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Forums - Politics Discussion - U.S attacked Iraq over rumors of W.M.D's

badgenome said:
mai said:

Because they probably got results they wanted?

And here I thought you were arguing that they weren't stupid.

You have to understand that forty years ago we were still in the Cold War era . The neoconservative priority was to oppose the USSR at every turn and not necessarily to promote democracy. After the Cold War, the neocons fell prey to inevitablist delusions that liberal democracy had won the day and was the answer to everything. See: Fukuyama's End of History.

I'd argue that Fukuyama is right in a broad-strokes sense, but the wrong step the American neo-cons took with it was in assuming this sort of thing could be rushed (really, the same mistake was made by Socialism and Communism. Societies less prepared for a stable sharing of wealth are just going to see class-genocide and looting). Countries that are not ready for democracy have a high probability of just melting down when democracy is thrust upon them from the outside.

Liberalization worked (to a degree) in Eastern Europe because the Communists had spent 40 to 70 years educating their people and building all sorts of infrastructure, and the eastern-european countries were mostly homogenous nation-states that would not have a lot of internal ethnic strife (or, like the Soviet Union, could be divided easily into sorta-homogenous zones).

The middle east, both far less developed and with a careless geography that cared more about the balance of power than who actually wanted to live in which country, could not have the same notions applied to it.



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No we did not find any wmd's in Iraq.



teamsilent13 said:

We found WMDs in Iraq so what rumour?

They found a (rather big) bunch of nuclear material, but not really an active weapon. It was at best a dorment weapons program. So the rumour might be half truth.



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badgenome said:
SxyxS said:

the neoconservatives never ever were interessted in bringing democracy to any place on this planet.

They have several problems in their own country with democracy .

And no:They are not stupid.

The biggest trick of politicians is to make people believe that they are stupid.They are not,but they know as long as people belive that they are stupid they can get away with anything,because people will punish and/or kill smart man with evil intentions,but they will forgive the stupid for the same crimes. 

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Politicians, at least in my country, are often genuinely stupid because they are a bunch of intellectual inbreds who all attend the same schools, talk exclusively to people who agree with them about everything, and never do anything of actual merit before landing in elected office. They live perfectly insular lives and never have any idea of what kind of chaos they've wrought because they don't experience the consequences of their actions. Such a person could hardly end up any other way than stupid. Or, more precisely, ignorant, because their natural intelligence isn't being questioned here.

Well,Ignorance is(just after stupidity) the 2nd best weapon the politicians use,especially in the usa because the usa have the most ignorant population in the western world(ignorance in europe does not work that good) but the situation in France and UK is pretty similar.In France almost all politicians come from the same elite-universities(right now france government isn't just dominated by people from the ENA but most of them are from the same age group-no coincidence),in england it's hard to find a politician without oxford/cambridge background and the actual prime minister is married to one of the top elite families(astor).Guess which countries are the worst warmongering in europe?france and england

The only difference maybe that you have to be smart in europe to pass college and that us politicians not only attend the same schools but they are specially organised in lodges like skull and bones and they meet every year at the bohemian grove.This means they are better organised and coordinated though most of them maybe really corrupt and stupid.And this is not a work of stupid men.

Believe me,stupid men would never be able to provocate and create wars for decades,to fool people systematically and stay at the top of power for so long.

Obama eg is not stupid(though he seems to be part of the inbred as he confirmed to be a cousin of cheney) nor had he ever the time or the social background to become ignorant(not while being part of a minority in indonesia,not in the usa),but there is almost no difference between him and bush in his actions(exept the fact that he received the nobel peace prize for not being bush).

I'm pretty sure all of them know that the usa are supporting 100% repressive terrorists dictatorships like saudi arabia or qatar.They all know that every time the usa is promising help they bring hell and the situation is getting far worser than it was before us-help(in iraq,in lybia,in afghanistan)they all know that the usa have replaced democratic goverments in south america with dictatorships several times and they know that the country that is producing and exporting the most weapons on earth(usa) need to empty the weapon storehouses by creating situations(wars) where old weapons can be used  ,exported and replaced with new ones.

 

Another thing:As you wrote:they(politicians) never experience the consequences of their action and live insular ,isolated lives and attend the same schools.They have 0 contact with ordinary people-do you really think such guys are interessted in bringing democracy to other countries??No.They don't give a shit about their own people(us citizens)

why should they care about people in Syria-they are just interessted in keeping and improving their status quo.They invented this "bring democracy-for-arabs" thing just as excuse for another war as it is very hard in times of internet to fabricate and keep up lies like they did before-they were caught lying too many times, but making war hidden as philantropic humanitarian help still works.



it depends how many barrels of oil every country has. they have oil so maybe in the future...



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badgenome said:
mai said:

I've actually read it ;)

Well then, you should know how neocons thought at the time. Nowadays you can find Fukuyama running like hell from his own ideas.

The elite are as prone to parochialism as anyone. And the naturally intelligent are probably more prone to believing foolish things than the less intelligent. The dullard tends to believe only in what he sees, while the intelligent often get carried away by their own fantastic imaginations. It doesn't help matters that if you grow up being told all the time how bright and smart you are, you can easily become convinced of your own intellectual superiority and are thus rendered unteachable.

Agree to an extent that conceptions and misconceptions come and go, elites aren't immune to that. I wouldn't call it stupid though. Agree that people who backed Iraq war might had some ideological concept in the mind in general, like "current model of liberalism won, hurray" (though it was 2003, a bit late for "hurrah", no? If it was 5 year before that -- I'd understand this euphoria). But in regards to practical politics -- I don't buy that. Say, Nazi Germany's leaders might had some idological concept in their mind during "drang nach osten" (you name it), but they did solve their practical problems -- getting rid of the threat, at lest what they thought to be a threat.

I don't follow Fukuyama right now, but I do follow Zbigney B. -- not sure if he qualifies as neocon -- I do read a lot of dissapointment between the lines coming from him these days, drastic change since the 90s, enjoying that :D

//Speaking about *ahem* democratization, how Arab Spring fall into that scheme?



badgenome said:

Your faith in their wisdom is cute, but if they knew perfectly well what they were doing then why did it all blow up in their faces so badly?


I might be ignorant, but I don't see how it blew up in their faces.



The US's reasons for the Iraq invasion doesn't matter anymore. The consequence is what matters. The US invaded Iraq and for a long time had to own Iraq. I don't think the American people want to go through that again. I think the American attitude towards war right now is similar to that of post-WWI and post-Vietnam. We're weary of war simply don't want it. I also believe the talk of rising debts wasteful spending has made a lot of Americans question what their tax dollars are paying for and if it's really our place anymore to police the world.

Personally, I think Syria should be a UN concern, an international one. I think the days of the world relying on America to clean up everyone's mess is slowly coming to an end.



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mai said:
Kasz216 said:
badgenome said:
Spoiler alert: we didn't really attack Iraq over WMD.


Of course the real reason we attacked Iraq, or what seems to be the real reason, is so silly nobody believes it.  Afterall, it wasn't oil or other natural resources either, that's all going to the chinese.

 

In reality it was simply.  Bush believed the US Military could be used to install just democracies in countries with dictators... and Iraq was just a good starting point.

Well, in such case he's either an idiot or a scumbag, or both. But I don't believe in good intentions in politics, so he's a scumbag after all, while your reasoning is as silly as "they went for oil". Who needs Iraqi oil in price of military operation of that scale? You simply buy it.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_Iraq

 

Iraq has a lot of oil apparently, but I agree oil alone would be a stupid reason. There were other reasons.



badgenome said:
mai said:

Because they probably got results they wanted?

And here I thought you were arguing that they weren't stupid.

Creating chaos within certain territory is a valid goal, why not? The only question remains is why?

Say, I do believe that this's the only goal of Arab Spring, unlike Iraq, which might have had some sort of order in mind after invasion -- didn't work out -- or rather plans have changed due to bad economic conjecture.