Thoughts on Iran vs West war in the ME
what are your thoughts on the middle east, especially the situation currently in Lebanon and my home of Iraq,
we seem to be caught between Iranian imperialism and the western one,
one tries to impose its theocratic system upon us, the other doesnt give two shit just wants their military here, seems like an endless situation, what are your thoughts?
we seem to be caught between Iranian imperialism and the western one,
one tries to impose its theocratic system upon us, the other doesnt give two shit just wants their military here, seems like an endless situation, what are your thoughts?
Comments (131)
Ideally Iraq would control it's own destiny and not be under the influence of any outside power. Regrettably, the last time it had that power it used it to invade it's neighbors, resulting in a response which now leaves it relatively powerless.
All across the Middle East, and the rest of the world too, the only real solution is for citizens to take responsibility for their own country. This will typically require the spilling of blood to overthrow those who would steal their freedom. I've been encouraged to see brave Iraqis protesting against their government when it doesn't serve their interests. Brave Iranians are doing the same.
In both cases, nobody else can really win the war against the despots for you.
To wider the lens to the larger global picture....
The next century will be defined by a struggle between the world's oldest democracy and the largest dictatorship in world history. The vast majority of Americans would be proud to have Iraqis as allies in that struggle. But it's your choice.
If I understand correctly, the recent tragic super explosion was caused by highly explosive materials which were shoved in to a warehouse and then largely forgotten. These materials were just sitting there patiently, waiting for somebody to screw up. And then somebody did.
The whole world is in that exact same situation, on a vastly larger scale.
Well, to be fair, large numbers of both Iraqis and Iranians have put their lives on the line repeatedly in demonstrating against governments willing to shoot them down in the streets. Few people in America or Europe have those kind of balls, so maybe we should give credit where it is due.
I was there with them once, they're too hopeful, refused to politicize when it was their only solution, thats why i see it as endless, there is no one willing to do anything, even those that do want to do something are doomed to do it wrongly and fail
We would never do that in America. Except every day for our entire history. Other than that, NEVER! :-)
for us its not constant
Every country does it wrong over and over and over again until they finally die or succeed.
Thomas Jefferson declared that "all men are created equal". Except for those who don't own land, the native peoples we were busy exterminating, the millions we enslaved, and of course, don't be silly, women aren't men!
Who are you referring to by "us"? What's your tribe?
Ok then, so until Iraq can retake control of it's destiny, who do you prefer? Americans or Iranians?
If you don't want Iraq to become more of a proxy war battle field between the two, it seems the solution would be to pick one and throw the other one out. Your thoughts?
Augustusea,
It is great that you start looking at the problem from these two actors, not the very typical viewpoint of Westerners criticizing their own governments and thus rather having unintentionally a condescending attitude towards people living in the Middle East (as if they don't have their own agendas in the conflict).
I think the Shia / Sunni divide and the various sides taken by Middle Eastern actors is important. And the fact that some of the Gulf Cooperation Council members have nearly gone to war with each other. The term Shia crescent coined by king Abdullah of Jordan in 2004 gives one narrative the conflict, but the issue really hasn't been of Iran trying to conquer the Shia crescent. More like Iran simply has getting involved in countries like Iraq, Syria and Lebanon (and Yemen). Likely because, well, it supposed to be revolutionary and offence might be the best defence, as they say.
I would compare the events now in the Middle East to the Spanish Civil war, where Spain obviously had it's huge domestic problems which after a failed coup ended up in a bloody civil war, but then at the time you also had countries extremely eager to get involved with the civil war (with Italy and Germany on one side and Soviet Union on the other). There presence of these powers made the fight very ideological which spawn then people like George Orwell to volunteer for the fight, and something similar you see happening now in the Middle East. Syria and Yemen, or in fact Iraq, might be seen as pieces on the chess board to be won or lost.
I think that behind all of the turmoil is that not only has the Cold War ended, but also the US lead alliance has fallen into total disarray as the US train wreck of a foreign policy has reached the train wreck stage. The US could hold it together when your ex-leader Saddam Hussein decided to solve the finance problem after a ruinous war with Iran by annexing a small rich neighbor Kuwait. Then even Syria joined as an ally the US lead coalition. Then the final train wreck happened with the 2003 war. And why I call this a trainwreck is that at first the Middle East started with the Baghdad pact and SEATO, with Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan being all allies. It seems like in the Middle East US allies tend to become it's worst enemies, apart from Israel.
Now you have in Libya supposed allies of the US being at different sides. As Egypt has it's own problems and Iraq as you know is a mess, Saudi Arabia and Iran try to compete which one is top of the hill if the US really would leave the area.
honestly I think there are a few historical events that lead to our inevitable downfall and collapse, those being the first islamic Invasion, then al ghazali being born, then the mongols,
even during islamic times (abbasid) we were doing relatively great compared to europe or asia,
but after the mongols and ghazali it inevitably went downhill, as tribals and barbarians would take over this piece of land then ottomans,
until ww1 where everything went well until first nazis came, then the cold war started and we got fucked over hard by that,
we went from sending europe ww2 aid to getting a new bomb each day,
and from that old time of post mongols, people were building up idiocy, till the point where they have become completely illogical and ignorant rn, most of the population still believes in magic curing cancer ffs
so the reason is mainly we got some dumb circumstances in a bad timing, which kickstarted a cycle of ignorance, and that cycle couldnt be broken because of how crappy outside influence was
Quite an extraordinarily asinine post. This is the quintessential example of how racial histories justify racism. When you can't see individuals as individuals, this is the consequence.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending OP, he can take care of himself. Your earlier post is ludicrously stupid, the way you approach history is worse than that of a child. You have 4.9k posts, how can someone think so much to end up with so little?
Even within America, a supposed democracy, your impact is unnoticeable. What accomplishments would you like to be accredited with? What atrocities do you wish to claim responsibility for? As an American.
In the middle east there is a plurality of ethnic wealthy elites with ruling potential and populist support. That is why the strongman leader found support there. With US intervention/theft this blew the door wide open for civil conflict and power struggles fuelled and helped by Saudi US and Iranian resources. As things have settled the media and disgruntled elites will always exaggerate the situation on the ground for political purposes.
My best advise would be to be an individual and dont expect your govt to nanny you or have your best interests at heart. Covid shows precisely how incorrigbly selfish and corrupt all govts are. Even the good ol US of A.
US Govts shit is just as stinky as Iraqs. Nay,worse!
Who funded and founded Israel? Who invaded Lebanon,Iraq and funded ISIS. Who funded hizbollah and Hamas? The US Saudi and Iran really helped exacerbate and create a lot of these conflicts.
The US admin freedom? They have been involved in umpteen conflicts and instigated conflict all around the world. It's great now the US admin has finally learnt that it cant flex its military muscle after having its ass kicked numerous times. Viva la peace!
And notice,I separate American individuals from the US elite ruling class. Were not all generalizing fools and crude identitarians!
History is a lie agreed upon.
Honestly we're kind of left between two evils as tim said, I personally am not a fan of the US at all, but I would chose them over Iran,
and thats our situation, we're left to choose or die crying
I think that when you investigate how power functions, the types of narratives that @tim wood is peddling start to fall apart. I think it is due to a lack of appreciation for how oppressive power can be, how centralised it can be and well, pretty much always is. Perhaps within some childish view of democracy, an American can see themselves as part of the winning team but within the middle east, we're talking theocracies, dictatorships and monarchies, it is really astonishing to listen to people who give power and responsibility to groups that include all various components of society - like racial groups or as citizens of a nation, or just people who live in the region!
Political leaders want you to feel powerless so you vote for
and support them.
so truly we only have either violent civil war or ask for international help, both sound horrendous
Yep,it is astonishing when people judge a person purely by the politics or "history " of the country they live in.
I'm sure timmy takes full responsibility for the US handling of the covid situation in the US.
As for those Germans,well "history shows" they are imperialists...
solutions just live your life without getting involved in the shenanigans. What is the situation where you live?
What I'm saying is any govt is going to oppress to some degree. If you are able to work study and travel then live your life. Politics is not a saviour.
the people don't have water, or electricity, while I do, which is complete bollocks tbh
Saying the choice is civil war or coup is irresponsible.
Will the poor be better off with civil war?
Its amazing how bourgeoise think the solution is always some drastic nonsense whilst sitting home pontificating on the internet.
anywho, well I am not saying they will benefit off civil war, I'm saying those are the only things we haven't tried yet.
You act like this is a game and you have to try new things.
So if they wont benefit whats the point?
Life is precious. Pakistan in the eighties had intermittent electricity and crappy sewage systems plus govt corruption. No civil war. Much better now.
Politics ain't no game and neither is war.
Point is, we tried every possible peaceful approach, the school system ruled by the elite is destroying and corrupting the youth, there will be no better tomorrow if no one works for so
I'm sure every revolutionary said these same words.
Even mr Saddam Hussein would approve. Going to war for economics. Bravo.
It sounds like your attitude and personal politics are hopeless mate. Let's hope Iraq improves peacefully.
Iraq will never improve in a peaceful manner, that would need a 1000 years to be done
1000 years! Man your attitude is a problem!
Places like Yugoslavia Rwanda northern ireland achieved peace in relatively short times.
Seriously,you are part of the problem. A pessimist with running water and electricity and internet probably better fed than me and with two cars.
and Iraq has been going on with this situation for about 600 years now, what makes the next 100 any different?
Your attitude is invalid. You've swallowed a bogus history.
I've met many Iraqis and they never said that the previous times were as bad as your making out.
100 years! Man you have no faith in progress. Hows Yugoslavia Rwanda and northern Ireland different to Iraq?
its not bogus history, but you haven't seen how these people are,
all the countries listed dont have a deep complex conflict that stretches throughout history like ours
What is so wrong about thinking history in a longer scale than the typical American?
If something that happened 60 years ago is important, why not something that happened 600 years? Augustusea just reflects a very common way for people in the Middle East to think.
For example, when Dubya Bush once accidentally (or out of ignorance) referred after 9/11 to go on a crusade, you bet that came the punch line of Al Qaeda back then.
I see no reason why you think Iraq is unique in history.
You are aware the current iraq is not necessarily the same borders from 100 years ago?
I'm not American btw. What's important is recent history and now. Living in a mythical past is for politicians and nationalists.
why would what you heard from other individuals matter in this argument? it doesn't add, decrease or make any point valid or invalid,
I think yes Iraq is unique in history and is quite different to all of those, as they are also different to each other
Other individuals matter because I'm showing people dont agree with your pessimism.
Every nationalist claims his country is unique.
You realise Syria and Iraq both had baath party ideology during the reigns of Saddam and Assad?
every country is unique, thats a true term, it doesn't entail nationalism
1920 the borders of iraq were the same as they are now.
Pre 1916 what were the borders?
If every country is unique what makes iraq different?
Iraq is Arabic speaking Muslim and comprised of different ethnic groups. No different to Syria Saudi Jordan etc. Iran has more difference due to language and ethnicities.
Iraq is more diverse then saudi or jorden,
not entirely arabic speaking either,
has a bigger sunni shia divide then syria
and Iraq has the oldest history and the most different amount of identities out of all of them,
a very multicultural and multi ethnic place
But the point is this is just nationalist posturing.
The main relevent history with Iraq is the the fall of Saddam, the US invasion and the current Saudi Iranian US
Interferring and disgruntled iraqi troublemakers.
Iran is more diverse that is correct, how is it any better now? I dont understand that point,
what I listed above doesnt make iraq any better or superior, it just is what makes it different,
and no the relevant history is that of the people, it goes far beyond that
My point is Iran is quite different bit doesnt have the problems Iraq has. Nothing to do with unique countries but foreign policy. You realise Libya and Egypt also have a few problems due to US interventions?
You mean the Iraqi propoganda called history.
The masses dont write history the wealthy political Elite do. And of course they never lie or propogandise!
@Augustusea
Agreed.
Not likely, if the history profession is done using the scientific method as usually now is done.
And political discourse uses only the few issues that have links to the present, but typically ignore absolutely everything else. So I don't buy your argument that history is all propaganda.
Do you really think Iraqi history will paint the Americans as liberators and totally justified in invading iraq?
Yet american history will paint the gulf conflict as being about liberating hearts and minds from a regime that supposedly had WMDs.
You think german history of WW2 is the same as the Russian version?
There may be a few facts of history but most is interpretation selective events and downright lies.
You are aware of the gulf of tomkin and pearl harbour being false flags? What makes you think govts are truthful when it comes to war reporting?
Reporters are only told what govt press releases wants them to know. You think the media just waltz into war zones and report every event?
600 years ago who were the historians and journalists?
Govt backed scribes and propagandists.
You cannot have value free anything. And honesty is the last thing govts release to journalists. To say nothing of journalistic propaganda and lies.
Fake news has always been the norm.
Have you watched the news or seen the state of journalism? History is just academic journalism.
Look at the history of 9-11. Only a few decades back. All nonsense. Thus is your scientific history.
Perhaps it's that people genuinely believe in destiny and karma. Hence if some area has a lots of conflicts, it's seen as it's the fault of the people. The racist explanation comes easily to mind that the problems perpetuate from the people themselves.
Yet this is totally fictitious. It's obvious that North Koreans and South Koreans are the same people with similar background and culture and were divided just like the Germans at the end of WW2 and now totally different outcomes. If North Korea would have unified the peninsula in 1950, people would say that Koreans simply are prone to authoritarian rule and dictatorship. They simply wouldn't believe that there could be a South Korea with K-pop and Samsung.
Will any history paint the 2003 invasion on those lines?
Ok, I'll give that one a go. :-)
Saddam invaded two neighboring countries resulting in the deaths of over a million people, not to mention decades of a ruthlessly murderous assault on the Iraqi people. If Saddam and/or his sons had remained in power it seems certain that, one way or another, such psychopathic behavior would have continued, perhaps for additional decades.
Cynical critics of the American invasion are almost always guilty of the sloppiest of reasoning. They correctly and accurately point to the incompetent American occupation and the resulting suffering of the Iraqi people. So far so good. But then they stop. They almost never compare that tragic outcome to the alternative of allowing Saddam to remain in power.
It's certainly true that Saddam didn't have WMD, and that such reports may have been blatant lies, or at least manipulative bendings of the known facts. This is a reasonable claim which the critics are justified in making.
But then the critics almost never go on to consider what the WMD situation would be today if Saddam had remained in power. It seems impossible that Saddam would not have earnestly sought to develop nuclear weapons, given that the Iranians are right on the edge of having them. And who can doubt that the Iranians would have correctly perceived the existential WMD threat from Saddam, and raced towards building their own arsenal. And so without the American invasion what we'd likely being seeing today is yet another nuclear arms race, this time between two ruthless psychopathic regimes.
And then of course multiple other countries in the region would have joined this arm race. Do the Saudis or Kuwaitis wish to face a nuclear armed Saddam with only conventional weapons? No way, for they've seen with their own eyes what Saddam was capable of.
Western critics of the 2003 invasion are also typically guilty of the most blatant forms of moral hypocrisy. They so often claim to care SO MUCH about the Iraqi people. But the actual fact is that they had pretty much NOTHING to say about the Iraqi people while Saddam was raping them, and once the American military involvement in Iraq wound down to it's current low level, and could no longer be used as a partisan political football, the critics again lost all interest in the Iraqi people. Point being, the critics of the American invasion NEVER cared about the Iraqi people, either before, during or after the invasion. They cared only about internal American politics, and their own fantasy moral superiority poses.
There you go. That should be enough to get me in to a ton of trouble. :-)
Maybe you are under the illusion that history and american history is written purely by honest non partisan
academics who personally witnessed the entire 2003 conflict and were privy to and invited to critique Bush et al. I'm sure you would say the official history of Russia,north korea,china and Palestine was partisan propoganda and biased by said nations.
News for you brother,America is just the same and worse.
The purveyor of official history is govt. And the US Admin is as dishonest as they come. It's been involved in numerous invasions proxy conflicts economic cronyism since WW2. Show me the mainstream American academic history that reflects this?
History is a lie agreed upon.
Your ego agendas are becoming tiresome. Please stop trying to turn every thread in to a food fight. Thank you.
Which was the main argument for the invasion btw. And now thoroughly shown not to be true: the last remnants of Saddam Hussein's WMD project were destroyed during Clinton's strike Operation Desert Fox.
Quoting Hippyhead
Perhaps Iraq would have had it's civil war like Syria during the Arab Spring. That's the likely outcome. Saddam's WMD program had all but collapsed. The only real threat would have been if Saddam hadn't invaded Kuwait. Then his armed forces would have been intact and hadn't faced basically the Western coalition that still had the Cold War armies intact to be deployed to Saudi Arabia.
Quoting Hippyhead
Not actually, what they did was to anticipate the mess that following the invasion would cause. Yet at the time very many believed the "mushroom cloud" propaganda and still would believe that Bush just got bad intel, if it wasn't for Trump. Bush the elder that heeded the advice of his Arab coalition partners: they did not want to march on Baghdad when they had the chance in 1991.
Just please listen to Dick Cheney making the case in 1994 just why didn't the US march into Baghdad after the Iraqi army was defeated during the 100 hours of land war during Operation Desert Storm:
Nothing is more convincing just why invading Iraq was a bad idea and would lead to a quagmire. Did Saddam Hussein kill a huge amount of people? Yes.
Quoting Asif
Lol.
That's funny.
I already agreed with this. And, as usual, you completely ignored that if Saddam (or his sons) were still in power today they would most likely be engaged in a nuclear arms race with the Iranians, which would in turn then expand to include a number of other countries in the region.
I also agree the American occupation was incompetent and led to a great deal of suffering. But there are outcomes worse than that which were, so far at least, avoided by the invasion.
Please stop clogging threads with this kind of junk. Thank you.
As per usual I will ignore the ad hominem and your ploy of making cases which one knows you will never be satisfied with. And never sticking to the point at hand.
As for selling!!!? You are trying to sell the myth of history and ignore the govts number one agenda is to maintain its power base and wealth. That is a manifest fact. You ignore the american imperialism since WW2 to say nothing of the lies of pearl harbour,gulf of tomkin,9-11,WMD iraqi.reconstruction contracts etc etc etc.
Maybe your not aware science and history carries its own assumptions and political biases.
Hesiod,thucydides,machiavelli the scribes of the bible,modern.history and american history,all propoganda narratives.
What distinguishes the "scientific" modern history of the
US,Russia and North korea?
Is the implication US history is more "scientific" and honest than Russia and North korea?
A huge amount of assumptions go into this kind of thinking.
Let's see a case for this myth of objective history.
I don't believe it is a belief in destiny or karma, I believe it is an issue of how framing can create nonsensical causal arguments. "Americans are doing great while middle easterners aren't" this is why I keep saying that the "truth" doesn't justify framings, because yeah, that framing isn't completely untrue but it's also wildly simplistic and very misleading. Without filling in the details - or knowing them as I know is the case with forum clown @tim wood any narrative can be created. So America, superior culture, better people, with a great moral compass and ideas and whatever else. The narrative can only be created in hindsight and if we look at tim's successful "defeated people" doing well, again, the intricate details of the recovery of Japan and Germany are overlooked in favour of a narrative which will never be able to predict the success of future peoples because its nonsense but as an explanation for what happened within the simplistic framing it makes sense, it's business as usual.
It's hard to take the views too seriously, they're only possible from a position of absolute ignorance.
but technically iraq was under an islamic caliphate, and the center of one,
and was neighboring to israel
now. What do you mean by future wannabes?
Quoting Banno
I would disagree, the problem with Iraq isn't the borders but the acceptance and education, multiculturalism can be quite successful, in iraq the conditions for such success weren't present, so we ended up here,
back in the abbasid times the borders were close to their current form, but there werent sectarianism or issues, its a recently developed thing
anywho, I mean ones who think Iraq should be in their potential future state, and such wouldn't be classified as history
So basically you want your history to be valid but Jewish and Islamic history not. Sounds legit.
Basically this boils down to what is the legitimacy and accuracy of history. Who's history do you follow?
and no, because there was never a greater israel who included iraq,
and there was a caliphate once, but its a different one and under it iraq had close to the current borders
anywho I see that the continuation of this specific line of debate as unproductive and so I will not continue on this specifically but anything else I will
So history proper starts 1850? How did they verify the history pre 1850? From what sources? You think ceasars history of the gauls was accurate?
And pray tell why is american history immune to the same propoganda of russia after 1850?
Is history an American science?
What time period did this start. And what do you say are the reasons?
and from there it started a little, and then post mongols, came the persian invasions, the persians were shiite, and adopted some very sectarian policies, and that all went on until the ottomans took over, then post ottoman, the ressurection of sectarianism came after the fall of the monarchy in 1958, because baathist took over and some were against shiites, then you had saddam and iran come and fuck it beyond belief
Are you saying before 1850 and mr dilthey nowhere in the world had "scientific history"?
If mr Caesars history is accurate within limits what of Islamic jewish and Christian history?
currently its moving towards islamist and secular
The irony is your last post was convoluted,not hegelian but pretty woolly.
Theres no rabbit holes,you are just scared of your idols being blasted.
How in the world does timmy reconcile competing histories by "scientific historians"?
Oh,btw was Marx a historian?
modern iraqi with its current religious backgrounds, borders and people, started in the 900s, it was called wadi al rafidain (mesopatamia), or Iraq (its a very very old name coming from Babylonian times)
All bark and no bite.
Academic History is an Idol. Pure propoganda.
Theres a reason marxism was a dirty word for US politicians. Marx nailed the class struggle and that official history and knowledge are ideological.
And for the record,I dont have to wait for wiki quotes from you. When will you discuss on your own merits without appeals to authority.
Naughty naughty.
but when they put King Faisal I in power after a referendum, they didn't assign it as the arab iraqi kingdom, but they attempted to create a unique iraqi identity which still lasts to this day
As usual, I don't ignore it.
I do agree with this, especially as this is speculation of all alternative history, surely Iraq would have a similar WMD project as North Korea especially if there wasn't the Kuwait debacle. It is doubtful after Desert Storm that WMD project would have been successful as US President would have the ability to do similar preventive strikes as president Clinton did in Desert Fox. And then the project was as non-existent as the Libyan nuclear weapons project was from the start.
Quoting Hippyhead
Yet the bottom line is that Saddam's Iraq was utterly incapable of posing a threat after Desert Storm at any of it's neighbors. With the exclusion zones and the UN sanctions, there was no threat.
Iraq is a real tragedy of a nation. Worse than Argentina. I remember that in my history book from the 70's it was said that perhaps Iraq would be a country that would become part of the first World in the future.
The present history of Iraq is sad story.
.
Neither do I, but I gather that a Philosophy Forum isn't representative of what people on average think about these issues.
Quoting Judaka
Clowns know they are playing the role of a clown. I never think of people here representing their views as clowns.
Quoting Judaka
Sorry, I lost your argument. Could you put this in another way?
You could add into the examples Germany and Japan of "defeated people that rose up" Carthage, but then again, Rome finally destroyed it's rival city.
Asif, you can spot the agenda of those who are in power.
Simple as that.
Quoting ssu
I didn't put that much thought into my insult.
Quoting ssu
History is paraphrased for convenience, to be used in arguments or positions in a way that makes the argument or position stronger. If you're focusing on the quality of the racial group's "intellect and spirit" then we need to create a narrative that supports this. The governments of Germany and Japan went from their respective ideologies to modern Western democracy. If this transition is to be held up as a template that Iraq should follow then logically we need to talk about what exactly happened in post-war Germany and Japan and whether Iraq could economically, politically, geopolitically, culturally, geographically do something similar.
Most of these things to the average person are too complicated and useless except a few - culture, race, people. It becomes the perfect target for advocating for your cultural superiority or a developing country's cultural inferiority. The narrative is created, disparaging comments of the culture or race are justified.
I think you and I both know that comparing modern Iraq with post-war Japan is pretty ridiculous but certain similarities make these comparisons useful. I think understanding a country like modern Iraq fairly is just so unbelievably difficult that easier and more self-serving narratives are an appealing option.
I've heard the same thing that there was a botched attempt to whack father Bush. Well, that might not be the reason to get into a quagmire that your vice president called a quagmire a decade before.
That was almost 20 years ago. Even when Saddam was alive and in power Western nations were losing interest in containing Saddam, and starting to do deals with him etc. Containment was an unsustainable mechanism. Obama was determined to avoid another mid-east war, Trump wants to bring all the troops home, American voters are fed up with the whole subject etc.
Did you notice how your claim that "there was no threat" ignores the threat Saddam continued to pose to the Iraqi people? This is the moral bankruptcy of the Iraq war critics at work. So long as they can claim Bush was wrong, bad, stupid etc they don't care what happens after that.
The Iranians are riding the edge of having a bomb. And there appears to be little we can do about it. Even Obama's treaty only delayed the inevitable. So why should we assume Saddam and his sons would never have done the same?
Where we have a meeting of the minds is that I agree that the Bush administration was utterly incompetent in it's occupation of Iraq. That seems a valid criticism to me. But it's not enough to just make that valid case over and over again while ignoring all other factors.
Fair enough, judaka.
Quoting Judaka
Or refer to the story of Carthage.
You see, Carthage did surrender to Rome and did adapt to it's lesser role as a peaceful city and got rid of it's "imperialism" just as post-war Germany and Japan did. But unlike the US, Rome wouldn't tolerate even that and finally destroyed the city.
So the real question is if Iraq is a similar country, capable of after an invasion getting it's shit up together and transforming to a better state. Well, Iraq has had a lot of problems and after personally meeting Iraqis I do believe that Iraqis think of themselves as Iraqis, there's all the problems of the Sunni / Shia divide, the Kurds being in the north and the various tribal elements. Yet as said himself, there really is the idea of Iraq. Still, that's a lot to ask from any people.
The US is withdrawing from the Middle East, yes.
That is one reason why now everybody is fighting for their piece of the pie.
Quoting Hippyhead
Same threat posed by the North Korean dictatorship to it's people. How many have died there because of famine, I should ask.
Quoting Hippyhead
To be blunt: countries that think Israel is an enemy to them will seek to have nuclear weapons to have a miltary balance with Israel. Syria had it's own nuclear program (WMD program) and Israel dealt with it with it's Operation Outside the Box, I should remind people here. What is there to see?
Just look at Gaddafi. He tried, but his dictatorship simply wasn't able to go through with a nuclear program. Making nuclear weapons is still a thing that not every country can do. Which btw tells how unequal First World and Third World countries are.
He didn't have a gun anymore.
Actually there was a great article about this in Foreign Policy. The fact was that Saddam was lying to his own people (meaning his regime) that he did have an ongoing WMD program when he didn't. it was basically for him a way to be in power. In a real tragicomedy, Saddam uphold the idea of having WMD program and the Bush administration neocons eagerly took that to be reality. Saddam Hussein, just like your typical dictator, was far more afraid of a coup attempt from within of his own state and army than an invasion of the US. In a similar fashion Ghaddafi was far more worried of his own armed forces staging a coup than the Western powers attacking him after he had made peace with the West (sort of).
Yes, agreed. Psychopathic despots are a curse upon humanity. We can debate the best way to rid ourselves of them, not all options are equal for sure, but we need not apologize when we succeed in ridding the Earth of their existence.
Quoting ssu
The Gulf States have plenty of money for making nukes. They have not tried to match Israel. Because they are not afraid of Israel. Because Israel is not a psychopathic dictatorship.
And they do not think that Israel is a threat to them. But then again, Israel can with impunity bomb both Syria and Lebanon as they don't have a nuclear deterrence, while both Jordan and Egypt have peace agreements with Israel and do monitor that no third parties will make for example rocket attacks into Israel from their grounds.
In fact, now you have an unholy alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Both Israel and the US hope that the Saudi's won't acquire nuclear weapons. That would be a genuine possibility if Iran say that it will have nukes.
Talk about Machiavellian politics.
Yup, and it all may be irrelevant given that American and Russian nukes can destroy the entire planet in about 30 minutes, and it could happen at any moment, by mistake.
The huge explosion in Lebanon seems instructive, for those willing to be instructed. So apparently they stored some highly explosive chemicals in a warehouse, and then pretty much forgot about them. So the chemicals sat there waiting patiently for somebody to screw up. And then somebody did, as somebody always does.
We're doing the exact same thing. And if we don't get our head out of our butts, it will likely have the same result, just on a vastly larger scale.
In truth, it is great that a huge amount of the Cold War build up of nukes were indeed destroyed and both the US and Russia have now only a fraction of the number of warheads that they had. India and Pakistan, Israel and North Korea don't have anywhere near these numbers of nuclear weapons. Perhaps they are smarter than the US and the Soviet Union were. Only Ukraine might be a country that really is disappointed about giving away it's nuclear arsenal as likely Putin wouldn't have dared to annex Crimea if Ukraine would have had nuclear weapons.
Many of the Russian nukes were used as nuclear power plant fuel for American cities (see Megatons for Megawatts Program). That is one of the happier notes coming out of the Cold War which the media naturally has totally forgotten to write about, because it tells that politicians can indeed sometimes do the right thing.
Sadly, this is largely irrelevant as they still possess enough weapons to completely destroy modern civilization. A single nuclear submarine can destroy any country in the world. Just 50 nukes dropped on America's largest cities would destroy the food distribution system, leading to mass starvation and social and political chaos.
I recently spent about 6 months studying this subject full time. I built a website of a couple hundred pages on the subject, followed every expert on Twitter every day for months etc. I'm sorry to report that we are in truly deep doo-doo. We've been lulled to sleep by the facts you accurately report, with the gun still firmly placed inside our mouths.
That's interesting.
Yet I guess Russia and the US having about 5000 each and not 24 000 and 40 000 respectively does mean something. Third World war having been fought at the middle of the 1980's would have been utterly devastating. Especially the Soviet war plans were crazy. Or the time when we had WW2 era generals that had seen the carnage of millions dying and there wasn't yet tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on each side.
The topic is interesting, but there is a huge problem with debating the issue. Firstly, no other topic has so much virtue signalling going around and seems like it's politically incorrect to ever doubt the worst case scenarios. Even to make the case that the World wouldn't be totally destroyed, or that the all the nuclear weapons exploded simultaneously make a small dent compared to the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs is viewed as bad as it somehow means that nuclear war is more possible. To describe the most catastrophic outcome is viewed as beneficial as it will "awaken people" to the threat of nuclear weapons. I do get the point, but then this creates mass hysteria, just like with nuclear radiation in general. And no other topic is so speculative, so kept secret that typically it seems that nobody hasn't been thinking of it clearly in the end. The fear that nuclear weapons raised later in Robert McNamara and people like William J. Perry shows how real the threat is.
Yet the politically incorrect truth is obvious. They make a hell of a deterrent, literally. And that's why they are an issue in the Middle East, where you have one dominant regional nuclear power: Israel. So it is actually reasonable that enemies of Israel have thought to acquire these weapons. And once you have them, welcome to the club! You can see it how the US responds with countries in the "axis-of-evil" that have actual nuclear weapons and have only "potential" nuclear weapons. Some countries like Libya, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and Sweden voluntarily stopped their nuclear weapons projects. Some have given away their nukes. Of them Ukraine is a country that is now truly regrets giving all the weapons away. It's now age old tech, but still under wraps.
And having nuclear weapons makes countries prone to attack with impunity non-nuclear states. The only case of a non-nuclear state attacking a country with a nuclear deterrent that I remember is when Argentina invade the Falklands, but I guess they understood that the British would not nuke Buenos Aires for some puny islands with sheep in the middle of nowhere.
In the case of the Middle East more countries having them will not make things easier.
And it still would be. 50 nukes dropped on the big cities of any country would collapse the food distribution system and so on.
If you haven't seen this already, perhaps this site will interest you. It shows the damage from various nukes on any particular city.
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
I think the most dangerous aspect of nuclear weapons is the modern Russian doctrine of "nuclear de-escalation". I know, the West has had thoughts along similar lines. What makes it so dangerous is that people genuinely can think it can work. The Russian have now in many of their large military exercises trained after starting conventional operations and have ended it with making a nuclear attack to "de-escalate the situation". Sounds crazy at first, but let's think about it.
There is the hideous logic behind it, because a) we genuinely think that the use of the smallest tactical charge will inevitably lead to all out nuclear exchange and b) our fear about nuclear radiation has no limits (the public reaction around the World to the Fukushima accident tells this).
Quoting Hippyhead
Oh yes, it one of the most eye-opening programs there are. I'd really welcome others to use it. It really makes a great case just what equivalent of 300 tonnes, 300 Kt and 3 MT mean. (The Beirut explosion some estimate to have been equivalent to 1 Kt).
Such a policy doesn't sound helpful for sure.
I would cast my vote for "Most Dangerous" the widely held assumption that we are safe because no current geo-political situations seems headed for nuclear war. You know, folks think they can calculate the risk by watching the news.
What this ignores is the hair trigger nature of nuclear deployments, and a long record of FUBAR screw up mistakes, some of which brought us within minutes of civilization crushing catastrophe.
One time somebody stuck a training tape in the NORAD computers and for precious minutes the entire US national security system thought they were witnessing a Russian first strike underway. The "incoming first strike" got reported all the way up the chain to the national security advisor.
In another case, a Russian satellite mistook sunlight bouncing off the clouds for the exhaust fires of ICBMs. All the Russian fail safe systems reported this was a real attack. A single launch commander put his life at risk by breaking all the rules and guessing the system was wrong. Had he instead reported it up the chain of command as a real attack, Russian leaders would have been under enormous pressure to launch immediately.
In another case, a research rocket launched from Norway was mistaken as an incoming first strike, because lower ranking Russians forgot to report this previously announced launch up the chain. The Russian generals rushed to Yeltsin, whom we shall recall was chronically drunk, and told him to launch immediately. Luckily, Yeltsin has his wits about him that day, or we'd all be dead right now.
And so on...
Point being, everything could be going great, and then out of the blue with no warning...
Game over.
How relations can turn sour is actually breathtaking.
It only takes one sunk aircraft carrier in the South China Sea and there's no trace of globalization, no trace of friendly relations and talks in a G20 summit, no eating cake at Mar-a-Lago. And it absolutely doesn't matter if it Trump or Biden when that happens.
In the 1930's smart people could understand that war was coming. In the early 1910's it wasn't so. Back then, it was more like now.
Quoting Hippyhead
Western arrogance was then to think that Russia is passed, that after the fall of the Soviet Union it had become an Austria on the Volga, quite harmless with only a somewhat glorious past. Yeltsin and especially the poor performance of the Russian military in the first Chechen war were seen as the final nails in the coffin. The situation in the end was so poor that it's said that some military personnel died of starvation at a radar outpost in Siberia because they weren't supplied. And I remember the views of Russian officers and families living in tents once they had been withdrawn from East Germany.
The only thing that the Yeltsin administration put money was into...the strategic rocket forces. The tanks could rust outside in huge parking places, but the nuclear deterrence was always financed, even if the number of weapons was drastically cut.
The real tragedy was that after the fall of Soviet Union, Russia could have been brought to the West or it could have had a more peaceful role to play. But that would have been a huge undertaking with larger than life politicians on both sides to successfully do it. But we had just the average or above-average politicians. When NATO went on with the Kosovo bombings, Russians had been already lost and finally the FSB director that became president, Vladimir Putin, had his new potential enemy in the West.
Yes, agreed, we are riding the edge every day.
One thing I've come to find interesting is our relationship with being in this position. Our relationship with civilization death is so much like our relationship with personal death. We are so skillful at sweeping inconvenient information under the rug. We know all this, and yet we don't.