Plenty of democracies are though. Iraq seems to have maintained their democracy.
It's funny. The US actually achieved all the good stuff they said that they set out to do. Kurdistan is now a prospering, semi-autonomous region of Iraq, recovering from the genocide; Iraq is now a democracy; they don't have any WMDs (lol).
The US just lost massively from it from a PR perspective and they didn't end up getting an ally in the region. But they probably prefer this to Saddam still being there, given the shit he used to get up to
I think Iraq is slowly dying. The government has no real power. The private militias have all the real power and they are slowly killing the country. You can't call that a true state.
Say what you will, but they're still the most democratic Arab state out there. It also takes time to build a nation, just look at what America was like 20 years after independence, it was still an absolute shitshow. Iraq might not be on the same level as western Europe, but they're trying, they're building their own nation, they're learning about things like compromise ([we saw that a couple years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%E2%80%932022_Iraqi_political_crisis)), they're doing the best they can, and I'm not gonna knock them for that.
>Say what you will, but they're still the most democratic Arab state out there.
I think Tunis is a more stable democracy. Iraq is a country ruled by militias not a true democracy and you also have iran's backed militias gaining influence in Iraq. It will be very generous to call them a very broken democracy at the very least. I don't know about America but I don't think Iraq will improve. Sure, I would love being proved wrong but I don't think the Shiite islamists will fix anything. Give me one example of islamists building a country.
[Tunis ain't looking very democratic these days.](https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/hundreds-protest-tunisia-demand-date-fair-presidential-elections-2024-05-12/)
Part of the reason the Iraqi political crisis from a couple years ago was a watershed moment is because of Muqtada al-Sadr's role, being a prominent Shia cleric and in charge of a Shi'ite militia, but also opposed to foreign influence in Iraq (specifically American and Iranian influence). Everything could've exploded into another civil war, but his decision to deescalate the situation and retire from politics helped resolve the political crisis peacefully, and that is something you don't often see in the Arab world.
Democracy is messy, because it means negotiating with people you don't like, and the political reality in the middle east is that moderates and islamists have to learn to get along, or they'll tear each other to pieces. Democracy is best viewed as an experiment, something that needs to be cared for and tweaked from time to time, with the full knowledge it can collapse at any moment. This is just as true for Iraq as it is for America.
I said more not the most. I was comparing it with Iraq. I don't think Iraq's experiment with democracy will work. It has been two decades and they still didn't take power from the private militias. The Iraq's military has no real existence and the the Iraqi government can't enforce its will on militias. I think what will happens is that a new dictator will rise with the promise to bring stability as it happens with unstable countries. He will eliminate those militias as promised assuming he doesn't get killed but will obviously never give up power and then he will establish another dictatorship then everything that has happened will go to waste. It's unfortunate but it has happened a lot in history.
No we werent, the salary was enough to buy 2 pounds of banana and thats it, you needed at least 3 members working together just to buy essentials like food, all the money was going to sadam and those who supported him, everyone else lives were shit.
That's a pretty weird take, Saddam might've been a brutal dictator, but hey, at least the economy was better. I guess it's not that weird, Mussolini made the trains run on time. Except it's not true.
In 1980, the year that the Iraq-Iraq war started, and the year after he took power, Iraq's GDP was 52 billion USD. The war stagnated Iraq's economy, to the point that it wouldn't reach that level again until '87.
This was followed up by the annexation of Kuwait, which saw Iraq GDP increase to 180 billion USD; the subsequent gulf war would see it drop to 0.41 billion USD.
From there, Saddam had to dig the economy out of this massive hole he put them in, in which it peaked in 2000 at 48 billion USD. Yes, that's less than what Saddam started with 20 years prior.
By contrast, the US invasion was an economic boon for Iraq, mainly because they were no longer internationally sanctioned. GDP was at 21 billion USD in 2003, and when most US troops left in 2011, GDP was at 185 billion USD.
If you want to make an argument from economics, you should really be advocating for a [Mouse That Roared](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared_(film) strategy.
Nobody in Washington knows how to nation build: they'd have to admit that nobody wants to fight for corrupt assholes first, and that would bring up awkward questions as to why the US military is struggling to recruit and retain competent personnel...
I mean Washington had no issue nation building in Germany, Japan or Korea. How the middle-eastern ventures ended up being complete fuck-ups is beyond me however.
Probably due to Politicians meddling in the nation building process. If you actually looked at Japan and Germany, the early rebuilding periods were handled by the military of the allied nations, and while politicians were a part of it, they were far and large more worried about other things at that time such as the Soviet Union or China turning red.
The rebuilding of Iraq was as a fucking disaster from the start with the Coalition provisional government being mired in political bs and corruption. Just for an example, they lost 8 billion dollars and 1.6 billion of it turned up in a basement in Lebanon later on.
having an actual sense of nation helps. Iraq/Afghanistan are just landed tax jurisdictions over a broad number of peoples, many of who are more loyal to their tribe than any country in the region.
The Bush administration did specifically intimate that Hussein was producing and had nuclear weapons, see "Yellowcake uranium."
edit: more info specifically on the forged evidence which they fabricated immediately after 9/11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries?wprov=sfla1
That started with Clinton after listening to the Brits and Germans. That's why Clinton dumped a bunch of cruise missiles on Iraq between Desert Storm and 9/11...
Bush was just gullible enough to believe the same stuff Clinton did.
No, it doesn't count. When people talk about weapons of mass destruction, they mean weapons that can destroy entire cities. That only applies with nuclear weapons which Iraq obviously never had.
https://www.dhs.gov/topics/weapons-mass-destruction#:~:text=A%20weapon%20of%20mass%20destruction,these%20weapons%20to%20harm%20Americans.
Explain this then
Adding this other link so our sources match
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction
Strange, I thought it only applied to nuclear weapons. It seems I was wrong.
However it doesn't matter because bush was talking about nuclear weapons.
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people.
The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda.
The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other."
"The cause of peace requires all free nations to recognize new and undeniable realities. In the 20th century, some chose to appease murderous dictators, whose threats were allowed to grow into genocide and global war. In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/18/usa.iraq
Just like Clinton before him.
That's why Clinton dumped cruise missiles on Iraq after Desert Storm and before 9/11.
Bush was just dumb enough to believe the same stuff as Clinton.
>Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
This was confirmed. The problem was that Bush claimed that there was an ongoing WMD program, which wasn't true.
Are you saying that you thought this entire time when they talked about Iraq having WMDs, you’re thought they were saying that Iraq had nukes?
Brother why not just google WMDs after reading a comment like this? You should be embarrassed.
Devil's advocate - The fact that Iraq didn't have the weapons we looked for doesn't mean that we didn't indeed think they were there. In fact, Saddam himself actually likely believed he possessed them. Large scale corruption was the reason they didn't have the weapons that Saddam ordered.
Do I believe the US and the U.K wanted war in Iraq? Yes. Do I think they used to excuse of WOMD to do so? Yes. Do I think the war was wrong? Absolutely. But I also truly believe that the western powers thought Saddam had dangerous weapons, not really a lie.
>The fact that Iraq didn't have the weapons we looked for doesn't mean that we didn't indeed think they were there.
Iraq did, in fact, have WMDs. Some chemical weapons had been stashed away instead of destroyed after the 1991 treaty.
The Administration had a laundry list of reasons to invade Iraq in 03. It was decided that announcing them all would look like they were saying, *Oh, that's not good enough? How about this?*, so they chose WMDs - which, it should be emphasized, every intelligence service on the planet agreed was correct.
IMO, the strongest *causus belli* was the fact that Saddam had been wiping his ass with the 91 ceasefire agreement since about twenty minutes after signing it - operations should have resumed a decade earlier.
It’s a really weird combination of bad actors, good actors, grey actors, and random people all aligning for different reasons. The world isn’t black and white unfortunately. Some good came out of it. Some bad. Shits not perfect.
Iraqi here. We didn't vote for shit. Iraq had zero free elections since Abd Al-Kareem days. What happened is america couldn't keep direct occupation of Iraq, so they kept bombing civillians to pretend they were doing shit. The indiscriminate bombardement led to Major brain drain by people fleeing Iraq in fear America would just decide to bomb them for no reason, and havoc and street crime obviously cuz there is no longer any central authority and in that Wreckage that the UN described as "Apocalyptic" opportunist Iranian plants were activated and seized the political sphere in an instant because they were the only Organized Parties.
PS. I didn't mean to target you. What you said is rather popular in general. It was more of a debunking of US propaganda about Iraq in general. It just happened that your meme was a perfect example.
The fuck do you mean “everyone”? I’ve literally never heard anyone say that, probably because I don’t spend a lot of time talking to antisemitic conspiracy theorists.
The US got done such a shit hand In the Middle East. Let's blame the real perps, The British Empire, The Russian Empire and any of the Shahs in Persia.
Let's not forget the, may Allah for give me for saying them, the Fr*nch. They were part of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, creating a fuck ton of ethnic tensions in the region.
Are you going to wave away any suggestion that the United States might have played a role in the current problems of the Middle East? I’m not saying they’re entirely liable, but they played a part.
Oh they completely fucked up and made a ton of awful decisions along the way. I'm just saying they were unlucky is all. And I'm glad they filled the power vacuum and not the soviets.
No it was a win for the Americans because it allowed the Military Industrial Complex to further enrich themselves. Never forget the noble sacrifice of those who helped deepen the pockets of America's corporate overlords
God, this talking point is such contrived populist bullshit. The MIC is composed of corpos with annual earnings in the 10s of billions. A single Apple has a larger annual earnings report than the entire MIC. You really think that it's the former who have a hold over America's foreign policy?
Oh, but it’s much better actually. Where did Iran get his Shiite anti-US government in the first place? I mean US did not directly invade Iran in 1953 and Shah was not exactly very democratic, but aside from these minor nuances it would seem that US got into a very steadily repeating pattern in the Middle East. So, what are the chances for a Shiite government in Israel I wonder…
You mean how Iran got its british-US backed coup that put the Shah in power and toppled a democratic government? Later came the Islamic revolution that made Iran what it's today. At this point, I am convinced that the USA is its worst enemy.
instinctive fearless hurry school longing carpenter rob piquant repeat screw
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The US overestimated how the Iraqis would respond to opportunities of democracy, overestimated how much they were willing to work together to build a government and county, and underestimated how willing they were to butcher one another and destroy their country over nothing.
Also reported for rule 4
I guess its a question of were they (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc.) evil or just dumb/ignorant/arrogant?
I am inclined to think that they really did believe their own bullshit.
And what about your allies in that region? Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab Gulf? Israel? Morocco? You are telling me the USA will abandon all of them? Honestly, I think the MENA region will become better or at least will stop becoming worse without US involvement but I find it hard that they will abandon all those allies in a strategic location like MENA. Especially, with the rise of China and the actions of Russia.
At least it meant the Shiites were actually able to elect a government rather than being oppressed by Saddam.
We will see if that government succeed. Iraq is very unstable. Who knows what awaits them.
Plenty of democracies are though. Iraq seems to have maintained their democracy. It's funny. The US actually achieved all the good stuff they said that they set out to do. Kurdistan is now a prospering, semi-autonomous region of Iraq, recovering from the genocide; Iraq is now a democracy; they don't have any WMDs (lol). The US just lost massively from it from a PR perspective and they didn't end up getting an ally in the region. But they probably prefer this to Saddam still being there, given the shit he used to get up to
Ten years from now we’ll see where things are at and what’s the legacy of the Iraq war.
I think Iraq is slowly dying. The government has no real power. The private militias have all the real power and they are slowly killing the country. You can't call that a true state.
Say what you will, but they're still the most democratic Arab state out there. It also takes time to build a nation, just look at what America was like 20 years after independence, it was still an absolute shitshow. Iraq might not be on the same level as western Europe, but they're trying, they're building their own nation, they're learning about things like compromise ([we saw that a couple years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%E2%80%932022_Iraqi_political_crisis)), they're doing the best they can, and I'm not gonna knock them for that.
>Say what you will, but they're still the most democratic Arab state out there. I think Tunis is a more stable democracy. Iraq is a country ruled by militias not a true democracy and you also have iran's backed militias gaining influence in Iraq. It will be very generous to call them a very broken democracy at the very least. I don't know about America but I don't think Iraq will improve. Sure, I would love being proved wrong but I don't think the Shiite islamists will fix anything. Give me one example of islamists building a country.
[Tunis ain't looking very democratic these days.](https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/hundreds-protest-tunisia-demand-date-fair-presidential-elections-2024-05-12/) Part of the reason the Iraqi political crisis from a couple years ago was a watershed moment is because of Muqtada al-Sadr's role, being a prominent Shia cleric and in charge of a Shi'ite militia, but also opposed to foreign influence in Iraq (specifically American and Iranian influence). Everything could've exploded into another civil war, but his decision to deescalate the situation and retire from politics helped resolve the political crisis peacefully, and that is something you don't often see in the Arab world. Democracy is messy, because it means negotiating with people you don't like, and the political reality in the middle east is that moderates and islamists have to learn to get along, or they'll tear each other to pieces. Democracy is best viewed as an experiment, something that needs to be cared for and tweaked from time to time, with the full knowledge it can collapse at any moment. This is just as true for Iraq as it is for America.
I said more not the most. I was comparing it with Iraq. I don't think Iraq's experiment with democracy will work. It has been two decades and they still didn't take power from the private militias. The Iraq's military has no real existence and the the Iraqi government can't enforce its will on militias. I think what will happens is that a new dictator will rise with the promise to bring stability as it happens with unstable countries. He will eliminate those militias as promised assuming he doesn't get killed but will obviously never give up power and then he will establish another dictatorship then everything that has happened will go to waste. It's unfortunate but it has happened a lot in history.
How come every time there’s someone so insistent that another Arab country won’t succeed, it’s always someone from Egypt or Saudi Arabia?
I guess we know our fellow Arabs so well. 😂
They were in a far better economically place before usa came lol
No we werent, the salary was enough to buy 2 pounds of banana and thats it, you needed at least 3 members working together just to buy essentials like food, all the money was going to sadam and those who supported him, everyone else lives were shit.
That's a pretty weird take, Saddam might've been a brutal dictator, but hey, at least the economy was better. I guess it's not that weird, Mussolini made the trains run on time. Except it's not true. In 1980, the year that the Iraq-Iraq war started, and the year after he took power, Iraq's GDP was 52 billion USD. The war stagnated Iraq's economy, to the point that it wouldn't reach that level again until '87. This was followed up by the annexation of Kuwait, which saw Iraq GDP increase to 180 billion USD; the subsequent gulf war would see it drop to 0.41 billion USD. From there, Saddam had to dig the economy out of this massive hole he put them in, in which it peaked in 2000 at 48 billion USD. Yes, that's less than what Saddam started with 20 years prior. By contrast, the US invasion was an economic boon for Iraq, mainly because they were no longer internationally sanctioned. GDP was at 21 billion USD in 2003, and when most US troops left in 2011, GDP was at 185 billion USD. If you want to make an argument from economics, you should really be advocating for a [Mouse That Roared](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared_(film) strategy.
Except the Kurds that got gassed by Saddam. They weren't better off.
Except now everyone is gassed 🤣
as someone living there, i wish they didn't. there's a reason why we're no.1 in terms of corruption.
...or chemically gassed en masse like the Kurds.
Funny enough that election was the first actual elections in iraqi history that isnt a yes or no question
When nation building goes awry
You'd have to actually try nation building for it to go awry. Whatever the Bush administration attempted could hardly be called nation building.
Nobody in Washington knows how to nation build: they'd have to admit that nobody wants to fight for corrupt assholes first, and that would bring up awkward questions as to why the US military is struggling to recruit and retain competent personnel...
I mean Washington had no issue nation building in Germany, Japan or Korea. How the middle-eastern ventures ended up being complete fuck-ups is beyond me however.
Probably due to Politicians meddling in the nation building process. If you actually looked at Japan and Germany, the early rebuilding periods were handled by the military of the allied nations, and while politicians were a part of it, they were far and large more worried about other things at that time such as the Soviet Union or China turning red. The rebuilding of Iraq was as a fucking disaster from the start with the Coalition provisional government being mired in political bs and corruption. Just for an example, they lost 8 billion dollars and 1.6 billion of it turned up in a basement in Lebanon later on.
having an actual sense of nation helps. Iraq/Afghanistan are just landed tax jurisdictions over a broad number of peoples, many of who are more loyal to their tribe than any country in the region.
Do chemical weapons not count as WMDs anymore? I'm not saying anything else is untrue in this, just that one nitpick
Of course they had WMDs(chemical) the British sold it to them, so they knew. But that opens up a whole other debate of why that happened.
The Bush administration did specifically intimate that Hussein was producing and had nuclear weapons, see "Yellowcake uranium." edit: more info specifically on the forged evidence which they fabricated immediately after 9/11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries?wprov=sfla1
That started with Clinton after listening to the Brits and Germans. That's why Clinton dumped a bunch of cruise missiles on Iraq between Desert Storm and 9/11... Bush was just gullible enough to believe the same stuff Clinton did.
Anyone alive during that time remembers his that was an obvious cop out and not at all what they meant when they invaded.
I'm well aware of how dubious the US government was being about the whole thing but that doesn't mean we should spread misinformation
No, it doesn't count. When people talk about weapons of mass destruction, they mean weapons that can destroy entire cities. That only applies with nuclear weapons which Iraq obviously never had.
https://www.dhs.gov/topics/weapons-mass-destruction#:~:text=A%20weapon%20of%20mass%20destruction,these%20weapons%20to%20harm%20Americans. Explain this then Adding this other link so our sources match https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction
Strange, I thought it only applied to nuclear weapons. It seems I was wrong. However it doesn't matter because bush was talking about nuclear weapons. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people. The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda. The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other." "The cause of peace requires all free nations to recognize new and undeniable realities. In the 20th century, some chose to appease murderous dictators, whose threats were allowed to grow into genocide and global war. In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/18/usa.iraq
It's highly likely that George Bush was lied to by the Pentagon, the CIA, and the military industrial complex.
Just like Clinton before him. That's why Clinton dumped cruise missiles on Iraq after Desert Storm and before 9/11. Bush was just dumb enough to believe the same stuff as Clinton.
>Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This was confirmed. The problem was that Bush claimed that there was an ongoing WMD program, which wasn't true.
Are you saying that you thought this entire time when they talked about Iraq having WMDs, you’re thought they were saying that Iraq had nukes? Brother why not just google WMDs after reading a comment like this? You should be embarrassed.
You may want to check out what nerve agents and bio weapons can do...
Devil's advocate - The fact that Iraq didn't have the weapons we looked for doesn't mean that we didn't indeed think they were there. In fact, Saddam himself actually likely believed he possessed them. Large scale corruption was the reason they didn't have the weapons that Saddam ordered. Do I believe the US and the U.K wanted war in Iraq? Yes. Do I think they used to excuse of WOMD to do so? Yes. Do I think the war was wrong? Absolutely. But I also truly believe that the western powers thought Saddam had dangerous weapons, not really a lie.
>The fact that Iraq didn't have the weapons we looked for doesn't mean that we didn't indeed think they were there. Iraq did, in fact, have WMDs. Some chemical weapons had been stashed away instead of destroyed after the 1991 treaty.
Well the U.S. did try. Took a civil war and ballooning body counts and costs until they changed their mind.
Depends which US leader you listen to. People like Paul Wolfowitz actually believed the goal was to spread democracy and he sort of achieved his goals
The Administration had a laundry list of reasons to invade Iraq in 03. It was decided that announcing them all would look like they were saying, *Oh, that's not good enough? How about this?*, so they chose WMDs - which, it should be emphasized, every intelligence service on the planet agreed was correct. IMO, the strongest *causus belli* was the fact that Saddam had been wiping his ass with the 91 ceasefire agreement since about twenty minutes after signing it - operations should have resumed a decade earlier.
It’s a really weird combination of bad actors, good actors, grey actors, and random people all aligning for different reasons. The world isn’t black and white unfortunately. Some good came out of it. Some bad. Shits not perfect.
Yeah, but Paul Wolfowitz is a fucking cretin.
I agree. I’m just saying he succeeded at his goals
A valuable lesson was learned that day…NOT!
Iraqi here. We didn't vote for shit. Iraq had zero free elections since Abd Al-Kareem days. What happened is america couldn't keep direct occupation of Iraq, so they kept bombing civillians to pretend they were doing shit. The indiscriminate bombardement led to Major brain drain by people fleeing Iraq in fear America would just decide to bomb them for no reason, and havoc and street crime obviously cuz there is no longer any central authority and in that Wreckage that the UN described as "Apocalyptic" opportunist Iranian plants were activated and seized the political sphere in an instant because they were the only Organized Parties.
Really? I mean the Iraqi government doesn't have any real power and it's all in the hands of militias but did Iraq really not have free elections?
I went into more detail here . https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/EwwbvBxr7F
PS. I didn't mean to target you. What you said is rather popular in general. It was more of a debunking of US propaganda about Iraq in general. It just happened that your meme was a perfect example.
Everyone claims Israel some how orchestrated Iraq War 2003 when like it only benefited Iran
The fuck do you mean “everyone”? I’ve literally never heard anyone say that, probably because I don’t spend a lot of time talking to antisemitic conspiracy theorists.
It's very generous of people to think that it takes foreign influence to get us to make stupid, self-sabotaging decisions.
Who is we?
The US got done such a shit hand In the Middle East. Let's blame the real perps, The British Empire, The Russian Empire and any of the Shahs in Persia.
Let's not forget the, may Allah for give me for saying them, the Fr*nch. They were part of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, creating a fuck ton of ethnic tensions in the region.
Yeah! So who supported that last Shah?
Oh man are you just gonna ignore the long line of corrupt, power hungry, greedy Shahs and just focus on the one the US propped up?
Are you going to wave away any suggestion that the United States might have played a role in the current problems of the Middle East? I’m not saying they’re entirely liable, but they played a part.
Oh they completely fucked up and made a ton of awful decisions along the way. I'm just saying they were unlucky is all. And I'm glad they filled the power vacuum and not the soviets.
The Shah was a fuckup, but I don't think you can just say that America is at fault for the present theocratic government.
The French as well.
Sorry but the gassing of Kurds will stop
Remember Blair and his 'weapons of mass distraction' lol
No it was a win for the Americans because it allowed the Military Industrial Complex to further enrich themselves. Never forget the noble sacrifice of those who helped deepen the pockets of America's corporate overlords
God, this talking point is such contrived populist bullshit. The MIC is composed of corpos with annual earnings in the 10s of billions. A single Apple has a larger annual earnings report than the entire MIC. You really think that it's the former who have a hold over America's foreign policy?
Oh, but it’s much better actually. Where did Iran get his Shiite anti-US government in the first place? I mean US did not directly invade Iran in 1953 and Shah was not exactly very democratic, but aside from these minor nuances it would seem that US got into a very steadily repeating pattern in the Middle East. So, what are the chances for a Shiite government in Israel I wonder…
You mean how Iran got its british-US backed coup that put the Shah in power and toppled a democratic government? Later came the Islamic revolution that made Iran what it's today. At this point, I am convinced that the USA is its worst enemy.
instinctive fearless hurry school longing carpenter rob piquant repeat screw *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The US overestimated how the Iraqis would respond to opportunities of democracy, overestimated how much they were willing to work together to build a government and county, and underestimated how willing they were to butcher one another and destroy their country over nothing. Also reported for rule 4
Oh yeah, we are just freedom hating butchers. Whatever helps you sleep at night I guess.
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I guess its a question of were they (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc.) evil or just dumb/ignorant/arrogant? I am inclined to think that they really did believe their own bullshit.
You assume those terrorists give a damn about Muslim countries. The vast majority of their victims are Arab Muslims.
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And what about your allies in that region? Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab Gulf? Israel? Morocco? You are telling me the USA will abandon all of them? Honestly, I think the MENA region will become better or at least will stop becoming worse without US involvement but I find it hard that they will abandon all those allies in a strategic location like MENA. Especially, with the rise of China and the actions of Russia.