This is the last time I felt the power of the propaganda machine. (The most recent time was the 2024 election) It was so obvious to myself and my friends that this was completely cooked up intelligence. And yet the truth was not getting out, and had fooled many people with this strange groupthink, almost like a dumb, braying herd animal, where the collective intelligence was utterly ambushed and tied up in a sack. I don't like feeling powerless, yet I have this feeling that our voices have been smothered of late, destroyed by ridiculous talking points.
stormfather · 43m ago
I've never understood what the real reason we invaded was. I just know it wasn't what we said, or oil.
arp242 · 4m ago
There was the notion in certain (neo)conservative circles throughout the 90s that toppling Saddam really would be the trigger for a democratic wave throughout the middle east, kind of like an "Arab spring". This would benefit everyone in a kind of win-win situation: the US would have fewer enemies, and the people living there would benefit because freedom and democracy is good.
The "weapons of mass destruction" was kind of used as a pretext because they didn't believe such an argument would win popular support. It's somewhat abstract and rooted in a kind of ideology rather than pragmatism. They also genuinely believed that Saddam did have weapons of mass destructions, but just couldn't prove it. They would be found after invasion. Just a little white lie in the meanwhile.
That's really all there's to it. People get all cynical about "freedom and democracy", but that really was the goal, as a kind of "enlightened self-interest".
Because they lied about the pretext, there was little to no broad discussion about any of this so they just operated in their ideological echo chamber. There was no one to really point out this entire notion was perhaps well-intentioned but also rather misguided and ignorant (to say nothing of the execution, which was profoundly misguided and ignorant).
dragonwriter · 24m ago
A US invasion, occupation, and political reformation of Iraq to serve as a lever for a pro-US series of regime changes in the Middle East were central ideas of the Project for a New American Century, from which the Bush Administration drew heavily for its defense and foreign policy officials (as well as VP.)
motorest · 22m ago
> I've never understood what the real reason we invaded was.
Ego? Bush Jr trying to surpass his father isn’t particularly far fetched.
The signal war plans leak shows decisions for these kinds of things aren’t necessarily particularly well thought out.
mycatisblack · 38m ago
I remember things sped up shortly after Saddam became vocal about having his oil paid in euros.
mrkeen · 24m ago
Good polling perhaps? Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 (and allegedly the actual vote), but won in 2004.
Or maybe it was just Cheney's idea to funnel money to himself via Halliburton.
Synaesthesia · 15m ago
It's imperialism. The US has traditionally dominated the Middle East region and it's big enemy is independence and nationalism. It wants countries that are willing to obey. So they made an example of a disobedient country, which may set an example for others if successful.
ekianjo · 21m ago
The more wars the more special interest groups make money.
IncreasePosts · 39m ago
Saddam tried to kill g dub's daddy
melling · 47m ago
$2 trillion for that war. Next time let’s cure cancer(s).
Correct, no one said it would be easy. True we would likely not have succeeded, but millions more would be cancer survivors.
johnohara · 4m ago
2,000,000 miles of roads @ $1,000,000 per mile.
Think of that the next time you drive through Arizona on I-40, avoiding the potholes, debris, and life-threatening disrepair.
I-40 runs a scant 2,556 miles from Barstow, CA to Benson, NC.
motorest · 27m ago
> $2 trillion for that war. Next time let’s cure cancer(s).
Aren't there any positive tradeoffs in overthrowing the likes of Saddam Hussein?
somenameforme · 16m ago
There's a problem there. Many people reason about things by assuming that since option A is clearly bad, option B must be more desirable. But in life we often have this fun situation where we get to choose between a bad choice, and a terrible one - there is no good one.
Saddam was, without any doubt, an at-times brutal tyrant. Yet not only was Iraq vastly more stable and peaceful under his reign, but so too was the entire Mideast. That war set off a chain reaction of events that led to a complete destabilization in the Mideast and created a fertile ground for extremist groups to recruit, operate, and generally thrive.
So I don't think so. Like in most contemporary wars, the only real winners are the arms dealers, and the people getting rich off death and destruction.
impossiblefork · 10m ago
The problem was that he was holding Iraq together. After he fell, we ended up with a situation where there are about 1/2 as many Iraqi Christians in Sweden as there are in Iraq.
Basically, Iraq went straight to hell, and whatever minorities etc. didn't flee got murdered.
I interpret it as something along the lines of Saddam Hussein's government caring about having a strong or at least functional country enough that they only wanted to kill Kurds and Iranians.
Baathists are better than sectarian madmen, and I suspect we'll see some kind of idiot outcome in Syria as well.
vkou · 8m ago
Yeah, like killing half a million people, creating an environment for ISIS to germinate, grow, and perform unspeakable atrocities in both that, and a neighbouring country (with a little bit of fun terrorism in Europe thrown in, but on the grand scheme of things, the moral weight of a few hundred murdered Europeans pales in comparison to what they were doing closer to home).
It's never a bad idea to create a power vacuum by overthrowing a dictatorship and then utterly fucking up your occupation and handling of the peace.
It's not clear if any invader and occupier could have handled that part well, but it is absolutely clear that the ghouls running the Bush regime were completely incapable of it.
Similar horrors were inflicted on Libya by the Obama administration in particular and NATO in the general, but they were smart enough to not even sully their hands with making any effort to occupy and nationbuild after the fact. And guess what happened? A decade of civil war.
latchkey · 21m ago
Perhaps the question should be: If the US is so great, then why would it take $2 trillion and countless US lives to overthrow SH?
hackandthink · 13m ago
Jeff Stein smells like a spook.
I'm sure it's his real name, but it still sounds made up.
The "weapons of mass destruction" was kind of used as a pretext because they didn't believe such an argument would win popular support. It's somewhat abstract and rooted in a kind of ideology rather than pragmatism. They also genuinely believed that Saddam did have weapons of mass destructions, but just couldn't prove it. They would be found after invasion. Just a little white lie in the meanwhile.
That's really all there's to it. People get all cynical about "freedom and democracy", but that really was the goal, as a kind of "enlightened self-interest".
Because they lied about the pretext, there was little to no broad discussion about any of this so they just operated in their ideological echo chamber. There was no one to really point out this entire notion was perhaps well-intentioned but also rather misguided and ignorant (to say nothing of the execution, which was profoundly misguided and ignorant).
Wikipedia has a pretty good summary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_to_the_Iraq_War
The signal war plans leak shows decisions for these kinds of things aren’t necessarily particularly well thought out.
Or maybe it was just Cheney's idea to funnel money to himself via Halliburton.
Correct, no one said it would be easy. True we would likely not have succeeded, but millions more would be cancer survivors.
Think of that the next time you drive through Arizona on I-40, avoiding the potholes, debris, and life-threatening disrepair.
I-40 runs a scant 2,556 miles from Barstow, CA to Benson, NC.
Aren't there any positive tradeoffs in overthrowing the likes of Saddam Hussein?
Saddam was, without any doubt, an at-times brutal tyrant. Yet not only was Iraq vastly more stable and peaceful under his reign, but so too was the entire Mideast. That war set off a chain reaction of events that led to a complete destabilization in the Mideast and created a fertile ground for extremist groups to recruit, operate, and generally thrive.
So I don't think so. Like in most contemporary wars, the only real winners are the arms dealers, and the people getting rich off death and destruction.
Basically, Iraq went straight to hell, and whatever minorities etc. didn't flee got murdered.
I interpret it as something along the lines of Saddam Hussein's government caring about having a strong or at least functional country enough that they only wanted to kill Kurds and Iranians.
Baathists are better than sectarian madmen, and I suspect we'll see some kind of idiot outcome in Syria as well.
It's never a bad idea to create a power vacuum by overthrowing a dictatorship and then utterly fucking up your occupation and handling of the peace.
It's not clear if any invader and occupier could have handled that part well, but it is absolutely clear that the ghouls running the Bush regime were completely incapable of it.
Similar horrors were inflicted on Libya by the Obama administration in particular and NATO in the general, but they were smart enough to not even sully their hands with making any effort to occupy and nationbuild after the fact. And guess what happened? A decade of civil war.
I'm sure it's his real name, but it still sounds made up.