"... but the price, we think the price is worth it"
March 22, 2018 5:54 PM   Subscribe

This week marks the 15th anniversary of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. But the U.S. has been waging war against the Iraqi people over the past six decades.
posted by spaceburglar (17 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
On that note, it's a lovely day to bring on John Bolton as national security advisor.
posted by Beardman at 6:08 PM on March 22, 2018 [17 favorites]


On that note, it’s a lovely day to bring on John Bolton as national security advisor.

Dang it I wanted to post that.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:32 PM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


Relatedly, from @realdonaldtrump: All former Bush administration officials should have zero standing on Syria. Iraq was a waste of blood & treasure.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:07 PM on March 22, 2018 [6 favorites]


That Intercepted episode is great, and includes a lot of history not otherwise discussed. Jeremy Scahill's tweet about it (emphasis added):
We put together a 28-minute audio history of the past 6 decades of bipartisan US policy, covert intervention, support for Saddam and regime change in Iraq
posted by anarch at 7:29 PM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


PBS Frontline's "Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia", first broadcast last month, filled in many gaps in my knowledge; it covers many details of the US's involvement in the Iran-Iraq War and the way that the US invasion of the 21st century has allowed Iran to dominate Iraq.
posted by XMLicious at 7:29 PM on March 22, 2018 [4 favorites]


Related to the topic: The Cat and the Coup, "a documentary videogame in which you play the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. During the summer of 1953, the CIA engineered a coup to bring about his downfall. As a player, you coax Mossadegh back through significant events of his life by knocking objects off of shelves, scattering his papers, jumping on his lap and scratching him."

Free. Short. Gorgeous artwork. Point-and-click puzzle-y game that follows the story, which is basically another form of "ugh the US decided it should run everything everywhere b/c we have the guns and money to stop anyone who disagrees."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:47 PM on March 22, 2018 [8 favorites]


Let's relitigate the primaries Iraq 2: Electric Boogaloo!
posted by ActingTheGoat at 8:12 PM on March 22, 2018


No relititagting, everyone against it was right, everyone for it was wrong, and it went worse then anyone could've imagined.

it was just another battle in the Long World War 1, which we will, one day finally be free of! maybe when everyone born in the 20th century is dead.
posted by The Whelk at 9:20 PM on March 22, 2018 [17 favorites]


everyone against it was right, everyone for it was wrong, and it went worse then anyone could've imagined

Anyone who was paying attention to the situation in Iraq knew that the further escalation of military action could only bring more suffering.

What can you say to a country that flies 280,000 sorties over a country (between the end of the 1991 invasion and 2003) and maintains that the country is a threat to them from a distance of 7,000 miles?

The population of Iraq were targeted with crippling, genocidal, sanctions, on top of the military persecution. The aim seemed to be either to cause the population to overthrow Hussein due to mass discontent, collective punishment, or simply to kill them. A necessary consequence of this was that infants suffered and died in huge numbers.

The use of depleted uranium in Iraq is akin to the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, genocidal experimentation with weapons of mass destruction against the civilian population.

All of this was before 2003.

'We will be greeted as liberators' - Cheney
posted by asok at 3:40 AM on March 23, 2018 [10 favorites]


One of the more difficult things I've done for money was to attempt to write a series of snarky but factually accurate copyedits to ostensibly sell some politically aware t-shirts about some of the more atrocious skeletons in the Western World's closet.

You know, cheery topics like the Bhopal disaster, US involvement in Central and South America like Chile, Columbia or El Salvador. Doing the background homework and research was just brutal.

You'd think this would be right up my alley, no? So did the person who approached me. Behind the scenes it was more like Don Hertzfeldt's Rejected, a slow, shambling descent into madness and an extended loathing of deadlines or production. Loading wikipedia started to get traumatic.

Main point being - as I recall I realy started to crack up trying to be snarky about Fallujah. I just couldn't do it.

Not enough people know about Fallujah.
posted by loquacious at 4:48 AM on March 23, 2018 [5 favorites]


So, only 6 weeks til the 15th anniversary of the mission being accomplished, then? Great! I'll sit back and wait for Trump to ride a golf cart up to a "Mission Accomplished" banner.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:12 AM on March 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


According to recent polls, Americans are still split on whether or not they think the second Iraq War was a good idea. Almost half of us will tell a pollster when asked that we think it was the right thing to do. The fact that this is true, even now, knowing all that we now know, drives me to despair.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:28 AM on March 23, 2018 [10 favorites]


On Feb 15 2003, ten million people in 600 cities around the world, participated in the largest peace demonstration in the history of the world.

Because we choose peace over war we were there too...

System of a Down - Boom!

The film clip is a video montage of the protests in the following cities, captioned with the approximate size of the protests:

Los Angeles - 30000
Paris - 400000
Cape Town - 10000
San Francisco - 200000
Rio - 30000
Lansing - 3000
Tokyo - 6000
Madrid - 800000
Melbourne - 200000
Seattle - 75000
Johannesburg - 10000
London - 1500000
Flagstaff - 1500
Rome - 1000000
Minneapolis - 7500
Tel Aviv - 2000
Durban - 5000
Sao Paolo - 30000
New York - 500000

I remember seeing these crowds in the news and walking in the protest in my little corner of the world. It seemed impossible to ignore, it was so obviously unpopular, how could they go ahead with it? And the evidence was so flimsy, satellite photos of what could be anything. A dairy looks the same as a chemical weapons plant from space! And these ludicrous claims, like Iraq could strike the US in 40 minutes. IF they had these mythical weapons we think they have. The repeated inspections, Hans Blix being invited to look under every single rock in the desert. The ludicrous assertion that Saddam and Bin Laden were best buddies. We all knew it was bullshit. It all seemed like some weird misdirected revenge attack. 9/11 happened so there had to be revenge, no matter how blind and misguided.

And they went anyway. They fucking ignored us. All of us!

And it just got worse from there on, and it hasn't stopped getting worse.

I saw the veep defending the use of torture on TV, and there were no riots. I can't believe they're going to get away with it.
posted by adept256 at 5:42 AM on March 23, 2018 [15 favorites]




I remember seeing these crowds in the news and walking in the protest in my little corner of the world. It seemed impossible to ignore, it was so obviously unpopular, how could they go ahead with it?

Me too. I remember thinking that news about the Bush Administration's plans to invade Iraq was so absurd and that they lied so transparently that there was no way it was going to happen. I just brushed it off as a lot of sabre rattling to make Bush look tough.

Those memories were mostly spurred by a tweet by @DavidKlion about things going on right now:
It's remarkable how many terrible things haven't happened yet, how complacent many of us have gotten as a result, and how tempting it is to imagine checks that aren't there and never were.

posted by mcmile at 9:06 AM on March 23, 2018


On that note, it's a lovely day to bring on John Bolton as national security advisor.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!

...

OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!!
posted by homunculus at 2:47 PM on March 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


“People responsible for this should not be able to set the parameters of future engagement with the world, nor have any say in the process of diplomacy. At a basic level, we should demand a foreign policy establishment that is both untainted by this crime and committed to never letting anything like it happen again.”
15 Years Of Blood
posted by The Whelk at 2:52 PM on March 23, 2018 [8 favorites]


« Older Look inside your heart, I'll look inside mine   |   The Cheers conspiracy Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments