But this is a must, must, must read:
War: Realities and Myths
by Chris Hedges
Monday, June 13, 2005
war, good god, yeah...
I trust my faithful few readers know all about the Downing Street minutes and the all the other evidence coming out about the lies that led to war. So I won't link to all the great articles I have been reading about that. And if you follow the usual sources, you can get a good picture of the mess that keeps getting messier.
But this is a must, must, must read:
But this is a must, must, must read:
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4 comments:
War is the most barbaric activity that a nation can become involved in. This article screams out to the reader what I have been attempting to portray since the beginning of the so-called War on Terror: War, in reality, is not characterized by John Wayne movies and Steven Ambrose books. War is more complicated than tails of heroism and triumph. It is about the stench of decomposing bodies and wretched refuge camps, of people torn from their loved ones and then forgotten about when they return. What this article brilliantly accomplishes is that it brings the reality of war to its reader. The veteran and refuge "know" war, or as the author states, "The vanquished know war". I became introduced to war as a young soldier deployed to Bosnia in 1997, going on mine lifting missions and recon missions in places such as the city of Srebenica. The priveledged, such as George W. Bush, do not know war. If they did, the fiasco in Iraq may not have come to fruition. In order for the "W's" to know war, the press has a responsibility to portray it as such. In a democracy, in order for its citizens to appropriately carry out their incredible responsibility of decision making, perfect information must be available. If not, you have government failure. As this article so thoughtfully points out, that information is not here. The American people, in order to carry out their duty as citizens, must know what the "vanquished" know.- MLP
Despite all the articles and “insightfulness” of Chris Hedges I don’t think anything of value has been posted on this forum that would ever further the effort of peace. Any rational person who looked at the recent history of the Middle East could have predicted a war there in next few decades. Whether Bush lied or not to go to war is mute. We’re there now and good or bad it’s in our interest to see Iraq succeed. Further no one here had offered anything constructive towards avoiding situations like this in the future. We demonize someone as being the problem and while they may have contributed they were acting on a situation that we could not or refused to solve. If our strategy in the future is to solely avoid people like Bush as leaders then we have already failed to stop the next war.
The Middle East, like it or not contains an incredibly important strategic resource. The regions stability is in the economic interest of the world. As China and India become superpowers it’s important to continue influence and control over these strategic areas. Areas that contain vital natural resources that these growing nations require to secure their economic, political, and military security are especially important. In addition growing efforts of Iran and past effort of Iraq to obtain nuclear weapons in light of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict will destabilize the region. If those nations obtain nuclear weapons it’s possible for an escalation of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict to a conventional war. If this war happens at a time when China or India is particularly dependant on Middle East oil it could lead to aggressive actions to secure oil reserves or government instability. As both nations are nuclear the risk of a nuclear exchange increases. It would be in the Interests of the United States to avoid all of these scenarios. An effective way to avoid them would be to remove one of the more “undesirable” nations in the Middle East and try to create a political power base to ensure regional stability. If such action is to be taken then is should be taken before any of the nations have nuclear weapons since this could successfully deter any conventional military action. If this action succeeds then it would solve a short term problem and allow the US to focus on the larger long term issue of China and India.
Assuming this is the path we choose it is clear why Iraq is the most likely and most logical choice as the country to overthrow. Iraq had little conventional military strength, most of it being destroyed in the Gulf War. The country is accessible by sea, extremely important since any large scale US military actions would require naval transportation. Iraq has one of the highest literacy rates of Middle East nations. They are boarded with two reliable allies, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Iraq has a history of aggressive actions against its neighbors along with a record of violating UN resolutions and one of the world’s largest oil reserves. In addition it is clear the US has no strategic interest in Europe going foward. Iraq would provide a better platform for strategic positioning in relation to China and India.
If you don’t like that just wait 15 years and replace “US” with “China” or “India”, the scenarios and reasons for invading Iraq work just as well for them as they do for us only with nuclear weapons and more death and destruction. Iraq is not the product of a single man it’s the product of a long history of failed US foreign policy and an impotent world body in the face of obvious threats. If Bush never invaded it doesn’t change the fact that the situation in the Middle East is an increasing problem to the world. It doesn’t change the fact that when these problems arise it’s standard operating procedure for the US and for the world body in general to ignore them until they blow up in a war. Then we all cry about it and conveniently forget the fact that we ignored the very problem that caused the war for decades.
Steve
Unfortunately, I can not reply to Steve's articulate comments at this exact moment because I have a ton of reading and writing to do; however, if you feel that the 'overthrow' of Iraq was essential for 1) United States hegemony with regard to the nations of China and India, and 2) balance of power politics in the middle east to ensure stability(remember what happened in WWI), then you can assist in this effort and help close the Army's recruitment gap and go visit your local recruiter (tell him you want a "Combat Arms" job, you'll get more college money). I will provide something, "constructive towards avoiding situations like this in the future", in addition to what I said regarding the availability of legitimate information for the citizens of the U.S. in order to make informed decisions and hold their representatives accountable, in the next few days. Stay tuned.
M.L.P.
I never said it was essential to overthrow Iraq but it is clear a large amount of reasons existed to warrant such action. Ensuring stability in the Middle East does not constitute a need for war but it does constitute a need for action, action that the United States and the world body were unwilling to take. I seriously doubt that the United States was the only country concerned with stability and security in the region. Cleary the world body is anxious about Iran becoming a nuclear power and the possibility of instability both in regional geopolitical and in world economic terms. What action did we take? How many serious negotiations did we have with these countries in the last 20 years? When Iraq invaded Kuwait what was the world response? How did we handle that situation, sanctions that some claim to have killed over half a million Iraqis? Sanctions that impoverished a nation and did nothing but tighten the grip a brutal dictator had on his people. All this did nothing for the region except hurt innocent people and create a situation that solved none of the United States’ or the world’s concerns. There is a war in Iraq now not because of George W. Bush but because of everything this country and the word body did in the last few decades. We can’t apply cosmetic fixes to the world, some half hearted sanctions or restrictions so we feel better about our selves when we look in the mirror. “War is more complicated than tails of heroism and triumph.” It is also more complicated then the “Ws” caused everything bad in the world.
In closing I think you mistook my post as support for the war, which it was not. The post was my opinion that your assessment of war and how to stop it was largely wrong. I don’t think the writings of Chris Hedges or knowing what the “vanquished” know will stop anything. I think history is proof of that. Wars happen for a lot of reasons, some good some bad, does that mean George W. Bush isn’t guilty of lying to the American people? Or that he didn’t personally contribute to those reasons? No, of course not but to single him out and actually expect that a war would have never happened had it not been for him is naïve. The list of reasons to go to war with Iraq and in the Middle East is huge and not just from our perspective. It’s no shock to me that one actually occurred. We can’t hide behind some excuse on available information either. War for us at this time might have happened because of this problem but in the future it will be something else. Further it may be another country and you have to ask yourself if you care about war or just wars we start. Because I can guarantee that any war started in the Middle East would eventually include us. And when it does include us then who will you blame? Who will be the “W” then? We can prevent wars, but it doesn’t include some vendetta against the “privileged” and the “Ws”. Iraq didn’t just happen overnight, we can look back and see a series of events dating back at least 20 years that snowballed into what we have now. We can’t expect to stop the snowball after it’s been rolling for 20 years, we need to stop it when it starts.
Steve
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