Iraq...

upperoilcan

In light of the current mess thats unfolding it seems that our presence there was a complete and utter waste of time..

Much the same as the current situation in Afghan....

bianchimoon

upperoilcan wrote:

In light of the current mess thats unfolding it seems that our presence there was a complete and utter waste of time..

Much the same as the current situation in Afghan....

Tony "I will answer to a higher power than any electorate"
and "Uber middle east peace maker" Blair
If it wasn't so tragic for all involved i'd pee myself at his total incompetence/delusion!

pblakeney

bianchimoon wrote:

upperoilcan wrote:

In light of the current mess thats unfolding it seems that our presence there was a complete and utter waste of time..

Much the same as the current situation in Afghan....

Tony "I will answer to a higher power than any electorate"
and "Uber middle east peace maker" Blair
If it wasn't so tragic for all involved i'd pee myself at his total incompetence/delusion!

I always thought that his appointment was the epitome of tragic irony.

thegreatdivide

Moral of the story - don't get rid of Dictators. Sometimes you really do need a total ba$tard in charge of the country.

bianchimoon

thegreatdivide wrote:

Moral of the story - don't get rid of Dictators. Sometimes you really do need a total ba$tard in charge of the country.

sad, but true in this case

sungod

yep

roots of these problems go back a long way, but for much of the world it does seem like it'd be better if the concept of 'country' were eliminated and things rolled back to the old feudal/tribal territories and small kingdoms that evolved over centuries, and managed a reasonable co-existence (punctuated by palace coups and territorial grabs)

so many of today's borders are the result of imperialist/capitalist/colonialist/communist running dogs (i.e. us and our peers) carving up the rest of the world and drawing borders, by fiat, conquest or haggling, that had no respect for the history, culture or relationships of the people who actually live there

for the british empire, it used to be our armed forces that kept things together by subjugating the natives and twatting the various competing running dogs, once that's gone, either some local dictator has to take over the role, or it degenerates, maybe in violence, maybe in corrupt and bloated administration

bush and the poodle blair simply represent the latest in that long tradition of self-serving meddling

tbh it makes what south africa has achieved so far really remarkable, it's not perfect and could still drift the other way, but at least it shows how if the people as a whole try and forgive the past and join together, there's a chance to build a better place for everyone

Gazzetta67

upperoilcan wrote:

In light of the current mess thats unfolding it seems that our presence there was a complete and utter waste of time..

Much the same as the current situation in Afghan....

You know what's coming next dont you !!! - Calais will be full of folk wanting to come to britain...just like sudan.

lesfirth

bianchimoon wrote:

upperoilcan wrote:

In light of the current mess thats unfolding it seems that our presence there was a complete and utter waste of time..

Much the same as the current situation in Afghan....

Tony "I will answer to a higher power than any electorate"
and "Uber middle east peace maker" Blair
If it wasn't so tragic for all involved i'd pee myself at his total incompetence/delusion!

Sadly I agree with you.

DesB3rd

We're probably kidding ourselves if we assume that the post-2003 alternative history of Iraq (less the US led intervention) would have been Saddam business as usual.

Ruthless as the Iraqi Baathist regime I don't imagine any alt-history wouldn't have it in some state of unrest by now; the Baathist regime had long since ceded any substantial popular base. Iran would be keen as mustard to back internal dissent and would probably turn a blind eye to cross border insurgent operations, essentially making it impossible for the Iraqi military to decisively snuff out a guerilla movement.

Similar narrative to Syria I guess; an Arab Spring popular rising (much more) brutally suppressed leaving a residue of nothing-to-lose extremists who'll fight on with a drip feed of foreign and domestic recruits and a river of guns from Iran.

Sorry to ramble, the point being that we shouldn't give ourselves too much credit; Iraq (and the ME as whole, to generalise) has more than enough domestic capacity for chaos and death without our involvement.

nathancom

Saddam wasn't some saint anyway, thousands died under his regime. Just because they died under the silence of an authoritarian regime instead of in the noise of a fractured state doesn't make them less dead.

pblakeney

nathancom wrote:

Saddam wasn't some saint anyway, thousands died under his regime. Just because they died under the silence of an authoritarian regime instead of in the noise of a fractured state doesn't make them less dead.

You are completely missing the point.
We didn't know what was happening when Saddam was in charge and ignorance is bliss. We want bliss.

pinno

sungod wrote:

yep

for the british empire, it used to be our armed forces that kept things together by subjugating the natives and twatting the various competing running dogs, once that's gone, either some local dictator has to take over the role, or it degenerates, maybe in violence, maybe in corrupt and bloated administration

bush and the poodle blair simply represent the latest in that long tradition of self-serving meddling

tbh it makes what south africa has achieved so far really remarkable, it's not perfect and could still drift the other way, but at least it shows how if the people as a whole try and forgive the past and join together, there's a chance to build a better place for everyone

The white Apartheid in SA has been replaced by a monetary Apartheid. Many more unemployed and thousands if unsolved murders. Yes, the freedom to vote but the freedom to be impoverished. A vote is worth nothing if it means you have nothing to show for it.

The British Empire has been subject to the most distorted of press. Britain had a divide and rule policy that was far more successful than say the French method of Colonisation.
Why do we continue to beat ourselves with a stick because we had the last geographical empire? Do you want to read the twin volume report that took hundreds of man hours to complete and 6 years of study compiled by Lord Delamere in the fifties? This was for the smooth transition of Kenya to native rule. It affords the different cultures and peoples in Kenya far more time and understanding than the ruling tribe (Kikuyu and only Kikuyi btw, never mind the Samburu, the Maasai, the Rendilli, the Luo's) since 1963. It details every aspect of their lives and every aspect of agriculture, exports, disease in livestock, train timetables, road maintenance schedules - everything.
India was ruled by 250,00 British in a population of 750 million! - for the best part of it, hardly a coercive relationship.
The Dutch were at it, the Germans, the Portuguese, the Spanish - the Empire was necessary for us to compete as an Island with foes across the channel. Why do we suffer from such flawed moral relativism?

Consider that the global empire of Capitalism without boundaries or hindrance, without an international treaty, is the most insidious empire this world has ever faced, the past was Pax Britannica, the present and the future: greed and ecological destruction.

The world was at it's most peaceful when it was 3/5ths pink. Somehow similar to the dictator Saddam keeping the lid on things paradoxically.

nathancom

The British empire in India was hardly benign. Whether you look at large scale famines caused by British rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876–78 or individual attrocities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amritsar_Massacre

The British were not in the colonies to spread peace and civilization but to exploit the workforce and to create a market for goods. Why were we half way across the globe conquering places, and now we complain about immigration. Amusing.

mamba80

nathancom wrote:

Saddam wasn't some saint anyway, thousands died under his regime. Just because they died under the silence of an authoritarian regime instead of in the noise of a fractured state doesn't make them less dead.

I was always against the 2nd Iraq war, we had a no fly zone, SH was manacled and his excesses were to some extent curbed, though our sanctions policy effected the normal populace, not the ruling elite.
he killed 1000s that is true but over a long period of time, of course dead is dead but the subsequent scale? the country was relatively stable, and he was certain no terrorist master mind, they had a health service, education, power, sewage systems..... now what have they got? mass shootings and bombings and very little else and the exodus of their population into the west.
100s of 1000s have died in Iraq since his over throw, do you think that is better? what are the chances of peace in Iraq? the spread of weapons and fighters from Iraq into sub Saharan Africa, into Libya, fighters spreading out into Syria,
Blair and Bush have caused untold misery on these poor people and should be held accountable for their actions.

bianchimoon

+1 Mamba and worse to come!

DeVlaeminck

nathancom wrote:

The British empire in India was hardly benign. Whether you look at large scale famines caused by British rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876–78 or individual attrocities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amritsar_Massacre

The British were not in the colonies to spread peace and civilization but to exploit the workforce and to create a market for goods. Why were we half way across the globe conquering places, and now we complain about immigration. Amusing.

I wasn't half way across the globe conquering places and nor were (if my dad's interest in family history is to be believed) were my ancestors - representatives of a govt elected by a minority working in favour of a minority may have been and exploiting the people over there the same way that the majority of people over here were being exploited at the same time.

morstar

bianchimoon wrote:

+1 Mamba and worse to come!

+2, well put Mamba.

And if you consider long term objectives of going to war: i.e. fighting a war on terror, the outcome is almost certainly the absolute worst result imaginable.

We can all be guilty of revisionism with the benefit of hindsight but that wasn't the case with this war. 100's of thousands in the UK mobilised to protest before the war ever started because they knew it was wrong.

I think Blairs UK legacy is that he tried to deliver capitalism with a social conscience. Whether people believe he delivered or not is largely polarised by political allegiances. His global legacy is a total f***ing disaster. As others have stated, peace envoy, WTF?

thegreatdivide

mamba80 wrote:

nathancom wrote:

Saddam wasn't some saint anyway, thousands died under his regime. Just because they died under the silence of an authoritarian regime instead of in the noise of a fractured state doesn't make them less dead.

I was always against the 2nd Iraq war, we had a no fly zone, SH was manacled and his excesses were to some extent curbed, though our sanctions policy effected the normal populace, not the ruling elite.
he killed 1000s that is true but over a long period of time, of course dead is dead but the subsequent scale? the country was relatively stable, and he was certain no terrorist master mind, they had a health service, education, power, sewage systems..... now what have they got? mass shootings and bombings and very little else and the exodus of their population into the west.
100s of 1000s have died in Iraq since his over throw, do you think that is better? what are the chances of peace in Iraq? the spread of weapons and fighters from Iraq into sub Saharan Africa, into Libya, fighters spreading out into Syria,
Blair and Bush have caused untold misery on these poor people and should be held accountable for their actions.

Very much this.

MountainMonster

The world's going to bits, fark the lot of ya!

I'll be ready with my shotgun, sustainable bicycle and bomb shelter if zombies/Iraqi's invade.

nathancom

for a quick review of deaths that Saddam is responsible for vs the war in Iraq (if we want to carry such a crude comparison) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein's_Iraq
or 1 million casualties from all sources vs 1 million directly murdered by Saddam. The sanctions were denying medical supplies to the general population and further impoverishing them which no doubt worsened survival rates for a whole host of medical conditions. Added to this you had a regime that bled much of the wealth from the country in order to sustain both a lavish lifestyle and a apparatus of authoritarian control and all the torture and human misery that that entails. This regime had recklessly sacrificed the lives of millions of young in the Iran-Iraq war and the invasion of Kuwait.

I am sure that the motives of Bush and co were not necessarily high minded, seeing an opportunity to wrest control of the oil fields of northern Iraq into American control. However, I think it is still debatable whether they were right to enter that conflict as the opportunity for regime change in a foreign power is not so easily achieved. Anyway, how can we know that Saddam would not have been dragged into a conflict similar to Syria with even worse consequences for the nation.

In these situations every option is a bad option and however much we want to decry people like Blair, that was the extremely difficult choice he was left with (especially knowing the Americans were going in) and I am sure he took what he thought was the best decision for our interests, our allies interests and the people of Iraq's interest. Anyway I am sure we can all agree it is tragic that the people of Iraq, who have nothing to do with politics, end up suffering the most.

zanelad

bianchimoon wrote:

and "Uber middle east peace maker" Blair

He works for the phone app people now,does he

bianchimoon

Zanelad wrote:

bianchimoon wrote:

and "Uber middle east peace maker" Blair

He works for the phone app people now,does he

Close, made a lot of money out of the watinya mobile phone deal in Palastine/Israel, he certainly knows how to turn a job as 'supposed' Middle east peace envoy into a lucrative money making venture

socrates

Has anyone stopped to think really that Iraq and later Afghanistan was none of our business. Just Blair and Bush being cowboys.

tangled_metal

Saddam was a western leaning middle east dictator. He was a thug and criminal who happened to be a member of the Baathist party when there was a power struggle. He stepped in using his criminal tendencies such as extortion and violence resulting in he took over the party. Then he made it his own. I did read an apocryphal story about those days but forgotten it now.
Anyway he became a nice western capitalism backed dictator much supported by USA and UK and others too. Then he saw the west losing interest. His wars against Iran no longer interested the west. He saw US backing leak away. That was happening at the time of gulf war 1. BTW his ppl were invited by Kuwait's top technical college to view how Kuwait was investing in its people's training. All new cnc kit and state of the art kit too. That was year before the invasion. Once Kuwait was liberated that college was empty. The western cnc makers just got another nice big order for the kit stolen. I heard that similar things happened through out Kuwait. They showed Iraqi officials round then first thing after the invasion they stole what had interested then less than a year before. A shopping trip!

sungod

yep, but we are where we are, bush/blair and others before them sowed the seeds, now we reap the harvest

now 'the west' and others act like it's a modern war with a political entity, isis is not a political entity

they are driven by a combination of delusion and idiocy - religion is a delusion, belief that killing or dying for it will get you eternal bliss is idiocy, that's a mix able to lay waste to civilizations

you cannot negotiate with such people, their absolute position is that everyone else is a heretic, apostate or infidel, and whichever you are the sentence is death, the only rational approach is to wipe them from the face of the earth, otherwise they will simply come back again and again, corrupting the idiotic with their twisted promises

it's a bleak situation, innocents will be slaughtered

tangled_metal

Then after he'd lost US backing, before gulf war 1, he'd looked around to see what could replace USA. He suddenly found religion apparently. He was starting to look towards Islamic states. After the war he was using his fellow Sunnis and keeping Shiite down.
Gulf war 2. No plan for afterwards. USA trashed the Baathist organization without taking into account the shades of grey in that system. Not black and white, bad to the bone. There were generals and senior police officers without as much blood on their hands that could have formed the basis of a US backed fledgling regime. No! USA wasn't having it, never had an alternative idea. Allowed Shiites to create an insurgency in the vacuum. Downhill from there. Iran backed of course. Then you had Kurdish sub-state in the north, Shiite one in south and Baghdad's Sunni sub-state.
Then new president of Iraq, a dictator of Shiite allegiances. Sunnis on the b wrong end of the stick now. Cue ISIS. Sunnis and allawites. Extremists one and all. Flush with battle hardened fighters and newer tactics that don't suit the big army that Iraq has. The old fashioned army. USA and UK have learnt fast how to fight this but not good at defeating it. You need ppl onboard. Cue the dictatorial tendencies of Malaki. He is considered worse than ISIS by the Sunni regions and villages/towns. He arrested, tortured and ruthlessly controlled his rivals from the Sunnis. Now he's asking for our help. Well US help at least.

tangled_metal

ISIS's success has a lot to do with the powers in Iraq and Syria. If they had nice western style democracy or a system people could live in without fear or suffering due to the state there would be less scope for ISIS. Bluntly put a lot has to be put at the people who put their leaders into power and propped them up.
In Iraq USA has a lot to do with that but not 100% to blame. That's too simplistic. Origins of conflict in the middle east are deeply held and date back many generations, probably before British empire. Always been a troublesome region.
Then Afghanistan? That area has only ever been conquered by Alexander the Great! Trouble with a capital T. We had a reasonable justification to go in there. No endgame or plan. Could we have kept some of the Taliban as part of the solution? Think that's what's being looked into now. Too late to negotiate with them. You've also got leaders with dictatorial tendencies, using force to keep power. Lining their own pockets. Sucking up US money for their own people.

Bozman

bianchimoon wrote:

thegreatdivide wrote:

Moral of the story - don't get rid of Dictators. Sometimes you really do need a total ba$tard in charge of the country.

sad, but true in this case

+1

meagain

And in the most amusing demonstration of the " if we have the same enemies then we must be friends " political philosophy for a while, I see that Iran is offering to work with the USA to counter terrorism!

None of this is going to end well.

Majestic 12

Very interesting debate on Radio 5 re the ISIS insurgency. Didnt listen to all of it but the first contributor and exiled Iraqi national claims that ISIS is the group that the West funded and armed at the beginning of the Syrian conflict. Think we all know the West has a calamitous habit of making things worse in the Middle East and other Muslim influenced areas of the world. However the other claim is that Saudi, Qatar and Turkey are now the key contributors to ISIS, who now have alleged assets of £1bn. Aren't a couple of these nations the darlings of the West, to which they suck up to in order to sell weapons?
The western powers must know that these Arab nations are playing a devious game of double and triple crossing in order to destabilise the region for their own benefit. So why don't the west make a stand once and for all and slap an embargo on them all? Or is it just an oil thing?

RideOnTime

Blair has been rattling on about the situation been difficult and how a partial response is difficult, a full response is difficult, between a partial and a full response is difficult etc etc. How about no response.