And I think, looking at Syria, which is also ruled by a sectarian dictator that used chemical weapons on his own people, and how little the US intervened.
Was that a better outcome than Iraq? Based on the substantial human and civilian cost, would it have made more sense for the U.S. to have intervened earlier? Would we only be dealing with Isis in the region then? And not a regime dropping barrel bombs and chlorine gas on schoolchildren?
I know the 2 countries are not equivalent in their issues, but we can definitely say the U.S. not intervening has its costs as well.
Except that the US was fine with helping Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war ten years before. A war which has roots in Iran being sick of being a puppet regime of the US. It’s a double jerk move!
It might have been ideological, it might have been a wealth grab, it might have been personal, but what it wasn’t was anything to do with a just cause.
And Reagan quashed sanctions against Iraq for gassing the Kurds because he wanted Haliburton to get the reconstruction contracts after the Iran-Iraq war.
This one of those liberal myth that has tiny basis of truth, but it is basically a lie.
The Iran-Iraq war occurred between 1980-1988. For the first 6 years the consensus in the Pentagon and State department was “oh look two countries, rule by dictators, who hate the US are killing each other, bring the popcorn.” During the 1980, Saddam spent hundreds of billions buying arms, financed by Saudi’s and even some from Kuwait. During that time frame the US was the 9th largest suppliers of arms to Iraq and not even in the top 10 to Iran, we were not only behind the Russia, China, and France, but behind Italy and the Netherlands. These were primarily dual-use things like helicopters.
Finally, in late 1986 it looked like Iranian larger population was going to eventually win the war of attrition.
According to Lt. Col. Rick Francona (long-time TV military analysis) who was the military attache to Iraq at the time. (He is a fluent Arab linguist and spent most of his career in the Defense Intelligence Agency) The US very reluctantly (not “was fine”) provided satellite recon photos. According to Rick the photo had to be censored by the DIA to avoid revealing our capabilities and went through a review which meant that by the time the Iraqi got the photos were already 48 hour old. This lasted through the summer of 1987, at which point Rick managed to go to the scene of a battle where Iraq was said to have used chemical weapons. Rick collected some samples and once it was confirmed that Iraq had used chemical weapons, that ended our cooperation.
After Manifest Destiny did its thing (those pesky Mexicans and Indians having been shoved out of the way), the U.S. was sitting rather pretty in terms of land and resources, though. The U.S. minus Alaska is almost 3 million square miles, comparable to China and far more than the Roman Empire at its height. I think a case might be made that in certain cases, having attained a certain size, a nation might slow its imperialistic impulse (as China did too – it was never very expansionist after consolidating its central real estate).
There are of course counter examples, like Great Britain, but that being an island nation reliant on trade and naval power had its own determinants.
What I’m saying is that I’m not sure it requires a particular cultural benevolence to stop amassing land after you reach a certain size. There are other reasons/factors etc., I suspect.
Really? I mean, I’m no expert on the matter, but from reading the wikipedia page on the subject, it sounds like it was much more than that. But y’know, wikipedia.
A lot of the help offered by other countries was actually US support given indirectly, through Italy and Saudi Arabia in particular. That would skew the numbers. They also gave aid in the form of technology transfers and experts, which are harder to quantify. The US sold biological weapons to Iraq (anthrax) and seemed not to mind about them using biological weapons on civilians and even sought to help cover it up, at least at first. It sounds a lot more like the US was very eager to help as soon as '83, and from then on were committed to Iraq winning.
Assuming this is true, the “maximum effective size” of a country would probably be proportional to communications technology, and thus increase over time. It’s an interesting theory.
The problem with Wiki on the subject is it lacks context.
Iraqi in the 80s was the largest and most important Soviet client in the Middle East. The Soviet had lost Egypt after Sadat signed the peace agreement with the Israeli in 1978. In addition, Saddam had already shown himself to be a ruthless SOB, a troublemaker in the region and was vehemently anti-American. So there was no love lost between the US and Iraq. Iran was no better, they had seized our embassy, humiliated us with the hostage, and their anti-America rhetoric was even worse than Iraqs.
So when the war started, we were in the position of watching your favorite team teams two biggest rivals play each other. Your first choice is the both teams lose. Since that can’t happen, what you are really rooting for is all of the rivals teams star players to get injured for a month or two so that can’t play against you. Of course, since it is politically incorrect for you to root for players getting injuried, you keep your mouth shut, but you are secretly happy when it happens. The US couldn’t out right come out and say “Ya, war keeping fighting assholes”, but it was lots of folks thought.
This did change a bit when both sides started attacking tankers in the Persian Gulf. The US did get involved on with agreeing to reflag Kuwait tankers as US ships which did keep them from being attacked. But this was more to help our allies Kuwait and Saudia Arabia and too keep oil prices from skyrocketing, than to help Saddam. But it was until as I said a short-period in 1987, that we start explicitly helping.
“A lot of the help offered by other countries was actually US support given indirectly, through Italy and Saudi Arabia in particular.” This a common mistake thinking the US runs everything. It is pretty damn clear that Saudi were pulling the strings and they were the puppet masters and we were the puppet.
The Saudi family was never neutral in the war. First, there is the support for the Sunni Bathist party as counter force to the Shi’a majority in Iraq. Next there is traditional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Finally, and I think the real reason the Saudi’s were on Saddam side was money. Saddam borrowed a lot of money (IRRC $100 billion or so) from various member of the House of Saud . The Iran offensive of 86 and 87 were getting close to and some case taking over oil fields in Iraq. If the war ended with Iran in control of these fields there was no way in hell the Saudi were getting paid back. Now this is pure speculation on my part, but based on past history, I have little doubts that Saudi used there considerable influence in the US to move us from our neutral position. Nor would be shocked if various US oil companies were used as part of the lobbying effort
Rick’s book Ally to Adversary discusses this and he also has pretty fascinating look at fight between realpoltic foks who advocating helping Saddam and the idealist who said “No, Saddam is a really bad guy who is using chemical weapons.” Ultimately the idealist won but the realpoltic folks had their day, which happens a lot in the good guy and bad guy discussion.
Sources for weapons exports are US News Triumph without Victory and CNN book on the Gulf war (which I can’t seem to find) both publish shortly after the 1st Gulf War.
I’ve said for years that I’m tired of the US being the workd’s police force. While I’m all in for being a good neighbor on the global stage, I don’t think it should always be this country leading the charge. Part of the reason for that is that we (meaning the country) are happy to be the “good guy” when there is money involved and are happy to ignore all sorts of humanitarian problems when it doesn’t. All the while, there are plenty of problems and people in need right here that are ignored.
I think Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar, and the various atrocities in Central Congo have all shown this. Even stopping Ebola was primary a US effort (although Doctors without borders deserves a lot of credit.).
Take a domestic problem like Africa American being shot by cops at rate 2-3x time whites. The total number of African America killed is in the order of 200-300 per year. If I compare that to 100,000 South Sudanese in a famine, a 1 million Rohingya in refugee camps and 10,000s being slaughter each month, or 500,000 dead Syrians with 6 million external and 6 million internal refugees. There is no comparison. Does the US federal government have role in reducing African-Americans killed by cops, sure. But it is primarily a function of state and local law-enforcement.
If the US Federal government doesn’t step up and to help solve the crisis in Syria, South Sudan, and Myanmar, nobody else will and the death toll will be staggering.
You can look at the efforts of Bush, who folks here generally hate, in Africa. The PEBFAR program he pushed saved millions of lives there. Litterally millions of lives.
There was no ulterior motive. It was just a good thing.
Are you suggesting we send troops into the sovereign territory of other countries to aid rebels against the military and political interests of the national governments, without considering regional geopolitics and understanding potential blowback? We’ve tried that many times over the last several decades. It has never worked.
How dare you give me a reason appreciate GWB! :) PEPFAR was (and continued to be) a good deed. I suspect if 9/11 hadn’t happened, his presidency would actually have showcased a slightly bumbling, but well-meaning and effective compassionate conservatism instead of the torture, lies, gross incompetence, and ghastly war we got.
