A different take on the Iraq bombing

[|MP|Buccaneer]

Hey guys, I was just over in East Dearborn for some good Arabic food for dinner tonight, when I noticed a gathering around the Kabalah Islamic Education Center.

Seems that a bunch of Iraqis here were upset about the bombing in Iraq today.  However, not in the way that most people would think.

They are pissed off at what they consider "outsiders" coming into Iraq to cause problems.  Taking the opportunity of the conflict to act out against the USA.  That they don't want peace, and they don't care a bit about the people of Iraq, they are just opportunists.  They all seemed convinced that most of the trouble is coming from arabs from other countries, who just see the USA as a threat, and not how bad it had really been in Iraq, or even care what's good for Iraq.  My arabic is only so-so, but it seems like a lot of them were bitching about people from Jordan for the most part.

Don't know if they have more information than I do, I don't know if they are right or wrong.

What I do know, and am retelling here is, these people, that actually lived in Iraq, that still have family they care deeply about, still think this is a good thing, that the USA is doing the right thing.  These people are still Iraqi citizens (many were, not all I'm sure, plus there were also a mingling of other middle eastern peoples there, but it was the Iraqis holding the impromptu rally).  So next time someone against the war in Iraq speaks up about if the Iraqi people wanted us there, ask them how many Iraqi people they've talked to personally.  After all the crap I see on the news, and some of it that I read here, It's always a good feeling to see a bunch of muslims waving an American flag, especially when many are from Iraq.  

[c| Spetsnaz.]

Good points Bucc, although I still find it hard to believe that any Christian nation's military would be welcomed on Arab soil. There are definitely some pros and cons to this War, and the argument about its validity could go on for years. I however am most disturbed by the fact the we were all lied to by the President as a means to justify War.

Having said that; here's an interesting article by a former CIA analyst, that brings things into perspective.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10102

[|MP|Buccaneer]

Good points Bucc, although I still find it hard to believe that any Christian nation's military would be welcomed on Arab soil.

Nah, I can name a couple right off the top of my head (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) and probably still Egypt.  

Islam is just as fucked up as Christianity.  There are assholes in both churches (using the term loosly) that want to start up the Crusades again, just not with the same objective.

But the zealots, and extremist nuts are still out numbered by those that just believe in the peaceful messages of Mohamed and Jesus, not the "we are right so they have to be wrong" assholes.

There are definitely some pros and cons to this War, and the argument about its validity could go on for years.

Completely agree with you there.  If you ignore anything Bush has said, and just leave him out of the discussion, there are a lot of points on both sides.  And we won't know if it was worth it for years to come most likely.

I however am most disturbed by the fact the we were all lied to by the President as a means to justify War.

I would be more disturbed by it, if it was the first time.  Clinton did it, Johnson did it, Both Teddy and FDR did (if you believe the theory that he let Japan attack knowingly).  All in all, as much as I hate Bush, he probably hasn't done anything as bad as LBJ did (and if I'm right that LBJ had JFK offed, LBJ was worse, but that's another discussion).

I'm more disturbed by the Patriot Act, and could go on for hours about how un-American that pile of shit is.

Having said that; here's an interesting article by a former CIA analyst, that brings things into perspective.

Yeah, it didn't really bring anything to light, just showed how just the confusion is, and how the Bush Administration, lied to or not, didn't want to dig deep enough to find out, it was an means to an end.  No surprises at all.

But like I've always mentioned, the reasons I believe the war was the right thing to do have never really come close to the reasons that the White House gave.  I don't care if he had WMD or not.  The fact that the asshole didn't hold up his end of the deal (from his surrender, when we didn't sack his ass the first time) to let inspectors in, for over a decade, is more than enough justification in my opinion.  The fact that he used chemical weapons after the first war (which is a widely known and documented fact) shows that he did hide some after the first war, and he wasn't afraid to use it.  That's just icing on the cake.  And the fact that he was found to have items that where restricted, from France and Russia (none from Germany that I ever read about) just goes to show why they didn't want it.  They had their own selfish motives in mind).  

Nope, they are just as bad as Bush.  But, good things can still come of bad intentions or motivations.  I still think that is the case and hope it does.

[a_Dingo]

Bucc,

Nicely put. Although I don't necessarily agree with our point that being lied to is less important due to the fact that it is not the first time.

As someone who lives in Australia, I am not all that happy that our government followed the USA into a war on what seems to be a lie.

My thoughts are that I would have liked half as much thought to have gone into making the peace as went into fighting the war.

I would not argue with you either on the fact that removing a dictator was a bad thing. However if that was a prerequisite why are there so many other dictators still happily in power in more impoverished parts of the world? Perhaps I could be cynical and wonder if it is linked to the fact that those other counties are not sitting on a huge oil stockpile.

Perhaps my cynicism is linked to the perception of the way that money is being taken by American companies to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed in the war.

My personal experience recently is with a Kurdish taxi driver the other day that said the whole problem throughout that region will not go away while there are dictatorships throughout the region.

[BFG]

I however am most disturbed by the fact the we were all lied to by the President as a means to justify War.

Very much the same thing here except it was the PM and his goverment that lied to us...

[abe 2.0]

Whatever the circumstances behind the outbreak of the war, i'm not at all suprised that Iraqis tend to blame much of current violence on 'outsiders'- generally radical muslims from arab countries-and i think they are correct to a large extent. Remember how in the months before the US/UK invasion there were reports of people from all over the arab world who went to iraq to protect saddam's regime....i doubt those guys just packed up and left. And many of the recent attacks have targeted iraqi civilians rather than the US military, which makes me doubt that the people perpetrating these attacks are iraqis. Nonetheless, i think many of the people who benefited from the saddam regime continue to provide assistance to these people and cooperate with them and some iraqis are clearly participating too, but i thiink mostly they know what is at stake. The fact that many of the insurgents are not iraqis makes them look more like ideological mercenaries than a "freedom fighters".

[|MP|Buccaneer]

Bucc,

Nicely put. Although I don't necessarily agree with our point that being lied to is less important due to the fact that it is not the first time.

It's ok not to agree with me, but I didn't say it was less important, just that I wasn't as disappointed by it, since I pretty much expect it

As someone who lives in Australia, I am not all that happy that our government followed the USA into a war on what seems to be a lie.

But yet, there are still enough of the right reasons that could have made the difference.  I didn't seen enough news from Oz to know what your government was telling the people though, so I don't know if they lied to you, were lied to themselves, or just did it for the actual right reasons.

My thoughts are that I would have liked half as much thought to have gone into making the peace as went into fighting the war.

Yes, but it takes both sides.  Iraq had 11 years to start playing nice.  They didn't.  They pushed and tested, seeing how much they could get away with for much too long.

And I posted this at the time (before the war).  That I am a student of history.  I look at the mistakes the human race has made in the past, and look to not repeat them.  After WWI, Germany had much the same conditions and sanctions that Iraq did after the first gulf war.  Europe turned a blind eye to the fact that the Nazi's were lying to them about the ships and weapons they were building, turned a blind eye to the fact that inspectors weren't allowed to inspect, and look where that got us 15 years down the line.  Peace is a great goal, but we should know by now that ignoring the problem wasn't going to make it go away.  Iraq didn't want peace (they didn't want their asses kicked either) but peace wasn't their goal.  

I would not argue with you either on the fact that removing a dictator was a bad thing. However if that was a prerequisite why are there so many other dictators still happily in power in more impoverished parts of the world? Perhaps I could be cynical and wonder if it is linked to the fact that those other counties are not sitting on a huge oil stockpile.

To that I just have to say:
Slobodan Milosevic
Mohamed Farrah Aidid (ok, he wasn't removed, but only because Clinton bowed to the pressures and gave up, but US troops still were sent and died)
Charles Taylor (and they wanted US troops, not UN there)

These guys aren't sitting on oil, but US Troops were sent, in some lost lives.  

Don't get me wrong, I think our government is a bit bipolar when it comes to these matters.  But part of the problem is that we switch leaders so often, and with that comes different opinions on how much force should be used.  I was all for sending troops to Liberia, and for sending troops to Somalia.  We don't stand to gain anything there, but restoring peace and feeding people, but I felt it was the right thing to do, even though many didn't.  Yugoslavia seems like a no brainer, but again, they aren't sitting on oil deposits either.

Funny how things like that get overlooked.  

And, like I've always said, I think Bush did the right thing for the wrong reasons, but I can live with that.

Perhaps my cynicism is linked to the perception of the way that money is being taken by American companies to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed in the war.

Ok, that's fair enough.  But only if you also link France and Russia's motives in avoiding the war to the fact that they were selling illegal weapons and supplies to Iraq, along with contracts by French and other European companies to rebuild the oil fields from after the first war.  If you are going to question the motives of one country, you have to question them all.  So were the veto's by those countries just them "listening to the people" or was it them looking out for their countries financial needs?  I can handle cynicism, as long as it's broad, even across the board cynicism.  

My personal experience recently is with a Kurdish taxi driver the other day that said the whole problem throughout that region will not go away while there are dictatorships throughout the region.

That's an interesting thought.  I personally don't think you have to remove all dictatorships, but by putting down the more ruthless, violent and just evil ones, it will make the whole region better.

Look at how many wars, how many killings Saddam was responsible for, just up to the first Gulf War.  Kurds, Iranians, Kuwaitis, not to mention all the people of Iraq he tortured and killed.  He fought his fellow Arab (not Israel, like he used to brag about when trying to rally the Arab nations to his aid).  He himself was behind much of what made the Middle East so unstable.  Take down enough assholes like him, and even the dictators will clean up their acts a bit, knowing that they could be next.

So, maybe not all of them, maybe just the worst, with the obvious threat hanging over the heads of others.

[c| Spetsnaz.]

Bucc, and anyone else who cares go see this movie http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/thefogofwar.html The Fog of War, saw it tonight with the fam, and I have to say it is one of the most powerful movies I've seen in a long time. It is especially relevant nowadays.

[alaric]

I saw that. It was ok. Macnamara reminds me so much of Rumsfield. And there are a distrubing number of similarities between Iraq and Vietnam.

I didn't agree wth everything Macnamara said, but he got most of it right. In particular I liked what he said about it being a Really Bad Idea? to take unilateral action against a country like we did in vietnam.

I think he said something to the effect of: "If we find ourselves taking unilateral action against a country and none of our allies support us, we should probably pause for a moment and re-examine our thinking."

[PLOPje]

Well you got iraqis that want americans out and you got some who want them to stay you got iraqis that support those bombings and others that dont, but I dont think we can know wich ones are the majority. Yesterday I saw on tv a guy saying one of the last bombing attacks was from an american plane while americans said it was a carbomb... Actually I could see both happen a pilot that lost a mate or is just bored drops a bomb on someplace or some other stupid carbomb blowing away their own people...
There are many (young) People that want to go over iraq or somewhere else to fight for the islam. A father of a guy whose now in jail in turkey for a bombing there
said there came young guys to him to ask if he didnt knew how to get in iraq.
Because they think that is the best they could do with their lives. They live in a strange culture, mostly dont speak the language, didnt finsihed school, ... So they think the best they can do is fight for their religion...      

Ho and you got a good point that france and russia had oil bussiness in iraq but now
all those things are given to american companies,... Besides in france , russia, germany and belgium and some other countries the majority of the people didnt want a war.

He and osme funnything I read in the newspaper that a french guy had driven over someone because he thougt it was osama bin laden

[BFG]

I just watched the trailer... look foward to being able to watch the full thing.. just one thing i wanted to quote from that

how much evil must we do to do good

100,000 men women and children...


Things like this should be compulsive bloody viewing for people... that and films such as shooting for columbine.

[a_Dingo]

Two distinct comments. Probably should have been two posts...

Bucc, Australia as you probably know is one of the strong supporters of the USA when it comes to the actions taken in Iraq. Additionally we have kept naval presence there between the wars supporting the blockade.

Additionally Australia put itself fair and square on the target list by supporting the independence movement in East Timor where we lead the international peacekeeping force. If you believe the confessions of the bombers this was one of the prime reasons for the Bali Bombing that targeted Australians in particular.

The challenge that I believe both our countries have is that we can win a war (or in the Timor case help to deliver independence) but sometimes the peace is lost due to a lack of foresight into the time taken to fix the longer term problem.

Australia is still heavily involved in East Timor and has been so since we led the peacekeeping force in 1999, and are now involved in peacekeeping in the Solomon's where law and order problems had taken the country to the edge of anarchy.

The point I guess I am trying to make is that it appears from the media reports that we are getting in Australia, that George W is wanting to get out of Iraq as soon as is possible. Given the challenges that Iraq face throughout the country I think that we are opening up the potential for another Bosnia to happen.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

On a separate note about Movies...

While we are talking of movies 13 days was on the TV here the other night. I believe that it is one of those movies that should be required watching. For no other reason than to see how lucky we are all just to be here.

It was frightening to see just how much provocation was going on in the background by both sides. To think I nearly didn't make it to my 2nd birthday.

[|MP|Buccaneer]

Bucc, Australia as you probably know is one of the strong supporters of the USA when it comes to the actions taken in Iraq. Additionally we have kept naval presence there between the wars supporting the blockade.

Yep, completely aware.  I even bring it up in the Madrid bombing thread.

It was frightening to see just how much provocation was going on in the background by both sides. To think I nearly didn't make it to my 2nd birthday.

Glad you learned from it, but something that is more disturbing to me is that people have to rely on movies (which may or may not be too accurate) to learn this kind of history.

I'm not really talking about you Dingo, as being from Oz, I can see why this would be lower on the importance scale for your schools, but here in America, how can any student that has gone through High School not know all about the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missle Crisis.  But amazingly enough, most of the people I talk do don't even know why we were ever pissed at Cuba, what started it all.  History is such an important subject, and it's scary how many people have such a limited education in it.

13 days could have had a prequel to it all about Castro, the nationalization of the American assets in Cuba and the Bay of Pigs.  Then a small short film about the US - Soviet Arms Race and how we were all freaked out about Cuba, but we had Nukes in Turkey, closer to Russia than Cuba is to America.  

[a_Dingo]

Bucc, I agree it is sad that many people get their (distorted) understanding of history through movies or TV. Very often people now have a belief of how things have happened which are way off from the facts of the time. What I tend to do is then go and look at the actual history that the film was based on.

I had a high level understanding of the cuban missile crisis prior to seeing the film, and have a better one since, as I have read a bit more into what happened.

A couple of bad examples of films loosely based on history that I have seen that would tend to distort people's understanding of what actually was happening at the time were Gladiator and The Last Samurai.  Both were amusing to watch, but the divergence from the facts of the time were huge in both cases. Its amazing though, just how many people believe that they were both accurate representations of history.

As you said, I am in Oz and Australia was more UK centric from a news perspective. However given that the world nearly went down the "On the Beach" scenario, I am surprised just how many Australians are not aware of the event at all.

Having said that what worries me more is the almost total lack of good world news that seems to be available in the USA. Having visited there on several occasions, and having access to CNN etc here in OZ, the lack of good global news seems to result in what I could only generalise as a myopic world view.

Australia seems to be a bit better in having global news presented, this may be because Australia is a small first world primary producer, sitting in the middle of nowhere between the pacific indian oceans, that is very dependent on global issues. Unfortunately our news and current affairs seem to be going the way of the USA into sound bites and sensationalism.

However current affairs and recent history seem to be suffering significantly from what I can only suggest is the influence of propaganda. As I said in an earlier post the fact that we were deceived by our governments into accepting a war is to me a good example. Or is it a case of life imitating art.... Wag the Dog comes to mind.

[|MP|Buccaneer]

The scarry thing about "wag the dog" is that Clinton learned from that movie =D.  Bush as well, yes.  Damn Hollywood for teaching them something as useful as that.

It's good that the movies inspire you (and hopefully others) to search out the real history sources.  I get really discouraged when I read about what they are teaching about WW2 now a days (many teach it that Japan was an innocent victim, talking all about the A-Bomb, ignoring all the crap they did for years and years before it).

There are some good news sources (the web being amongst the best) for us Americans.  They just aren't part of the main stream.  I tend to watch more CNNi (the international version of CNN) than the normal one.  etc.