And for what? Today, Iraq is struggling to rebuild itself. Iran and ISIS remain a serious threat. The Americans hoped to build a Jeffersonian republic in the heart of the Middle East, and failed. The whole thing seems like a horrible, tragic mistake.
I disagree.
This is a bold statement for someone who left Iraq fourteen years ago and never went back. Probably the current regime is better than Saddam. Is it so much better it was worth two trillion dollars and half a million lives? Is it so much better the rise of and fight against ISIS was worth it? I would like to hear the perspective of someone who lives there.
> This is a bold statement for someone who left Iraq fourteen years ago and never went back. Probably the current regime is better than Saddam. Is it so much better it was worth two trillion dollars and half a million lives? Is it so much better the rise and fight against ISIS was worth it? I would like to hear the perspective of someone who lives there.
You don't need to be "someone living there" to answer this question. Just imagine half a million people in your state got killed by some foreign invader, and try to answer for yourself would it be wort it.
> The number of soldiers who died between 1861 and 1865, generally estimated at 620,000, is approximately equal to the total of American fatalities in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, combined.
Was the US Civil War "worth it"? I suspect the current answer is yes. Was the Iraq thing as pertinent or powerful as the civil war? I lean toward no, but I don't have detailed information.
Just imagine half a million people in your state got killed by some foreign invader
Half a million people were not killed by a foreign invader. They were killed as a result of a foreign invader destroying the existing power structure. The number actually killed by coalition troops is a small fraction of the total.
Ok. Good to know they are not killed by a foreign invader. It’s just that their deaths are caused by a foreign invasion. Good, I guess citizens of the invading countries can now sleep well.
The world is not clear-cut black and white. Few are completely bad or completely good. Maybe no-one is. Sanguinely, the world is realpolitik and the good must do some bad to increase good. Also the bad do some good in order that they may continue to do bad. On balance was it good? It's an open question.
Should the world have let Saddam initiate an Iraq-Iran War II? Was he bluffing? We don't know -he's dead. Maybe countries, like siblings, need to duke it out sometimes.
Many years ago there were people calling for Bush (and maybe Obama) to be arrested by the ICC. Bush and Obama are rehabilitated and now there is a more immediate foe who is now to be arrested and rendered to the ICC. Still, we could benefit from examining and have a congressional inquiry into the matter with consequences so that future presidents think twice before committing to war so easily. Then again, the Congress has abrogated its responsibility to declare war, and allows presidents lots of latitude to engage the military in "not war near wars" which are wars in all but name. If they really meant it, they would take that responsibility back.
It's more about degrees of good vs degrees of bad. There is no clear-cut good guy and we have to live with that. There are people who are bothered by the duality.
I'm fairly sure that most of the leftists who complained about Bush back then have not rehabilitated him, they've just added more people to the front of the list.
No, it isn't an open question. The United States dragged the world into a war based on lies and false pretenses. It invaded and destroyed a sovereign state, allowing museums and priceless cultural artifacts to be looted and burned, murdered millions of people - Iraqis and allies - and left a broken country to the depredations of the insurgent forces their own ham-fisted belligerance created.
And no one knows why. It wasn't because of WMD, that was bullshit. Not because Iraqi intelligence had a hand in 9/11. Not yellowcake from Africa. All lies. Not even for the oil. We didn't even take the fucking oil. Why? Because the neocons already had plans to Christianize and democratize the Middle East? Because Bush wanted to cement his family's legacy? Because Afghanistan wasn't big enough to satisfy American bloodlust against Muslims post 9/11?
It was evil. Unqualified evil. Absolute evil. Evil that will have the United States mentioned in the same breath as Nazi Germany for the next hundred years.
It's an open question because we don't know how things would have panned out if Iraq had continued under Saddam. He might have gone for Iraq-Iran War II with the commensurate casualties, or he may have mellowed out and been much better off than the Bush alternative. We don't know, therefore it's an open question.
But, yes, we should have a congressional inquiry with teeth to find out why and punish wrongdoers and establish a precedence by congress that a president cannot go sending American soldiers to war capriciously without having to answer why and have convincing reasons.
(apart from the bit where the illegally conducted private foreign policy was selling arms to the other side in order to fund some other terrorists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair ; really it was the pardoning of everyone involved in Iran-Contra that set the stage for the Iraq war misconduct. Oliver North ending up as a TV host rather than, say, jail)
>It's an open question because we don't know how things would have panned out if Iraq had continued under Saddam.
American policy in that regard was already to put up with him because he was the "devil we knew", and we didn't want to risk someone worse filling the power vacuum if he was overthrown. If there were a credible threat of him starting another war with Iran that justified the US changing policy, The US could have presented a case with credible evidence. None of this "you're either with us or you're with the evildoers" nonsense.
Infinite hypotheticals always exist, but they don't carry moral weight in this universe because they could be used to justify anything in hindsight.
It might seem like all Americans are totally fine with invasions, but you have to remember that we form a new government every 2 years and we replace our executive usually every 8 years unless you do something that incenses a lot of Americans. You paint with a pretty broad brush because you're totally ignoring the history of protest for each of these wars. The fact is we're divided as a nation by whether we're comfortable with imperialism. But we're also allowed by law to be divided, which is a big difference.
When I read comments like this, I have a hard time understanding how people come to such wide conclusions.
You do realize there's an enormous percentage of Americans who do have empathy for those that suffer from their country's actions?
It's hard to not simply dismiss comments like this as dishonest, given that this analysis decontextualizes these deaths. What would the consequences be if the US did not help the UN in protecting Korea from a war of aggression? What would the consequences be if the US didn't play a major role in ending European empires post WW2? What would be the consequences for Europe if the US didn't wage a cold war against an aggressive Soviet Union? No one can truly know.
The going criticism of Sadaam was that he had killed 10,000 people during his reign (as a CIA backed dictator I may add). Even the most US fanboy supported reports admit the US committed more deaths in the first week of the war; many times that 10k over the course of the war.
Which regime would rather live under if you were a normal Iraqui?
I smell sarcasm, but still, you're not that wrong. The motivation absolutely matters - US Imperialism is much softer, even in it's war crimes, than Russian Imperialism that comes with genocide bundled. In the former case where it hurts is that they try to paint a rosy picture (freedom and democracy etc.) while committing war crimes / invading left and right for business interests, and that hypocrisy is very annoying. At the same time when the Russians invade, they're brutal, war crimes are part of their process. I'd take the former over the latter any day, even ideally neither should be a thing in the 2020s.
Im saying, that the structure of empire, does not give a damn about the values, it corrupts all, infiltrates all, from the highest king to the lowest peasant, the mindset starts to differ, the values start to differ, the processes start to devolve and dissolve, turning a democratic process of searching for compromise into a partisan war of conquest. The outcome is the same, but one struggles against it and the other embraces it to the fullest as the natural order of things.
The dosage makes a thing a poison, but this beast can not be dosaged, as the lack of self-control is in its very heart.
Well, compared to the alternatives that go around, dressed up in nice propaganda but horrific beneath.. they still kind of are even though heavily deformed by 70 years of empire.
Even since the fall of the USSR, Russia was not at war only in 1998 when their economy collapsed in the aftermath of Asian financial crisis and they simply couldn't afford it.
And the list doesn't include covert operations all around the world. For example, Latin America in the 20th century was greatly affected by them, Nicaragua in particular. Deep involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is missing too.
> than Russian Imperialism that comes with genocide bundled
The United States has killed well over a quarter million Arab civilians, many of those directly through war crimes, in an ethnically motivated invasion. Explain what isn't genocide about that.
Yes, that's correct. No matter how much US lead wars caused distruction and suffering it was "mostly" collateral damage and naive stupidity that they can change things to their own accord. Russian invasion in Ukraine is pure evil for the sake of showing how evil they are just to scare off the enemy and the future opponents. This is just as barbaric as did Mongols to Slavs, burning entire towns. Next thing after they lose the war I expect them to turn inwards and start murdering their own people a-la Stalin's purges.
The official motivation in Irak were WMD, eventually revealed to be a complete fabrication by the Bush administration.
The United Nation voted against the war, and the US went anyway, under the pretense there was a link with 9/11, which we know now is BS.
If Russia did this, you would call it what it is: a bunch of greedy bullies that seized the opportunity provided by a terrorist attack to justify the occupation of a sovereign country because it's a military and economic winning move.
But apparently the US gets a pass at being a monster.
The US actively supported death squads, drug trafficking, and dictators in Central America in the 80s. Nothing about what the US did during the Cold War (and realistically the “war on terror”) could even remotely be called “soft”, or for “good intentions”.
Propaganda is when other countries sell a narrative.
What are you trying to say here? Russia is intentionally kidnapping children and murdering innocent non-combatants in a campaign of terror to break the spirit of Ukraine. They're launching cruise missiles into apartments and hospitals. They told their own soldiers that the Ukrainian people wanted Russian occupation so badly that their army sent riot police instead of regular army when they made their first push toward Kyiv. The US made a lot of mistakes but the soldiers on the ground did the best they could to not harm people. In the invasion of Ukraine murder of noncombatants is so routine that it's a matter of course to mention it.
It's disingenuous to claim that the US and Russia are exactly the same and that they both fought for the same things in both wars. The war in Ukraine is a land grab for Putin to expand his power.
Indeed, and unlike the Russian excuse of the fake bio weapon labs, the US had the totally valid excuse of weapons of mass destruction that were 100% real and not invented by the Bush administration.
Good thing the entire world opposed the war when the USA decided to go against the UN vote. Because letting those of hundreds of thousands of innocents die just because the USA are the strongest bully of the planet would be weighting heavily on our conscience otherwise.
We continue the good work by supplying weapons at taxpayer's cost to extend the war against the evil Russians and the definitelly not corrupt Ukranian government, instead of, idk, crazy idea, try to push for peace.
It's not the same, but there are similarities. It's not like the US hasn't knowingly killed civilians before.
And speaking of the war in Ukraine, I truly believe the US provoked Russia. Of course, Russia is responsible for its war crimes, but the US and its allies are the ones who wanted to encircle Russia by expanding NATO eastwards, even after they promised not to.
There was a time when we could have made Russia an ally, but now they are an enemy and aligned with China.
Our politicians either are too stupid, too corrupt, or both.
> [..] but the US and its allies are the ones who wanted to encircle Russia by expanding NATO eastwards, even after they promised not to.
This is simply not correct, and even Gorbachev has confirmed this. There has never been any agreement stating that NATO is not allowed to accept new members in any particular direction. There were statements made by western politicians but never any pen to paper. The sovereign states that have joined NATO have not done so because of some US campaign or persuasion, but by their own free will. Your statement is indirectly saying that these countries are too dumb to decide for themselves, it's incredibly condescending.
Why does it matter whether statements were made? It’s quite obvious to any objective observer that a large, powerful nation would perceive an enemy alliance expanding to its border would be perceived as a threat.
How would the US respond to an enemy alliance incorporating Mexico or Canada?
> Of course, Russia is responsible for its war crimes, but the US and its allies are the ones who wanted to encircle Russia by expanding NATO eastwards, even after they promised not to.
That so-called promise is a lie made up more than a decade later. Russia and NATO have in writing[1] that they agree to respect that third countries' are free to choose their allies, and even when asked specifically about Eastern Europe joining NATO in 2004 (which was overwhelmingly their initiative, against the hesitancy of existing members), Putin personally said that it's fine and Kremlin's official press release repeated it, without any mention of any broken promises or other grievances.[2]
When I was working in Afghanistan I met a decent number of interpreters and Afghani leaders that were former forced fighters. I even guarded one while he was being interviewed and jailed, he was the first of a few that I'd end up meeting. The story that sticks with me is the last one and I think will sit with me for the rest of my life.
I was back at my units "home" base where they spent most of a year. Recently US and, I believe, Georgian EOD troops were engaged in heavy fire outside of town and an IED exploded as they tried to defuse it. You hear a lot of these stories day to day so like the author I was pretty desensitized to hearing about people dying trying to do their jobs. Not a day later I was reassigned to the small jail that we had and I met a man who didn't speak English, had a gut but wasn't overweight, and who lacked any education beyond religion and farming. I kept him fed, kept him safe, made sure he had rec time, time in the bathroom etc... I could do basic communication with him through a combination of hand signals. Mostly though I had no way of having any real conversation with him.
HumInt came to visit and interview him. They had gathered his side of the story and were going back out to gather information based on what he told them. He was captured after detonating the IED that had killed the EOD troops just days before by connecting a battery to a buried cable. It became clear to me early on that this man did not have the know-how to create a projectile cone, the REX for the explosive material, or the electrical knowledge to determine the battery and wire gauge necessary to carry out this attack. I read through his jacket and understood he had lived mostly a farming life, he was devout in his religion (as most were in that area), and he had a family. The Taliban had approached him to carry out this attack, his gut was a combination of disease and malnutrition most likely which is why they targeted him. They offered him the chance to do this act in exchange for his family being taken care of.
A day or so later HumInt came back. They asked me a lot about how he was acting and I told them mostly normal, he'd been sleeping most of the day, he prayed as usual, and had asked for some religious items. They informed me that they had gone to his house with representatives from one of the units on our base and had found that his family had been killed. They had been debating on whether to tell him because he was surely going to the jail in Kabul where he would likely be hanged. They told him during the interview and I remember from that time until he left he was just mute. This will be how I forever remember the Taliban and sister groups like Al Queda.
> And yet.
> It is hard to express what it means, if you have lived under an authoritarian regime, to experience freedom. Those who have grown up with the privilege of liberty are lucky not to understand it—and the heavy price you are willing to pay for it if you have lived without it.
This sentence punches far above it's weight class.
Why do you assume the taliban killed his family? if they go around killing family of people that do bombings for them they aren't going to find many people willing in the future. I know nothing of afghanistan but where I'm from (latin america) the US has a long history of training paramilitaries and death squads. My guess just based on that story would be US or Georgian connected paramilitary group killing his family as retribution for killing one of their own, and as a message to scare future people from working with the taliban.
In a world of infinite possibilities it is possible, but I doubt it. I spent a year in Helmand and Nimroz. In that time I watched the Taliban attack our bases with three large, at times overwhelming attacks. I watched them gather on mountain tops as we turned bases over to the ANA and proceed to slaughter them after we left. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, I believe the stories of forced fighters who had their family members abducted and held hostage, were tortured, and the general sense of enslavement that the local populous felt under Taliban rule. You are right that I didn't, and nobody from HumInt or our sister unit watched these executions happen, but anyone thats served in or lived in Afghanistan for any significant period of time is familiar with the Taliban's patterns. Additionally, two EOD members are fairly inconsequential to the military and any intelligence community that would have to train, arm, and deploy said paramilitary units.
Additionally, in Latin America if memory serves me correct paramilitary units were used because the US didn't want to go there as a military presence for both optics and cost. We (the military) were already present in Afghanistan.
Lastly, as I said earlier as well, this one death and one attack among many. There was very little significance to this attack. EOD was doing civilian route clearance, trying to clear civilian roads of IEDs and bombs planted by the Taliban. We didn't use these specific roads so that the Taliban wouldn't put bombs on them, but they did anyway and used it as leverage on the local populous. These types of operations were part of "hearts and minds" operations. The real message from the US military was sent every year during Opium Interdiction operations where after the Taliban had enslaved farmers to produce poppy for them we would raid the Taliban opium production facilities.
Interesting, thanks for sharing your experience. I don't doubt the Taliban is evil, but I don't think they're stupid. That they hold family hostage to force people to fight for them I can easily believe. That they kill the family of someone that just carried out an attack for them, and hasn't betrayed them or anything, seems counterproductive for them.
As far as I understand paramilitary are part of almost all armed conflicts, to do the dirty work that isn't wanted to be associated with the official military. In some of latin america like you say the US had no official military role for optics and cost. Other countries like Guatemala, Colombia, etc the US had official military advisors present, and funding and cooperation with the official military. And then paramilitary groups also operating that are really just an extension of the official military and intelligence institutions, for doing the dirtier stuff.
They're absolutely not stupid, but I think you underestimate the ideology that lives heavily in the Taliban. They likely believe they delivered his family to a better life.
You are right about paramilitaries, but the governor's of districts in Afghanistan ran their own militaries that are not Geneva bound. That said, in this particular part of Helmand I don't remember seeing many ANA.
> They had been debating on whether to tell him because he was surely going to the jail in Kabul where he would likely be hanged
What a sad ending.
> This will be how I forever remember the Taliban and sister groups like Al Queda.
Something that amazed me was to see how fast the ANA capitulated.
Billions of dollars were spent on education and training for the Afghan army so that they could stand against the Taliban. I was expecting the population to be very happy to get rid of them for good, seeing how they were treated under their regime. And yet it only took them a few weeks to completely undo decades of work. This reeked of double allegiance. In some regions, the village elders accompanied by ANA soldiers were welcoming the Taliban and cheering for their return. No fights. Worse, ANA soldiers were seen giving military supplies to the Taliban.
Apparently, families frequently sent their sons to fight on both sides of the conflict.
I have long sat with a post I want to publish about being a Marine during those times. I watched as President Obama and Vice President Biden told people countlessly how well the training was going, that the takeover was progressing despite generals raising internal warnings, there were messages broadcast across SIPR about troops being shot in the back during training and operations by their counterparts. I served with a Gunny that was awarded a Bronze Star with a V because when his counterpart patrol was ambushed all of the ANA ran and left them to fight off a strong contingent by themselves. The administration lied to fullfil their desires to be free of Afghanistan rather than doing the arduous work of freeing Afghanis. You're spot on about the ANA giving away supplies and doing other things, but I suspect this was out of fear and coercion knowing that they were not ready and our ROE was significantly dialed down to the point that we could not protect them.
I hesitate to publish it because, frankly, I think it'd be co-opted by the right and ignored by the left. If meaningful change is to be made for future wars, both of them need to sit up straight and listen with sober ears.
> there were messages broadcast across SIPR about troops being shot in the back during training and operations by their counterparts. I served with a Gunny that was awarded a Bronze Star with a V because when his counterpart patrol was ambushed all of the ANA ran and left them to fight off a strong contingent by themselves.
> rather than doing the arduous work of freeing Afghanis. [...] but I suspect this was out of fear and coercion knowing that they were not ready
Did they want to be free at all?
To me it sounds completely alien. A regime that abducts and coerce people into fighting for them should be fought tooth and nail by the population.
I think so. They've been through generations of fighting, from internal to external, and people are tired. Religion, and the extremism of the Taliban's doctrine is also very pervasive and not something to be underestimated.
To contrast this, if you go to Kabul people wear jeans, go to nightclubs, women attend university - it's very modern and still Muslim. Most of what I've described occurs in the rural parts of Afghanistan which are predominately not served by Afghanistan's government and are thus co-opted by the Taliban and other groups.
The shortest answer to whataboutism on this topic is that the invasion of Iraq was also criminal (second time, not the first time). It was based on lies, achieved very little, displaced and killed millions. Please do not do the disgusting Russian thing of pretending that "we're only defending ourselves" or are otherwise justified in these actions.
Not being able to face historical facts and be honest is a major, major problem for the future. Again, to pick on Russia look at how many of them genuinely do not understand why almost all of Eastern Europe would gladly go back in time and suffocate baby Stalin with their bare hands, without thinking. Homo Sovieticus can only see the exaggerated glory of the Soviet Union without seeing the millions farmers starved to death in the Holodomor, or the hundreds of thousands tortured in KGB offices for absolutely no reason.
Could it be some of the deaths were caused by the instability that toppling the existing Saddam Hussein government caused and not only by direct US military involvement? Some consequences that come to mind are warlords battling for control of provinces, unleashed tribal factions now free to kill each other, collateral damage from US military attacks destroying critical civilian infrastructure like sewage treatment and medical capacity, starvation, etc.
The amount of spite and hatred in the comments here are a little bit surprising... But here's a question: Do you believe this man wants the wrong things? Do you believe his desire for freedom, and his willingness to sacrifice everything for it is all foolishness and lies? I am hoping not. I already know how much you hate the USA and other western governments, but I'm just wondering whether you despise the principles that they are meant to represent, especially to the article's author.
HN is a vacuum with respect to understanding war. Most people here are privileged enough to have fled from war outright or to have not been participating in it. That's not to say their perspectives are without value but I'd take them with a grain of salt and a side of empathy.
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[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadI appreciate blowback arguments but drawing a line from A to B to C is easier once you get to C - when you're at at A it's pretty impossible.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/s...
We are easily programmed meat machines.
I disagree.
This is a bold statement for someone who left Iraq fourteen years ago and never went back. Probably the current regime is better than Saddam. Is it so much better it was worth two trillion dollars and half a million lives? Is it so much better the rise of and fight against ISIS was worth it? I would like to hear the perspective of someone who lives there.
You don't need to be "someone living there" to answer this question. Just imagine half a million people in your state got killed by some foreign invader, and try to answer for yourself would it be wort it.
Was the US Civil War "worth it"? I suspect the current answer is yes. Was the Iraq thing as pertinent or powerful as the civil war? I lean toward no, but I don't have detailed information.
Half a million people were not killed by a foreign invader. They were killed as a result of a foreign invader destroying the existing power structure. The number actually killed by coalition troops is a small fraction of the total.
Should the world have let Saddam initiate an Iraq-Iran War II? Was he bluffing? We don't know -he's dead. Maybe countries, like siblings, need to duke it out sometimes.
Many years ago there were people calling for Bush (and maybe Obama) to be arrested by the ICC. Bush and Obama are rehabilitated and now there is a more immediate foe who is now to be arrested and rendered to the ICC. Still, we could benefit from examining and have a congressional inquiry into the matter with consequences so that future presidents think twice before committing to war so easily. Then again, the Congress has abrogated its responsibility to declare war, and allows presidents lots of latitude to engage the military in "not war near wars" which are wars in all but name. If they really meant it, they would take that responsibility back.
It's more about degrees of good vs degrees of bad. There is no clear-cut good guy and we have to live with that. There are people who are bothered by the duality.
I'm fairly sure that most of the leftists who complained about Bush back then have not rehabilitated him, they've just added more people to the front of the list.
they did after he trash talked Trump
apparently saying "grab her by the p----y" is worse than starting two wars
No, it isn't an open question. The United States dragged the world into a war based on lies and false pretenses. It invaded and destroyed a sovereign state, allowing museums and priceless cultural artifacts to be looted and burned, murdered millions of people - Iraqis and allies - and left a broken country to the depredations of the insurgent forces their own ham-fisted belligerance created.
And no one knows why. It wasn't because of WMD, that was bullshit. Not because Iraqi intelligence had a hand in 9/11. Not yellowcake from Africa. All lies. Not even for the oil. We didn't even take the fucking oil. Why? Because the neocons already had plans to Christianize and democratize the Middle East? Because Bush wanted to cement his family's legacy? Because Afghanistan wasn't big enough to satisfy American bloodlust against Muslims post 9/11?
It was evil. Unqualified evil. Absolute evil. Evil that will have the United States mentioned in the same breath as Nazi Germany for the next hundred years.
But, yes, we should have a congressional inquiry with teeth to find out why and punish wrongdoers and establish a precedence by congress that a president cannot go sending American soldiers to war capriciously without having to answer why and have convincing reasons.
(apart from the bit where the illegally conducted private foreign policy was selling arms to the other side in order to fund some other terrorists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair ; really it was the pardoning of everyone involved in Iran-Contra that set the stage for the Iraq war misconduct. Oliver North ending up as a TV host rather than, say, jail)
American policy in that regard was already to put up with him because he was the "devil we knew", and we didn't want to risk someone worse filling the power vacuum if he was overthrown. If there were a credible threat of him starting another war with Iran that justified the US changing policy, The US could have presented a case with credible evidence. None of this "you're either with us or you're with the evildoers" nonsense.
Infinite hypotheticals always exist, but they don't carry moral weight in this universe because they could be used to justify anything in hindsight.
If he hadn't put that ridiculous "I disagree" after the obviously true explanation of the failure, this article would not have been published.
You do realize there's an enormous percentage of Americans who do have empathy for those that suffer from their country's actions?
It's hard to not simply dismiss comments like this as dishonest, given that this analysis decontextualizes these deaths. What would the consequences be if the US did not help the UN in protecting Korea from a war of aggression? What would the consequences be if the US didn't play a major role in ending European empires post WW2? What would be the consequences for Europe if the US didn't wage a cold war against an aggressive Soviet Union? No one can truly know.
Which regime would rather live under if you were a normal Iraqui?
To justify the atrocities of the west is the height of hypocrisy.
- War in Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF; March 2003 - November 2011) ...
- War in Afghanistan. Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF; October, 2001 – December, 2014) ...
- Persian Gulf War (1991) ...
- Vietnam War (1962 - 1973) ...
- Korean War (1950 - 1953)
And this does not include things like coups in South America, or the fact they are surrounding Iran with missiles.
The USA is among the biggest war mongers of the world, they have killing millions since 1950, and everybody seems to just go "meh".
War against China in Mongolia
War against Georgia
War against Finland
War against Insurgenst in eastern europe
War against Insurgents in ukraine
War against Checheyna
War in SouthKorea
War in Vietnam
Bloody beasts those empireus..
Stating you have only being 80% the serial killer that jack the ripper was is not really what I would strive for in life.
The dosage makes a thing a poison, but this beast can not be dosaged, as the lack of self-control is in its very heart.
A lot of people still think the USA are angels liberating the world.
Even since the fall of the USSR, Russia was not at war only in 1998 when their economy collapsed in the aftermath of Asian financial crisis and they simply couldn't afford it.
And the list doesn't include covert operations all around the world. For example, Latin America in the 20th century was greatly affected by them, Nicaragua in particular. Deep involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is missing too.
The United States has killed well over a quarter million Arab civilians, many of those directly through war crimes, in an ethnically motivated invasion. Explain what isn't genocide about that.
That is “mostly” just a PR narrative. The notion that it should be accepted at face value is farcical.
The United Nation voted against the war, and the US went anyway, under the pretense there was a link with 9/11, which we know now is BS.
If Russia did this, you would call it what it is: a bunch of greedy bullies that seized the opportunity provided by a terrorist attack to justify the occupation of a sovereign country because it's a military and economic winning move.
But apparently the US gets a pass at being a monster.
Propaganda is when other countries sell a narrative.
It's disingenuous to claim that the US and Russia are exactly the same and that they both fought for the same things in both wars. The war in Ukraine is a land grab for Putin to expand his power.
Good thing the entire world opposed the war when the USA decided to go against the UN vote. Because letting those of hundreds of thousands of innocents die just because the USA are the strongest bully of the planet would be weighting heavily on our conscience otherwise.
Everyone would remember.
And speaking of the war in Ukraine, I truly believe the US provoked Russia. Of course, Russia is responsible for its war crimes, but the US and its allies are the ones who wanted to encircle Russia by expanding NATO eastwards, even after they promised not to.
There was a time when we could have made Russia an ally, but now they are an enemy and aligned with China.
Our politicians either are too stupid, too corrupt, or both.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8
That was at best a narrow window in the 90s. The Russians backed Serbia during the Yugoslav war.
This is simply not correct, and even Gorbachev has confirmed this. There has never been any agreement stating that NATO is not allowed to accept new members in any particular direction. There were statements made by western politicians but never any pen to paper. The sovereign states that have joined NATO have not done so because of some US campaign or persuasion, but by their own free will. Your statement is indirectly saying that these countries are too dumb to decide for themselves, it's incredibly condescending.
Thanks, you just confirmed that you shall never trust what America says till you have that in writing.
"Very American, very like!" - Borat
How would the US respond to an enemy alliance incorporating Mexico or Canada?
Yeah, there's absolutely no desire from the local populations to join the EU and NATO at all...
That so-called promise is a lie made up more than a decade later. Russia and NATO have in writing[1] that they agree to respect that third countries' are free to choose their allies, and even when asked specifically about Eastern Europe joining NATO in 2004 (which was overwhelmingly their initiative, against the hesitancy of existing members), Putin personally said that it's fine and Kremlin's official press release repeated it, without any mention of any broken promises or other grievances.[2]
[1] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm
[2] http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/30678
I was back at my units "home" base where they spent most of a year. Recently US and, I believe, Georgian EOD troops were engaged in heavy fire outside of town and an IED exploded as they tried to defuse it. You hear a lot of these stories day to day so like the author I was pretty desensitized to hearing about people dying trying to do their jobs. Not a day later I was reassigned to the small jail that we had and I met a man who didn't speak English, had a gut but wasn't overweight, and who lacked any education beyond religion and farming. I kept him fed, kept him safe, made sure he had rec time, time in the bathroom etc... I could do basic communication with him through a combination of hand signals. Mostly though I had no way of having any real conversation with him.
HumInt came to visit and interview him. They had gathered his side of the story and were going back out to gather information based on what he told them. He was captured after detonating the IED that had killed the EOD troops just days before by connecting a battery to a buried cable. It became clear to me early on that this man did not have the know-how to create a projectile cone, the REX for the explosive material, or the electrical knowledge to determine the battery and wire gauge necessary to carry out this attack. I read through his jacket and understood he had lived mostly a farming life, he was devout in his religion (as most were in that area), and he had a family. The Taliban had approached him to carry out this attack, his gut was a combination of disease and malnutrition most likely which is why they targeted him. They offered him the chance to do this act in exchange for his family being taken care of.
A day or so later HumInt came back. They asked me a lot about how he was acting and I told them mostly normal, he'd been sleeping most of the day, he prayed as usual, and had asked for some religious items. They informed me that they had gone to his house with representatives from one of the units on our base and had found that his family had been killed. They had been debating on whether to tell him because he was surely going to the jail in Kabul where he would likely be hanged. They told him during the interview and I remember from that time until he left he was just mute. This will be how I forever remember the Taliban and sister groups like Al Queda.
> And yet.
> It is hard to express what it means, if you have lived under an authoritarian regime, to experience freedom. Those who have grown up with the privilege of liberty are lucky not to understand it—and the heavy price you are willing to pay for it if you have lived without it.
This sentence punches far above it's weight class.
Additionally, in Latin America if memory serves me correct paramilitary units were used because the US didn't want to go there as a military presence for both optics and cost. We (the military) were already present in Afghanistan.
Lastly, as I said earlier as well, this one death and one attack among many. There was very little significance to this attack. EOD was doing civilian route clearance, trying to clear civilian roads of IEDs and bombs planted by the Taliban. We didn't use these specific roads so that the Taliban wouldn't put bombs on them, but they did anyway and used it as leverage on the local populous. These types of operations were part of "hearts and minds" operations. The real message from the US military was sent every year during Opium Interdiction operations where after the Taliban had enslaved farmers to produce poppy for them we would raid the Taliban opium production facilities.
You are right about paramilitaries, but the governor's of districts in Afghanistan ran their own militaries that are not Geneva bound. That said, in this particular part of Helmand I don't remember seeing many ANA.
What a sad ending.
> This will be how I forever remember the Taliban and sister groups like Al Queda.
Something that amazed me was to see how fast the ANA capitulated.
Billions of dollars were spent on education and training for the Afghan army so that they could stand against the Taliban. I was expecting the population to be very happy to get rid of them for good, seeing how they were treated under their regime. And yet it only took them a few weeks to completely undo decades of work. This reeked of double allegiance. In some regions, the village elders accompanied by ANA soldiers were welcoming the Taliban and cheering for their return. No fights. Worse, ANA soldiers were seen giving military supplies to the Taliban.
Apparently, families frequently sent their sons to fight on both sides of the conflict.
I hesitate to publish it because, frankly, I think it'd be co-opted by the right and ignored by the left. If meaningful change is to be made for future wars, both of them need to sit up straight and listen with sober ears.
> rather than doing the arduous work of freeing Afghanis. [...] but I suspect this was out of fear and coercion knowing that they were not ready
Did they want to be free at all?
To me it sounds completely alien. A regime that abducts and coerce people into fighting for them should be fought tooth and nail by the population.
To contrast this, if you go to Kabul people wear jeans, go to nightclubs, women attend university - it's very modern and still Muslim. Most of what I've described occurs in the rural parts of Afghanistan which are predominately not served by Afghanistan's government and are thus co-opted by the Taliban and other groups.
Not being able to face historical facts and be honest is a major, major problem for the future. Again, to pick on Russia look at how many of them genuinely do not understand why almost all of Eastern Europe would gladly go back in time and suffocate baby Stalin with their bare hands, without thinking. Homo Sovieticus can only see the exaggerated glory of the Soviet Union without seeing the millions farmers starved to death in the Holodomor, or the hundreds of thousands tortured in KGB offices for absolutely no reason.
He most likely used data from a survey in 2007 [1], hence i'll question the integrity of the article
Already mentions millions in 2008 [2]
> More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003
And 2.4 millions in 2016 [3]
> But our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion.
[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20090422225308/https://surveys.a...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-deaths-survey-idUSL3...
[3] - https://www.salon.com/2018/03/19/the-staggering-death-toll-i...