I know. It's like "Israel is evil, look everyone says so, hence Israel must be evil. No I have never been there or met an Israeli and I certainly don't care about history much.".
I was wondering when Israel would somehow get dragged into all of this. The topic of Israel, and whether it is evil or not, is not part of what Mr. Paul was talking about (if you like I can post an article with the speech of one of my other favorite politicians, Mr. Galloway from the U.K)
What this is about, again, is trying to put a military occupation in a frame that the occupiers can themselves understand.
Regarding the Iraq war, in terms of fighting "terrorism" the ultimate solution was political and not military, in which Petraeus cut a deal with the "terrorists" who then suddenly turned into "awakening councils" thereby removing the bulk of the insurgency and exposing a relatively small, foreign body of real terrorists who didn't operate in country in earnest until -after- the U.S took over.
One more thing in response to this little diddy;
Of course the US could have just watched the Arabs murder the Jews, the Assyrians, the Kurds, and the various African tribes the UN granted them ownership of. And I am absolutely certain that if the US had simply accepted slavery in Sudan, a few million dead Jews and hundreds of thousands of refugees in the Mediterranea, gas attacks against Kurds (and the odd war with Iran), andan invasion of Saudi Arabia by Iraq or whichever Arab tyrant became powerful enough to do so, the US would have been among the last to be attacked. There would have been no 911 in 2001.
What is and isn't accepted on the international stage, by various super-powers, has absolutely nothing to do with that pesky thing called human compassion for others and more with what benefits or advantages the situation grants the powers-that-be.
The Russian army pretty much cleaned out Chechnya in waves of ethnic cleansing since their second invasion in the late 90's, where was the outrage?
In Indonesia, we (the west) trumpeted the murder of a couple million "communists" by a military dictator who overthrew the government with our support.
Many of our so-called allies in formerly soviet asia (countries ending with "an" like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) have attrocious dictators that the U.S formed alliances with while turning a blind eye to the oppression and mass-murder carried out of any dissidents or undesirables. This is the same formula that they employed in Iraq;
1) Form an alliance of convenience
2) So long as that alliance grants benefits to the superpower (political, economic, military etc) turn a blind eye to the attrocities carried out in country
3) if it ever goes sour, which in most cases it usually does after a period of a few years, then employ one of three generally accepted methods to corect situation-
A- the "do what we want or -else-" ultimatum. FYI, this is where the U.S is on Mr. Karzai in Afghanistan right now, and my prediction is that they are probably going to replace him if he doesn't play ball the way they like. Karzai, a former oil executive has actually had a pretty good run lasting almost a decade. However, after multiple instances in which dozens of civillians were wiped out in indiscriminate airstrikes he's started to openly question and push back against U.S interests in the region which is an unforgivable sin.
Pressure is applied, whether directly or indirectly to play ball as desired. In Iraq's case, this was largely for economic reasons and geo-politically because the war with Iran was at best continuing a stalemate and not producing any tangible results.
This started to happen in the mid to late 80's when U.S and European countries wanted to do with Iraq what was done with Saudi-Arabia- a massive influx of business for engineering firms and oil companies to build cities out of the desert and oil infrastructure. Just like what happened for Saudi in the 60's and 70's, western firms would win big in getting massive development contracts which would be paid for with petrodollars (and win the dependency of Iraqi infrastructure) on western skill. If you've any spent any time in Saudi, then you know that the majority of skilled labor is actually imported foreigners working for massive international engineering conglomerates. Things went sour when Saddam refused. He wanted to keep infrastructure, resources and skill localized and did not want to get to deep in bed like Saudi did.
Once it became clear that Iraq -would not- be another Saudi Arabia and -would not- win the war against Iran, the decision was made to sit back and wait for Saddam to carry out a blunder so big that he could be pounced on internationally, so that eventually he could be replaced with a leader or government that would do business as desired. The invasion of Kuwait gave them this exact opportunity. If Iraq had won the war against Iran, or if Saddam had opened up Iraq's economy, he probably would still be in power today with our blessing and the plight of the Kurds and all the other groups he committed genocide against would be a footnote brushed under the rug.
B- Once the ultimatum phase has passed comes the next stage- assassination/mysterious death- This includes many of the mysterious plane crashes in which presidents of south and central american nations seem to suffer. Isn't it interesting that presidents seem to be prone to die in mysterious plane or helicopter accidents moreso than the general populace, when in fact it should be the opposite as they should have the best maintenance team in country? One such example of this would be South Vietnamese president Diem, although this was intermingled with a coup.
C- Once assassination or mysterious death has failed then comes forcible regime change. In it's most benign form this is a rigged election, the intermediate level is a sponsored coup or rebellion, and the most acute form is a full blown military invasion, hello Panama and Iraq. Forced regime change always costs the most money and resources and runs the most risks, as we see today with the blowback resulting from Iran and the coup masterminded by Kermit Roosevelt in the 50's.
