You keep trying to give a blanket, cut and dried answer to a complex question. You ignore counter arguments (Iraqi Kurds), dismiss data that shows how complex the story is (infant and under 5 mortality rates) and strawman everyone who disagrees with you by telling them they are justifying the war.
You make statements like :
Iraqis were much better off after GW I than before it. No fly zones, the crippling of Saddam’s army, and the end of his WMD capabilities made a huge difference. You are incorrect if you believe otherwise.
Even the most casual of googling shows that to be a lot more grey than black and white…
As many as 576,000 Iraqi children may have died since the end of the Persian Gulf war because of economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council, according to two scientists who surveyed the country for the Food and Agriculture Organization.
. Therefore, the imposition of sanctions post-1990 had a particularly severe effect on Iraq’s economy and food security levels of the population. The State of the World’s Children Report, 1997 (UNICEF) states that the per capita income in Iraq dropped from $3510 in 1989 to $450 in 1996. The average salary dropped to 3 to 6 US dollars per month by 1999, largely due to a rapid depreciation of the Iraqi dinar.
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Since 1991, when the current public food distribution system was put in place by the government, most Iraqis became dependent on the food rations they received through this system. It is estimated that 60% of the Iraqi population rely on food rations to substantially supplement their daily food requirements.
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A survey on the extent and geographical distribution of poverty in central and southern Iraq in March 2003, by the World Food Programme (WFP), found that even with the above food rations, one in five Iraqis suffered from chronic poverty and were unable to meet all their basic needs.
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The literacy rate in Iraq had reached 78% in 1977. More distinctly, the adult female literacy rate had reached 87% by the year 1985, but declined rapidly since then. Between 1990 and 1998, over one fifth of Iraqi children stopped enrolling in school, increasing the number of non-literates within a decade and losing all the gains made in the previous decade. By the year 2000, the number of children of primary school age not attending school increased to 23.7%, even though education until primary school is compulsory and secondary level had been free in Iraq since 1976. One of the main reasons identified for this decline was the inability to expand the number of schools due to a lack of financial resources.
Historically, Iraqi women and girls have enjoyed relatively more rights than many of their counterparts in the Middle East. The Iraqi Provisional Constitution (drafted in 1970) formally guaranteed equal rights to women and other laws specifically ensured their right to vote, attend school, run for political office, and own property. Yet, since the 1991 Gulf War, the position of women within Iraqi society has deteriorated rapidly.
The truth is that the answer to the question of whether or not Iraq is better off with or without Saddam is quite complex and doesn’t fit into this neat little box that you want it to.
I’ve generally been addressing Timex in the later half of this thread, who really has justified the war, both here and in other threads. He believes that GW2 was a good use of US military power, whereas I think we should have stayed out. As for mortality data, the number killed by Saddam’s genocide and offensive campaigns prior to GW1 was higher than the number that died in the years between the wars. GW1 thus achieved some good things in an absolute sense. Some people were worse off, some were better, but the overall balance was positive. It didn’t make Iraq perfect, but it helped, as did the subsequent no-fly zones. Sanctions, as you and I have both pointed out, were far from perfect, but they could have been worked on. We went for another invasion instead, which caused mortality rates to shoot up again, and they remained higher during the subsequent occupation and resistance. Now there are a million plus new refugees this year alone and the whole country is on the verge of collapse. So whether or not Iraq is “better off with or without Saddam” depends entirely on which Saddam you mean. It’s better off than it was during the height of his power. It’s worse off than it was during the interim between GW1 and 2. If you think that’s a neat little box, great, it’s a neat little box.
Now you are just trying to create a straw man, when all I’ve done is point out that your assertion that things are worse than before the war in Iraq is not nearly the unassailable truth you pretend it to be.
In your desire to condemn the war, you ignore the mountain of atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein right up until the second gulf war.
You keep trying to pretend like things were fine after the first gulf war, but that is clearly not even close to true. The condemnation from the UN for horrific human Rights violations wasn’t prior to the gulf war. It was in 2002 for God’s sake.
Who’s pretending? Come on Timex, read what I wrote in all my previous posts. If we use a 10 point scale for awfulness where 10 is “the worst country to live in on Earth” and anything above 0 is still bad, I’d say Iraq under Saddam at the height of his power was a easily a 9. Saddam after the first Gulf War didn’t have the power to be as terrible any more (though I’m sure he would have if he could have, offensive war and gassing his own people was no longer possible), so Iraq fell to a 6 - 7 or so then. After GW2, it shot back up to 9, undoing the gains made by the first war. I’m not ignoring anything. Nothing has been “fine” in Iraq during the last 40-ish years. It’s your claim that I think otherwise is the real strawman.
And unless the rest of the world is willing to pay us trillions to be its police force, it’s not the job of the US to go around changing every regime that gets condemned by the UN for human rights violations. Israel has received more than 50 since 2006 all by itself, but you’re not arguing that we should invade them, are you? Putting aside the very political issue of who gets condemned by the UN and why, should we also attack North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Myanmar, Iran, China, Russia, Egypt, much of sub-Saharan Africa, or anyone else on the endless list of rights violators put together by various objective bodies who specialize in such things? Where does the carnage end? How do we build nations in regions we don’t understand and where we’re very unwelcome? How much blood will we spill trying to do so?
Well, its clear the iraqi army is not capable of anything. I don’t mind if Iraq was chopped up into pieces, should have been done ages ago, these people cannot live together, so why try.
I mentioned deliberate partition as an exit strategy back in 2007 in response to a list of options suggested by Lum (who I miss greatly in his former role as one of this board’s best fiscally conservative/socially liberal posters):
Had we removed Saddam (who certainly deserved a fate worse than death) but not totally destroyed the rest of Iraq’s ability to govern, things might have balanced better. I still think the failure to think through the aftermath of the (inevitable) victory over Saddam, or at leas the decisions made like disarming the military and leaving a total power vacuum might be more crucial than the actual decision to invade, though of course they flowed from that one.
There are at least two big questions here–was the invasion itself a good idea, and was the way it and its aftermath handled good practice. The first question is not totally black and white–wise or not, there was probably ample legal justification for invading Iraq given its failure to uphold the terms of the agreements that ended the first Gulf War, among other things. And Iraq under the sanctions system was pretty hellish. But the second question is pretty clear cut at its base–we botched the post-war, and probably had no real post-war planning whatsoever.
At a deeper historical level, though, you still have to go back to the artificial nature of Iraq as a unified nation state, and the fact that none of the regimes it has had–from the colonial to the monarchical to the Baathist–have ever facilitated any sort of organic working out of how such a country might actually work–if it can work at all. Sort of like Syria.
The real story right now is that this situation seems to be getting worse and worse and at this point I don’t see how we are not going to get pulled back into Iraq in some form; especially if they gain some foothold in Baghdad.
It’s going to be a disaster in every sense, if (god forbid) some American servicemen get killed at some point going forward.
I had wondered why the news made note of B2 bombers heading over to Europe not too long ago for “training” and “becoming familiar with” the local bases. Seemed a little odd, and imagined it was just a slow news day sort of thing. Now I’m guessing perhaps not.
Serious answer…
Based on the news reports they are apparently just giving up turning in their uniforms and walking away.
Residents of Tikrit reported remarkable displays of soldiers handing over their weapons and uniforms peacefully to militants who ordinarily would have been expected to kill government soldiers on the spot.
Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, himself suggested the possibility of a disloyal military in his exhortations on Tuesday for citizens to take up arms against the Sunni insurgents
NPR said this morning that the Kurds have taken over Kirkuk in response to the chaos around Mosul and Tikrit. I don’t blame them at all for moving to protect themselves, but these could be the opening moves of civil war between the three main Iraqi factions.
That’s what I was clumsily alluding to in the post I quoted from a previous Iraq thread, the one where I talked about Iraq as a failed creation of Versailles. Its borders were drawn by uncaring diplomats and incorporated three major factions who had neither a history of working together nor the desire to learn how. Building a functioning state within those boundaries was going to be tough no matter who was in charge, and it’s no wonder that it fell into the hands of the military.
Yep, pretty crazy potential for a massive conflict in the region. The Sunnis are coming from the NW out of Syria, which puts them among the Kurds who just want independence, meanwhile Iran can push from the east to support the Shiite center. The wacky-pants end result would be for the war to get big enough that Saudi Arabia flexes its Sunni muscle up from the South and the Sunnis take the whole damned country, daring Iran to do something about it. Thankfully Saudi Arabia is too rich to bother and don’t want to shut off the money faucet we’ve poured on them for decades.
Sure, it’s just ridiculous how easily it’s happening. I mean, nobody doubted that the Iraqi forces were corrupt and inept to a certain degree, but it seems to be 100%, and that’s a little shocking.
