance very often.

"Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us".

This happy co-existence lasted right through the 1980s.

When the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran in 1979, America set about turning Saddam Hussein into Our Man in the Gulf Region.

Washington gave Baghdad intelligence support.

President Reagan sent a special presidential envoy to Baghdad to talk to Saddam in person.

The envoy's name was Donald Rumsfeld.

America did some pretty stupid shit back in the Cold War, but putting Saddam fucking Hussein in charge of a country has to take the cake. Well, aside from putting former Nazi party members in charge of the Iranian monarchy back in '53 but that's a different story.

Go back to my previous post. I mentioned the relationship between Hussein and the US.

 

[Suits]

 

[IvanDrago]

Real tough guy around a few noobs with AKs when he has trillions of tax dollars of hardware and propaganda backing him up.

You want some one to blame for everything getting so damn expensive in the US and all of these weird pissed off people migrating in to Europe, this guy would be a good one to start with.

Getting macho boners by rubblelizing people's families, homes, water supplies, electricity, roads etc. is nothing to be proud of. Blowback is a bitch.

 

[WalterBlack]

Great speech by the American, but it's a waste of time. He wants the soldiers to fight for Iraq - but they don't identify with Iraq, they identify with their Shi'ite religion.

Iraq is a fake country created by the British nearly 100 years ago. If the world wants real peace in the region then Iraq should be split into Sunni, Shia and Kurd areas. These communities can't live with each other unless they're under a dictator. In Iraq now many Sunnis are being suppressed by the Shia, so they turn radical and join groups like ISIS.

 

[911]

Great speech by the American, but it's a waste of time. He wants the soldiers to fight for Iraq - but they don't identify with Iraq, they identify with their Shi'ite religion.

Iraq is a fake country created by the British nearly 100 years ago. If the world wants real peace in the region then Iraq should be split into Sunni, Shia and Kurd areas. These communities can't live with each other unless they're under a dictator. In Iraq now many Sunnis are being suppressed by the Shia, so they turn radical and join groups like ISIS.

Not quite Walter, Iraq was indeed carved up by Sykes/Picot a century ago, but it's long been a fairly cohesive and fairly well-integrated country under Saddam, with a fair amount of intermarriages in the middle classes and plenty of mixed neighborhoods in the big cities. Like the other countries in the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan), Iraq developed a strong national identity in the post-war era.

There are lines of fracture there though*, and those were purposely exploited by funding violent extremists, going as far as blowing up civilian targets under false flags in order to ignite sectarian conflicts. Divide and conquer, part and parcel of the Oded Yinon plan. I think there was a lot of that from the Brits back in their Indian colonial rule as well, nothing new there.



This geostrategic dynamic is at the heart of the Syrian crisis. Israel and the neocons want to break up Syria into at least 3-4 pieces, while Assad and most Syrians, Muslim and Christians alike, want to preserve their country. That's why Russia has been so successful in Syria in fighting back the jihadis, they have the full support of the people there.

Conversely, the reason why the US/NATO campaign in Iraq has been such a disaster is because we haven't been working in that country's best interests. The real reason we went in is to balkanize the country and turn it into a bunch of warring failed mini ethnostates. So our soldiers in Baghdad have to watch their backs, while the Russian troops in Damascus or Tartus are warmly supported by the locals.


*every nation-state has those lines of fracture, you see them getting revived today in the US with the Confederate Flag North-South divide, the BLM vs whites racial divide and the right vs left divide. And if countries like Korea are naturally very homogeneous and cohesive, you can always break them up into two warring nations (see also Vietnam and Germany).

 

[911]

Gilad Atzmon has some sharp insights into this subject:

"Back in 1982, Oded Yinon an Israeli journalist formerly attached to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, published a document titled ‘A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.’This Israeli commentator suggested that for Israel to maintain its regional superiority, it must fragment its surrounding Arab states into smaller units. The document, later labelled as ‘Yinon Plan’, implied that Arabs and Muslims killing each other in endless sectarian wars was, in effect, Israel’s insurance policy.

Of course, regardless of the Yinon Plan’s prophesies, one might still argue that this has nothing to do with Jewish lobbying, politics or institutions but is just one more Israeli strategic proposal except that it is impossible to ignore that the Neocon school of thought that pushed the English-speaking Empire into Iraq was largely a Jewish Diaspora, Zionist clan. It’s also no secret that the 2nd Gulf War was fought to serve Israeli interests - breaking into sectarian units what then seemed to be the last pocket of Arab resistance to Israel.

...As we can see, a dedicated number of Jewish Zionist activists, commentators and intellectuals have worked relentlessly in many countries pushing for exactly the same cause – the breaking up of Arab and Muslim states into smaller, sectarian units.

But is it just the Zionists who are engaging in such tactics? Not at all.

In fact, the Jewish so-called Left serves the exact same cause, but instead of fragmenting Arabs and Muslims into Shia, Sunnis, Alawites and Kurds they strive to break them into sexually oriented identity groups (Lesbian, Queer, Gays, Heterosexual etc’)

Recently I learned from Sarah Schulman, a NY Jewish Lesbian activist that in her search for funding for a young ‘Palestinian Queer’ USA tour, she was advised to approach George Soros’ Open Society institute. The following account may leave you flabbergasted, as it did me:

“A former ACT UP staffer who worked for the Open Society Institute, George Soros’ foundation, suggested that I file an application there for funding for the tour. When I did so it turned out that the person on the other end had known me from when we both attended Hunter [College] High School in New York in the 1970s. He forwarded the application to the Institutes’s office in Amman, Jordan, and I had an amazing one-hour conversation with Hanan Rabani, its director of the Women’s and Gender program for the Middle East region. Hanan told me that this tour would give great visibility to autonomous queer organizations in the region. That it would inspire queer Arabs—especially in Egypt and Iran…for that reason, she said, funding for the tour should come from the Amman office” (Sarah Schulman -Israel/Palestine and the Queer International p. 108).

The message is clear, The Open Society Institutes (OSI) wires Soros’s money to Jordan, Palestine and then back to the USA in order to “inspire queer Arabs in Egypt and Iran (sic).”

What we see here is clear evidence of a blatant intervention by George Soros and his institute in an attempt to break Arabs and Muslims and shape their culture. So, while the right-wing Jewish Lobby pushes the Arabs into ethnic sectarian wars, their tribal counterparts within George Soros’s OSI institute, do exactly the same - attempt to break the Arab and Muslims by means of marginal and identity politics.

It is no secret that, as far as recent developments in Iraq are concerned, America, Britain and the West are totally unprepared. So surely, the time is long overdue when we must identify the forces and ideologies within Western society that are pushing us into more and more global conflicts. And all we can hope for is that America, Britain and France may think twice before they spends trillions of their tax payers’ money in following the Yinon Plan to fight ruinous, foreign wars imposed upon them by The Lobby. "

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/the-jewish-plan-for-the-middle-east-and-beyond.html