The situation in Iraq

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We will be watching for blatant anti US or anti Bush sentiments, keep it reasoned or be warned.

Edited by Dauth, 22 October 2008 - 16:12.

Well at least one good thing came out of it. It allowed USA to dig itself in a hole with debt and again give hope for a more multi polar world. In Terms of Oil, Politics, Religion, Military i really don't Give a damn. But it terms of reassertion of countries getting to decide what they want to do and not get things shoved down their throat by a world Hyper power, it has been a damn good thing. USA at the turn of the century just had way way too much power and the last 8 years have cut them down to size. I love Americans, They are good people and their heart is in the right place but their actions do not live up to their Ideals.

Also as far as i can tell, Iraq will rip itself apart. Iraq was a nation carved by the British. There are no Ideals, Ethnicity or Culture which binds their society together. If we are lucky then Iraqi will end up with a Three state solution in a peaceful way. If not then the last 8 years were nothing compared to the shit that might be expected when the US pulls out.

Iraq in 3 states, perhaps if you wash the place with blood first no one will notice.

Kurdistan might be ok, if you get the border right then no more than a few thousand deaths until its no longer considered due to the new state. Of course you then have the issue with Turkey and their recent encroachments into Iraqi.

Splitting the Sunni and Shia areas will be much harder, the mixing in Baghdad will be a nightmare. IIRC the Shia were favoured under Saddam however the land they occupy is of little value (no Oil, nor access to the river out) so you create a bankrupted nation. The remnants of the Baath party will cause an awful lot of issues.

In defence of the British at that point in time they did break up the Ottoman Empire. Read some history and find what a hulking monstrosity of a state it was.

I think that the west should properly change its mission role in Iraq, from being an invasion/occupying force to being a proper rebuilding force, with its main goal being to rebuild hospitals, schools, infrastructure and the like necessary for a working society. All those British soldiers kept inside in Camp Bastion could do a lot more to make their job easier if they actually did anything sitting in there. Rebuilding Iraq with the help of the people of Iraq and training them to be self sufficient should make Iraq stable enough that the West can leave. If we still need a minor presence there afterwards, we could actually just have armed UAVs and UGVs; if they get destroyed, no soldiers inside would die.

I'll prolly have to preface a lot of things I say in this forum with: I'm American

I originally supported the war, mostly because I was in the equivilant of seventh year for you guys and didn't have a clue, but there was the idea of WMDs and then once we got there SURPRISE!!! no wmds...

Mission change: democracy. Kill all the terrorists for a stable government...now there is a government with limited power and massive corruption (I imagine)...

I just think the war was handled terribly and that the British weere the only ones to do it properly because they started rebuilding as soon as they got settled in....


I love my country but I hate GWB. I am so excited the Obama is my next president.

Wizard, on 22 Oct 2008, 15:54, said:

I don't think a full scale military invasion was necessary. We should have intimidated Saddam into being a puppet dictator so we could allow our private companies to drill there.

Dr. Strangelove, on 19 Nov 2008, 8:38, said:

Then they couldn't try to grab the oil there. Which was a side mission at the very least.

Chyros, on 19 Nov 2008, 7:04, said:

Do honestly think us conservatives really care about some other person's freedom? No, this was never about democracy in Iraq, nor was it about terrorism which we knew had no major ties to Saddam's regime, or WMDs. This war was fought for oil, and I'll be damned if we don't get it.

Dr. Strangelove, on 19 Nov 2008, 9:14, said:

I was trying to not put it that bluntly, but yes. Anyways you blew it, or actually the Iraqis blew it when they destroyed the oil wells .

There is still plenty of oil there.

There is gobs and gobs of oil there because no one has been drilling it to capacity in 6 years


But yes, simply put it was about oil and that our secretary of defense and VP had huge amounts of stock in the defense contracting corporation: halliburton (sp).


Corruption???? YES!!! AGHH....

Another reason I am so happy we are getting a new President!

A minor necro, but in light of the recent successful elections in Iraq, I wanted to find out other people's opinions. I foresee a good future for Iraq. The people are able to beat down sectarianism. If only this could happen in Beirut
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To be entirely blunt, the United States' handling of the occupation of Iraq will likely go down in history as shining example of exactly how not to occupy a country. It was an utter disaster. Despite overwhelming technological and numerical advantages they were totally unprepared for fighting a civil war, either announced or otherwise, and their military intervention almost always caused more problems than it solved. This is the view of experienced United States analysts and I consider it fact rather than opinion. They just didn't know what to do with the mess they found themselves in - in fact it's widely acknowledged they didn't even have a plan for how they would actually go about ensuring a peaceful occupation, assuming that the country would somehow be jolly happy to see them and fall into a comfortable democratic Westernised state, and then ignored the advice of allies who tried to help by telling them otherwise and giving tips on how to handle it.
On the plus side, it has effected extraordinarily drastic change in the way the situation and others like it has and have been tackled in almost every level of US military, political, procurement, diplomatic, investigative, contracting and management circles. They failed to come up with a strategy, true; but far worse would have been if they continued to do nothing about it other than bombing suspected insurgent locations and stirring up another hundred potential al Qaeda members every time. That's not to say that I think there is any excuse on this Earth which will ever exonerate George W. Bush and his administration for the deaths of one million people as a result of the war they started, but on the plus side, Iraq is now showing signs, however tentative, of having a real future.
It's a bit early to say they have won the battle just yet, however. They may have been able to stabilise their government for the moment, but the divisions in the state of Iraq and its cultural make-up run deep and ingrained after hundreds or thousands of years. All it would take is a radical figure gathering enough support to his cause and back goes the country into outright civil war and the hope so slowly building up once again shatters.
To be honest, the last thing the United States should be doing now is cutting and running. Barack Obama's domestic situation is such that he cannot do otherwise in the scope of reasonable politics - but another few years are I think necessary to make sure Iraq's insurgency is kept under for the duration it takes for genuine solidity of indigenous politics, solutions and military and police forces to come into place first. We'll have to see, but this is far from over, and while there is hope I still hold grave fears for what the future may bring if it's handled wrong by anyone.

Edited by CommanderJB, 10 February 2009 - 08:32.

JB's got point, but I'm hopeful for Iraq. During Saddam's rule, Iraq was fairly secular, so there's a good chance they'll continue to do so to a degree. Iraq also has the resources, with investment, financial stability for the country can be achieved which would probably yield political and social stability. If Iraq can keep itself together for another year or two, it will probably have no problem becoming a decent democracy in the Middle East.

The problem is however, Afganistan. That country has little resources while the taliban have funds fron opium. The NATO Allies aren't commited enough, save for Britain and Canada. I really do wonder how that war is going to turn out, I just don't see it becoming a stable democracy.

Iraq was secular during Saddam's rule because Saddam ruthlessly repressed any threat to his power in the way that only a dictator can, and religion, especially given the fact that his ruling Baath party was a religious minority, represented a greater threat than almost any other. While this virtual repression has effected some positive change, radical religious movements currently have only too much footing after the US invasion. You're right that they have a viable economy and a solid platform on which to build a state; what they need is the people to agree on it. And there are deep, deep divisions in the still-bitter people, and that is a problem, and a big one.
To be honest Afghanistan probably represents the easier fight for the Coalition, though they can't win there either. What they're fighting in Afghanistan is an irregular war. That's a lot different to counter-terrorist work and it actually needs military strategies. Unfortunately fighting an irregular war is probably Afghanistan's national sport and every occupier for the last several hundred years has sat there getting nibbled away at for a decade or two before they got sick of it and sodded off home. The situation in Afghanistan should get better as there's a massive shift of troops to there from Iraq - as more troops are what the current forces desperately need to make any progress at all - but in order to genuinely cow the Taliban insurgency they'd need to stay there for decades, and I can't see any NATO member state having the political will to do that no matter what their generals might cry out for.

Edited by CommanderJB, 10 February 2009 - 22:48.