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Ten years on, it is clear that the Iraq War fueled a sea-change in international opinion toward the United States. These movements in foreign sentiment are the most significant since at least the Vietnam conflict, and hold key present day implications for U.S. policymakers.
Over the course of the past decade, not one but two cross-cutting meta-narratives have been at work in international public opinion.
The first is the international growth of anti-Americanism, driven by Iraq and wider perceptions of excessive U.S. power, unilateralism and over-reliance on military might. This was an especially strong impulse from 2003 to 2008 during the Bush administration.
In the run-up to and aftermath of the Iraq War, favorability toward the United States, which had spiked upwards after 9/11, went into freefall in many countries. This and the accompanying rise of anti-Americanism is important because it has undercut U.S. soft power and thereby reduced Washington’s ability to promote its interests overseas, and indeed those of its allies.
History underlines the role soft-power has played in obtaining favorable outcomes for Washington. For example, successive U.S. administrations used soft resources skilfully after World War II to encourage other countries into a system of alliances and institutions, such as NATO, the IMF, the World Bank, and the U.N. The Cold War was subsequently won by a strategy that combined soft and hard power.
The falloff in international favorability toward the United States since Iraq has now been largely arrested, and in most cases, partially reversed. Yet, significant issues persist.
For instance, in 8 of 13 key states that were surveyed in both 2002 and 2012 by the annual Pew Global Attitudes Project (Britain, Czech Republic, Germany, Jordan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, and Turkey), significantly fewer people now think favorably of the United States than they did a decade earlier. This is most clear in the two Muslim-majority countries.
Since 2002, U.S. favorability ratings have halved in NATO ally Turkey from 30% to 15%. The fall in Jordan, another pro-Western state, has been from 25% to 12%.
The election in 2008 of President Obama, who is more personally popular with foreign publics than Bush, produced an immediate increase is favorability toward the United States. However, since Obama took office, there has been a significant decrease in international approval of U.S. policies, with particular concerns including reliance on drone strikes in the campaign against terrorism.
Support in China for U.S. policies has dropped from 57% in 2009 to 27%, according to Pew. In Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Poland, the average reduction is 15 percentage points.
To be sure, significant ups and downs in international favorability toward the United States are not unprecedented. During the Vietnam War, anti-Americanism increased markedly. There was also significant overseas concern about U.S. policy during the early Reagan presidency following increased tensions with the Soviet Union.
While the United States fully recovered from these previous episodes, it remains unclear whether this will happen again. In part, this is because those former rises in anti-Americanism occurred during an era of rigid bipolarity in which U.S. allies regarded the Soviet Union as by far the greater danger and tended to give Washington the benefit of any doubt.
The post-Cold War world is more fluid and uncertain. And, this is where the second cross-cutting meta-narrative, which has assumed special prominence since 2008, is key. Relating to the perceived recent decline of the United States, it reflects widespread international assessments of the country’s record in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the global financial crisis which is commonly perceived to have accelerated the rise of China and the wider East.
Specifically, there has been sizeable growth in international opinion that China will or already has surpassed the United States as the world’s most powerful state. For instance, between 2009 and 2011 alone, there was an at least 10 or more percentage point increase in public support for this proposition in Spain, France, Pakistan, Jordan, Israel, Poland and Germany, according to Pew.
China’s growing prominence has aroused mixed international reactions: in some cases there is considerable anxiety, but elsewhere the perceived shift in the global balance of power is welcomed. Interestingly, numerous Muslim-majority states (where favorability toward the United States is generally low) are among those who tend to regard China’s rise most positively.
In coming years, the interplay between these cross-cutting meta-narratives will be shaped by global events. Even though some international opinion perceives the United States to be in decline, there are continuing concerns about how Washington uses its power. The latter could become especially salient again in the event of U.S. military action against Iran.
Conversely, if the United States does not soon stage a strong economic recovery, as it did following recessions in the early-1980s and early-1990s when concerns about decline were last voiced, this would fuel international anxiety about a global leadership vacuum, especially if China’s rise is perceived to continue unabated.
Whichever way momentum flows, the post-9/11 decade, from Iraq through the global financial crisis, will be remembered as an extraordinary period in terms of international opinion volatility towards the United States. It will take another remarkable event or combination of developments to witness comparable movements of global sentiment in coming years.
© Japan Today
47 Comments
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nostromo
the US has completely lost the moral high ground - something it could previously claim regardless of its covert actions...
Serrano
It would definitely be better to still have Saddam Hussein or one of his sons ruling Iraq with an iron fist.
BertieWooster
You're not kidding, are you?
Bush twisted intelligence to justify invading Iraq in March 2003, "We know they have WMDs and we know where they are." Bush and his crew maintained that Hussein had stockpiled chemical weapons and Scud missiles.
Hussein declared that they had destroyed any WMD stockpiles and invited U.N. inspectors in to see for themselves in the months before the invasion.
Bush ignored this and kept up his fiction about Iraq's WMD stockpile. Later, when this was exposed, Bush would lie that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had barred U.N. inspectors from his country, a decision that Bush said left him no choice but to invade. Bush began reciting this false history just months after the invasion and kept on telling the lie until the end of his presidency more than five years later.
We were told that there are Al-Quaeda cadres in all major cities around the world and that they were poised to attack. We were told that the U.S.A. had no choice but to restore freedom to the victims of Hussein's regime. There were several Hollywood-type scenes, an Iraqi girl tearfully telling of the cruelties of the Hussein regime. She turned out to be the daughter of an Iraqi diplomat who had been drilled for the TV shoot. "Iraqis" cheering when a statue of Hussein was torn down. This was completely staged:
http://www.uscrusade.com/forum/config.pl/read/1297
And these lies were PATENTLY obvious. So much so that there were MASSIVE demonstrations not only in the States, but all over the world. These were completely ignored.
Under Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's orders, US and allied troops killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of these old people, women and children that just happened to get in the way.
Can anyone be surprised that "international opinion" has changed toward the U.S.A?
sfjp330
BertieWooster....The Iraq war was more about controlling oil. U.S. don't care about public image. Whoever controls oil will control other countries. And you can see the U.S. pattern also with handling of Libya. One of Bush administration's biggest reconstruction benchmarks for Iraq was to pass an oil law, and U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad spent months brokering negotiations. In 2007, a draft oil law passed the cabinet. The Kurdistan signed a contract with the U.S. firm Hunt Oil, Ray Hunt, sat on Bush's Intelligence Advisory Board. The definitive American influence, was wielded not by the U.S. Embassy but by a private company.
In 2009, Shahristani signed a deal without parliamentary approval with oil giant BP to rehabilitate the Rumaila oil field. Then came ExxonMobil, West Qurna field. Those two fields hold more proven oil reserves than the entire U.S. has, and if the terms of just those massive contracts are met, Iraq will reach more than half of Saudi Arabia's current production before the end of this decade.
issa1
The change in American foreign policy of Middle East to Asia is not good. Just look at history and see how is the american imperialist thought. United States will suck all the wealth of japan with TPP and when japan is chaos as Iraq they will leave as if nothing wrong had happened.
bass4funk
@bertie
You're not kidding, are you?
If you want to blame Bush, then you need to blame other intelligence agencies that apparently gave out for what one might say could have been faulty information. Bush was NOT the one that surveyed or obtained the information, are you aware of how intelligence gathering works? Various agencies from UK, German, Israeli, , Turkish, French, Russian and Spanish all had the same intel. So that means, they were all wrong. Blair, Putin and others all received the same intel. This is NOT just and only an American or Bush misstep. If you are going to criticize, then you should be fair in your overall criticism.
When it was convenient for Hussein, NOT for the U.N. when they wanted to do surprise visits.
Again, based on international intel that seemed credible at the time. Bush is NOT an intelligence agent, he has to rely on at the time seemed like solid intel.
Later, when this was exposed, Bush would lie that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had barred U.N. inspectors from his country, a decision that Bush said left him no choice but to invade.
Over 40 resolutions and Saddam still wouldn't comply with the inspectors. And remember, Bush at least went to the U.N. to present his case, Clinton just sent jets into Kosovo, didn't say anything to the U.N.
Of course, the Bush admin. wasn't going to let up, we had investments that were paid for and had every single right to protect.
I'm from L.A. originally, I met quite a few Iraqis most of them were Christian and many of them fled Iraq, because Saddam and his sons were thugs. I mean, I heard crazy stuff what this guy would do to his enemies or people he didn't like. You cannot say that everything was staged. In the beginning the people wanted Saddam gone, the Kurds, the majority Shiites and why is it that you don't address the attacks and revenge reprisals from the Shiites and muslim on muslim sectarian violence. I never hear liberals address the rape and murder and slaughter of innocent people. I know you think that it would have been better to have left that mad dog in power and being a threat towards the US, we should have just gone about and let him do as he pleases?
So because people all over the world protest, they can dictate how to deal with our conflicts and interests?
As bad as it is, that's war, as long as there is war, that will always happen, nothing you can do about it. Were you there, did you serve? Many of these thugs would dress as women and hide between the women and children. Strapping bombs on children and forcing them to get close and blow up coalition forces. Where is your outrage on that, Bertie? Under Obama, you had hundreds of people men, women and children that died as a cause of the on going drone strikes or is it because under Obama it was a few hundred and Bush a few thousand, therefore a few more people that were killed makes it worse?! Whatever war will come in the future, rest assured, people will be killed, that is the price you pay for protecting freedom.
I don't think the US cares or needs to care. But my problem is when people like you talk about Americans as if we are bad and evil people. If you don't like Bush or the American government, I have no problem with that, but if you point your finger at me and curse me because I'm an American, that is absolutely idiotic. I did not start any war, nor did I attack or hurt anyone. I am a person first, American, second. I treat everyone with respect as long as they give it to me. We are all different and think differently. We are a diverse nation, so I think you should be more specific when you want to criticize America, your problem is with Bush specifically and keep it at that.
SimondB
It would definitely be better to still have Saddam Hussein or one of his sons ruling Iraq with an iron fist
. At last Serrano you've seen the light. There was no Al Queada presence under Saddam. Also people were able to go shopping without the fear of being blown up. Some countries need an "iron fist" to maintain stability. Remove that stability and you get chaos. So good on you Serrano for recognising that.
issa1
The American propaganda of good guys of the world that doesn't stick anymore.
Bruce Miller
Here in this 21st Century are we witnessing the downward spiral of this Super Power? Are the Americans truly locked in to their 20th century glories, even their foreign oil fueled Military Machine, their oil fueled transport system, their oil fueled planes and trains? Can they honestly carry on in unsustainable McMansions, high fat, high corn fructose sugar diets expensive land yacht gasoline cars, desk jobs, Barbie Doll wives, drunken drug addled, legal pot even minds doing evermore better than sober minded practical folk of this world? The Vietnam "Fiasco" even photos of Americans in the "cut and run" mode did not overcome the Asian propensity for holding Americans as all, Hollywood film heroes? Separate the bull shit from reality folks!
Christopher Blackwell
Know any other country in the world with a thousand military bases in the world. Know any country that outs spends all of Europe, Russia and China in Military spending. Know any other country that regularly goes to war agains the third world countries that are of no danger to it and then flattens entire countries. There might be a good reason why people worry about the United States as the most dangerous country in the world, especially if your country is sitting on top of oil. Controlling the worlds oil supply has been the reason for most of the wars that America launches from Vietnam on.
oikawa
bass4funk
This is the crux of the problem. It patently would have been better overall for Iraqis to have left him in power when you compare the difference in security and death rates for them before and after, and simply he was not a threat to the USA.
I agree nobody should be lumped in with a govt. they may not agree with but when some people, including you, do seem to agree with what they did, then by your own argument we can lump them in with the hatred for the Bush administration. And people do not think drone attacks are any more acceptable under Obama than Bush, it's still cold-blooded murder.
bass4funk
@oikawa
I totally disagree, Saddam had threatened the US numerous times and by the international intelligence committee with all the countries that were involved and gave (at that time) credible intel. Saddam possessed a potential threat based on that intel. I don't think the Iraqis and especially the Kurds would have been better off with Saddam and his thuggish sons in power. As I said, wars are terrible, but when you go to war people die. Under our current President people are dying right now and he gets a pass. I don't see bertie or other liberals calling Obama a war monger when he flies a drone obliterating men, women and children, which has happened and which Pakistan had protests on just that. They want the US to stop these attacks, is Bush in charge? What do you liberals think we should do with the terrorists, leave them in charge, let them threaten us, talk to them, rationalize and reason with them? IMO, I think Bush did the right thing, I supported it then and still do.
nostromo
"Why do they hate us" asked a rather perplexed looking George W Bush ..... statements like this certainly dont do anything for the cause....
MarkG
The US has no business in the region. Iraq...Dictator to chaos. Libya....Same. Afganistan...Ditto. Now rumors of Syria.....more of the same. The culture is vastly different from the west. Children are used and abused. Woman are virtually worthless and traded like livestock. Girls married in their early teens or earlier. Multiple wives. I only wish I had a magic wand to re-align the thinking in the region but thats fantasy.
Takumi Saito
RIP America 1776 - 2015
BertieWooster
Bass4funk,
Whether Bush was the one who orchestrated the whole thing, or whether it was Cheney or the CIA or an oil cartel is too complicated for me to work out. Bush was in the driving seat. Bush could have stopped it, but he didn't.
In the U.K. Blair is equally to blame.
France was one of the few countries who didn't swallow the propaganda and didn't want to play the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice game. I respect them for that.
As for the rest of the excuses, I don't buy them.
There was a US led invasion of Iraq based on pure lies. As a result of this atrocity, hundreds of thousands of people died and a country was ruined. The U.S.A. did it, whether it did it on false information or not is immaterial. They did it.
Iraq was followed by Afghanistan, Syria, even Mali.
In spite of the opinions of other commenters, I am not anti-American. I like Americans, and I have many American friends. I love the technology and music culture of the U.S.A. But I am disgusted with American politics and American militarism.
I can completely understand why public opinion about the U.S.A. is so low.
The U.S.A. needs to get its own house in order.
Upgrayedd
Afghanistan was invaded before Iraq with the majority of the world supporting. The US has not invaded Syria and Mali is a French problem.
afroengineer
@nostromo, he found out the answer quickly though, "it is because of our freedom".
bass4funk
@bertie
So it is too complicated to work out, yes, that's true. Bush was in the driving seat, but Bush saw an eminent threat at the time based on multi credible sources, he felt his decision was the right course of action to take, you may disagree, but many didn't and many Iraqis and Kurds didn't. Funny, how the liberal media always shown the people and the Iraqis that were against the war, but the ones that were for the invasion and the ouster of Saddam, got barely a smidgen of coverage. But as a former NBC Journalist, I really know why everything played out the way it did.
Great man
France?? Oh, yeah, they did....in public at least.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/oct/10/france.iraq
Most liberals never want to hear opposing facts.
Yes, and a lot of those crimes were perpetrated and committed by other Iraqis=fact! Over 4500 American troops were killed=fact! Bertie, aside from blaming Bush, where is your outrage against these atrocities?!!
Of course they did and at the time, the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do for the coalition forces.
Afghanistan, started under Bush and the torch was passed to Obama (Who continues the Bush policies in many ways and stepped up the drone program)
Syria, NO U.S forces on the ground, can't blame Bush. Mali, French forces, U.S. had nothing to do with Al Qaeda infiltrating that country, can't blame Bush.
In spite of the opinions of other commenters, I am not anti-American. I like Americans, and I have many American friends. I love the technology and music culture of the U.S.A. But I am disgusted with American politics and American militarism.
Sure sounded like that, but glad to hear you say that.
Well, it can't be too low, because the population is swelling and quite rapidly, so for many students and immigrants trying to get into the states, so it depends on who we are talking about that has an unfavorable view of the U.S.
Show me ANY country that is perfect and that has all its affairs in order and I will show you otherwise.
BertieWooster
I'm glad you see my point of view about American politics and militarism, bass4funk:
I wrote:
And you wrote back, in agreement:
Magnet
I'd say it merely confirmed what a lot of people probably already thought about Bush and his administration. Wouldn't go as far as saying it affected the way we all viewed Americans.
bruinfan
Bassfunk, please don't try to justify Iraq. You just make yourself look...well figure it out. BTW many Palestinians are Christian and they suffer persecution too...just so you know.
bass4funk
@bertie
Let me please clarify, I meant: I am not anti-American. I like Americans, and I have many American friends. I love the technology and music culture of the U.S.A. I was in agreement with that statement.
@bruinfan
Not trying to justify anything, just the facts and my own personal opinion. I'm not trying to appease anyone, I don't back track or follow a certain crowd and yes, I know many Palestinians are Christians and?
Serrano
Takumi Saito ( March 19, 2013 - 11:45AM ): RIP America 1776 - 2015
Ha ha, as much damage as Obama and the Democrats are doing to America, we'll still be alive after 2015.
Zenpun
Bush lacks the credibility since Vietnam war. During that era, Bush did not go to front line because his Daddy was a powerful congressman. Not other able body young men had privilege like him. He served as safe and sound national guard for US back then. Not only Bush, Cheney and Rumsfileld were draft cheaters. May be they avoided draft more than five times. However they are Chicken Hawks who are very hawkish about Irag war.
Bush declared that "Bring them on". The consequence was more road side bombs explosion for Service men. He is responsible for casualty of more death of American soldiers.
Bush declared that "The course of that nation is not depending on others" before Irag invasion. International audience realized that he was immature and out of touch.
Later on he begged fund for reconstruction of raped Irag civilization, International community said that " I told you so.
Bush proudly declared that "Mission accomplished". Later on he admitted it was premature.
Bush and his disciples ruined reputation and credibility of US. His successive failures and fraudulent actions were rewarded with second term President.
Therefore International opinion drifted apart from US Domestic opinion. When the credibility is lost, it will never come back.
Kevin Brent
All these anti-American governments don't seem so anti-American when their hands are out for our money. They and that criminal outfit known as the 'United Nations' can all burn in hell.
oikawa
bass4funk
There is no link between terrorists and Saddam Hussein. It was purely a potential link which could have been made, and made much more strongly, about any other mad leader on the planet.
Obama is hated less than George Bush because he is less insular and didn't start the actual war, but for me as I said it is still cold blooded murder when they use drone attacks. It has nothing to do with Democrats /Republicans, conservatives/liberals, it has to do with actual actions themselves. Bush isn't derided more because he's a Republican, he's derided more because of what he did.
Of course Iraqis were better off under Hussein. In what way is hundreds of thousands of more dead people being "better off"?
leakemichael
Everyone is the same. We all want to live in peace, have good food, have nice homes, raise our families...that's until some leader ( president or dictator) spouts about how "those guys over there are evil and we need to fight them". Every country in the world has leaders like this... They , these leaders, are only interested in their agenda. With Saddam, it was how powerful he could become over those weaker he could push around. For Bush, it was how much he could get and how he could finish something his father started.... Either way, both side lost... There are no true winners in war....But, those who survive, can rebuild and try to live in peace, have good food, rebuild nice homes, and raise their families. One day, I would like to be able to walk down the streets of Baghdad, on a visit, and sightsee, go to a restaurant, or just stroll without worry. Maybe in the future they will see we are just the same, without our leaders approval....
JadeDragon
Nations die this way, empires collapse, societies atrophy, and countries implode (like the old USSR) or are conquered from within. In the United States, this phenomenon cannot be blamed exclusively on Democrats or Republicans as both parties represent coalitions of groups that all want something from the government. Indeed, if there is any difference between Republicans and Democrats in this regard. It's that President Obama has accelerated this process over the last four years. Yet institutionalized selfishness was a going concern well before Obama came along. All of which is suicidal, right? Yes, it most certainly is.
Can anything be done to arrest or reverse this process? Absent of some kind of revolutionary demolishing of governmental interventions, no, there probably is not. So what then might happen to America? Considering the current economic situation, some kind of collapse is of course possible. Most likely the United States will change into something else if not worse. Something akin to a totalitarian society envisioned by Alexis de Tocqueville, where its citizens are weighted down by mountains of rules and bereft of any dynamism, creativity, or imagination, subservient, socialist, and senile.
While many here might believe that the collapse of the US is a good thing. I am not nearly as optimistic. It will have a global effect of which could bring down nations and possibly lead us to a third World War before it's all said and done. I can live with a less influence US but I don't want a US which becomes a second China, North Korea or worse. I don't think any rational person would want that either. While the US reputation has been damaged greatly and pubic opinion is at it's lowest in decades. I would like to believe it isn't end game. What needs to happen is the American people need to quit being afraid of their government.
It is supposed to be a country for the people by the people which it clearly isn't anymore. If that requires a second revolution then so be it. US can be a great nation again but it going to take some sacrifices. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives (James Madison). In closing I think the world would be better off without governments as clearly none of them have the interest of it's people in mind. Let's hope greater wisdom prevails and the US return to what it's principles were founded on.
bruinfan
Ok good. I had thought that you were supporting this awful mess that was the US involvement in Iraq, but you also see it for what it was. No praise for it...no glory for it...
corner-of-my-eye
iraq was a savage place to live, saddam threw enemies off buildings and gassed kurdish people, make no mistake, he was a more wretched man than bush. he may well have been the best out of the bunch but he certainly had a conflicting ideology to the US model, and often showed aggression to the US.america wants to police the world.america believes this will result in a more peaceful world n the future. although this seems grossly unfair, and begs the question, why should it be america? i for one would prefer the american model over the the chinese, russian, indian one etc., all nations that are key players in the power struggle. war is always bad, but we will only learn if the iraq war was a mistake many years to come.
corner-of-my-eye
obviously war is never good though. i suppose the other side of the argument is, irrespective of whether the iraq war will be seen in america as the right choice in years to come, killing a single human being is never justified.
sfjp330
corner-of-my-eyeMar. 20, 2013 - 07:10AM JST iraq was a savage place to live, saddam threw enemies off buildings and gassed kurdish people, make no mistake, he was a more wretched man than bush. he may well have been the best out of the bunch but he certainly had a conflicting ideology to the US model, and often showed aggression to the US.america wants to police the world.america believes this will result in a more peaceful world n the future.
Iraq might've been a savage place to live, and saddam might've been a dictator at it's worst. However, does any country have right to invade a soverign country that has not done nothing to you with lies? iraq had no WMD, no nothing and U.S. saids they have all the evidence with all the lies. What was the conclusion at the end? U.S. didn't find nothing and what happened? They end up killing hundreds of thousands of people. For what? Iraq had nothing to do with 3/11. The invasion of Iraq was nothing more than controlling oil to counter the Chinese. You see the same results with Libya.
bass4funk
@oikawa
Actually, there was. Accourding to Isreali intelligence, French and British, Saddam did pose a serious potential threat. If you ignore what CNN was force feeding you as we'll as the pundits on msnbc, there was most definitely a connection there.
Funny, but liberals are always complaining that people that oppose him are racists and they hate him, or that most conservatives hate a black man in the WH. They hate Obama because of his policies, if he were pasty white, freckled faced and ginger, it wouldn't make a difference, it's his polices.
That depends on who you ask. In my town, most people supported Bush and the Iraq invasion.
That the people can openly elect there own leaders, they can create their own democracy in the way they see fit. More shops are opened, people can walk around people have something that they never had before a choice, yes, it will take awhile before it can be considered a stabilized and true democracy, Saddam is gone, no one has to fear him and his thuggish sons, good riddance, but it's a start. So yes, they ARE better off.
ka_chan
What the Iraq war demonstrated was that GW Bush and the leaders of the US military never read "The Art of War" For example: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” and “who wishes to fight must first count the cost.” As for Obama, “There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. ”
bass4funk
Because the work was already done for him. He's got a cake walk now.
Jimizo
56 killed yesterday in Iraq. According to a Zogby Poll last year the majority of Iraqis believe the situation is worse in terms of personal safety and security (72%), economic development and employment ( 66%), government services (59%), and most interesting of all, half feel that there has been a negative impact on political freedom as opposed to a third who said it has improved. I personally couldn't give a toss about what the Republicans or Democrats think about Iraq thousands of miles away. 120,000 dead, and a less than grateful population living in a country left tearing itself to pieces in sectarian violence. Mission accomplished?
bass4funk
And you are entirely, entitled to your opinion.
Eppee
bass4funk
@jimizo
How many people do you think we're brutally murdered under Saddam? We will probably never know, U.N reports aren't so clear, but a few million at least.
http://history1900s.about.com/od/saddamhussein/a/husseincrimes.htm
@eppee
That is VERY important. I totally agree.
oikawa
What does that mean? Did he have links to terrorists or not was what I asked. No he didn't. None of those intelligence services expressed that idea.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. I really wish you'd stop going on about liberals and conservatives. I know you're an intelligent guy and you should know how meaningless those terms are.
So they were predisposed to support him and it, because he flew under the Republican/Conservative flag, not because they analysed the actual details of the war? Well, that's patriotism. I don't mean this disparagingly, but you can't let the facts get in the way of support for your country sometimes.
At least I see we both agree there have been thousands more deaths per year as a direct result of the invasion. The question then is was it worth it? For me I don't see how you can say having your whole family obliterated through no choice of your own is better than at least being able to do something about it by deciding how you live your life under an unpredictable regime. Either way, that was not for America to decide. And even if it was the war purportedly had nothing to do with that. It was supposedly because of the threat of terrorism which had been proven not to exist so the "benefits for the Iraq people" were brought in, which had nothing to do with the war in the first place even if there were any benefits, which there weren't. There is so much blatant hypocrisy, pulling wool over people's eyes and lying here. George Orwell wrote 1984. The Iraqi invasion 2003 was Act 1.
ka_chan
Referencing Sun Tzu and Obama was a dig at Obama. Granted 99% of Iraq is done for better or worse but Afghanistan is still going on for over 10 years. The cost of the war is still mounting. The wars costs are somewhere around 4 trillion dollars. Then there are the costs of those soldiers injured which is a continuing cost for decades of something close to $50-60 billion per year. As a strictly financial deal, it doesn't seems like a total loss. As for some of the intangibles, what people in what country in the world would be happy to be liberated by a foreign country other then the extent that the hated leader is gone. Once that is done, the hate is transferred to the liberators who are now the occupiers. In the case of Irag, I don't think that the US was ever thought of as liberators. When they (Bush and Cheney) tried to compare Iraq to Japan and Germany, it made no sense. Japan and Germany fought a war and lost where the aggression came from the defeated. During the Iraq war, the US was say they were not fighting the Iraqi people but the Sadam regime. This made things worse since if the US as not fighting Iraq but Sadam, why were they still there once Sadam was gone. Since Sadam was the only thing keeping the lid on the violence of the ethnic and religious sects, violence will happen once Sadam is gone. The same goes for Afghanistan, The people of the region has to come to their own balance. The idea that you can give liberty to a people is ridiculous. Liberty and freedom has to come from the people, not given to them.
bass4funk
@oikawa
Well, yes he did and he allowed Al Qaeda often to train and did to some extent help fund their cause.it wasn't on a massive scale, but on top of Saddam threatening our purchased oil reserves and with brutality he was inflicting on his people was more than enough reason to survey and impose sanctions as the first step.
I am intelligent that's why I was bringing politics into it. I never said, I agreed everything with what happened during the war, however, there is a fundamental difference in the way liberals and conservatives view the world, particularly when it comes to defense. Liberals almost always have been weak when it comes to defense, they believe in talking, sending flowers, turning the cheek and hopefully, praying that our enemies will quietly walk off into the sunset, hear our reasoning and back off.
So they were predisposed to support him and it,
Because, I personally saw the threat and felt it was necessary.
because he flew under the Republican/Conservative flag, not because they analysed the actual details of the war?
As I said earlier, based on international and domestic intel, that was the analyzation. Was the reason to terminate that threat. And yes, I support weatherboarding.
I am patriotic, but that's not the why I supported the war. Not at all, I supported the war based on my previous comments.
Well, I disagree, when we were threatened, we had every right to neutralize that threat by any means. I have a few family members in both Iraq and Afghanistan and the stories that I hear are astounding and as a Journalist in the American media, I know exactly how ( since the majority of journalists are liberals ) they operate and they purposely chose a lot of heart-wrenching stories to turn and insight disapproval, doubt and hatred for the wa effort. They hardly ever shown the schools that were built, money and security given, children being escorted, many soldiers being invited to people's homes. There were many positive stories, but most people don't know of this, I know this for a fact. I remember Keith Olbamann on msnbc badgering Bush every night for years in the worst way. By the way, where is he now? I don't expect everyone to believe as I do, but I'm not going to swallow and tow the predominantly liberal orthodoxy that war is bad, talk is good. It doesn't always pan out like that. Sometimes you need war to keep the peace. I firmly believe it.
oikawa
bass4funk
None of the West's leaders denied when confronted that there was no credible evidence linking Saddam to Al-Qaeda. The rationale for the war was that the potential threat of a collaboration between Hussein and a terrorist group was so bad that pre-emptive action had to be taken. That's what it comes down to. The other factors like Hussein's brutal regime were just window dressing. The problem was so much was said that was shown to be blatant outright lies, or backtracked on, that many people didn't trust the leaders and their reasons for going to war. It's not so much that there weren't good reasons for his removal (I never saw why he wasn't removed in 1990) but politically it was BS. The reasons given were so spurious it was pathetic, whether or not someone agrees that he should have been removed, the actual reasons the govt. acted for were probably not them.
As for the actual threat though, what kind of threat did you envisage? Hussein had been contained since 1990 and done very little. There was no sign of him being a threat again, if he ever was to the West. Maybe to his neighbours but not us. What did you think would have happened if he'd remained in power?
As for war it's not about if any good things were done too or liberals being less accepting, the point is that for people who don't believe in the reasons for going to war, it renders the consequences much worse. Not for me, but for a lot of people things like the bombing of Dresden would be a lot more acceptable to remove someone like Hitler than civilian deaths in Iraq for the sake of removing someone because he had embarrassed the US President's dad/oil/whatever they thought the real reasons was.
BertieWooster
The truth is beginning to come out.
Watch the video, if you have the stomach for it:
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/22/new_expos_links_torture_centers_in
Get Real
Bertieleaks!
bruinfan
Rumsfeld was buddy buddy with Saddam in the past when it served his corrupt interests (a well known picture shows these two birds of a feather shaking hands). When Iraq wanted to start using the Euro for oil transactions though, that was a different story.