ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape

[Metahive]

Why should the people of Iraq be expected to settle for "Well, most of you aren't suffering too much as long as you don't piss off the government somehow"?

Edits: It doesn't mean it was right for America to invade Iraq, but is that really how low you want the bar to be set for a government? Or does that only apply to an Iraqi or Middle Eastern government? Because I can't help suspecting that people who are holding up Saddam Hussein's regime as a better option, or treating it like the only alternative to the horrors of ISIS, would never accept such a regime for their own countries no matter how bad things got (I certainly hope they wouldn't), but have much lower expectations of what them backward Middle Easterners can do or what is good enough for them.

That's completely ass-backwards and missing the point by several zip-codes.

Here's a fact: what Middle Easterners have to settle for is ultimately for them alone to decide. It doesn't matter what you or I or the US President or the Easterbunny think about it, it's irrelevant. What kind of country or society they want to live in is their decision. If Space Aliens came deploring the lack of universal healthcare and the wealth gap in the US with the firm intention to violently "rectify" the situation you'd probably be in resistance too, no matter how benevolent the intentions of the meddlers.

All I and several are pointing out is that violating this principle and dictating to them what they should prefer is what caused the Hell that is today's Middle East, a Hell that wouldn't have been possible if we had left them alone. A Hell that makes whatever they had before look vastly preferable in comparison.

[The Romulan Republic]

Why should the people of Iraq be expected to settle for "Well, most of you aren't suffering too much as long as you don't piss off the government somehow"?

Edits: It doesn't mean it was right for America to invade Iraq, but is that really how low you want the bar to be set for a government? Or does that only apply to an Iraqi or Middle Eastern government? Because I can't help suspecting that people who are holding up Saddam Hussein's regime as a better option, or treating it like the only alternative to the horrors of ISIS, would never accept such a regime for their own countries no matter how bad things got (I certainly hope they wouldn't), but have much lower expectations of what them backward Middle Easterners can do or what is good enough for them.

That's completely ass-backwards and missing the point by several zip-codes.

Here's a fact: what Middle Easterners have to settle for is ultimately for them alone to decide. It doesn't matter what you or I or the US President or the Easterbunny think about it, it's irrelevant. What kind of country or society they want to live in is their decision.

In theory, I have little respect for nationalism and national sovereignty. Not because I believe America has a right to dictate how everyone else lives, but because I believe that people are people, their are issues of global concern, and that a border shouldn't get in the way of doing the right thing. In theory, I believe we may one day reach a point where a global government is a good idea. However, this is all theoretical. I include it for clarity with regards to my position. In practice, we're not at the point where I would support a global government, and even if we were, practically speaking, its a pipe dream for the foreseeable future.

So I agree that it should be up to the Iraqis to determine how their country is run, with certain caveats. Countries do not have a right to engage in unprovoked attacks or threats towards other countries, or to engage in genocide or other comparable acts of mass murder, torture, or rape just because its within their borders.

But generally speaking, yes, Iraqi should be free to run itself. But that does not mean I cannot offer my opinion on their system of government, just as an Iraqi posting here would be free to offer his opinion on my country's system of government.

And I must ask why you are attacking me over this point instead of all the other people who feel that they are equally entitled to say what a better government for the Iraqis would be (Saddam Hussein's regime), which I was fucking objecting to.

If Space Aliens came deploring the lack of universal healthcare and the wealth gap in the US with the firm intention to violently "rectify" the situation you'd probably be in resistance too, no matter how benevolent the intentions of the meddlers.

Probably I wouldn't, because I have pretty much zero fucking interest in being a soldier. Call me a coward if you want, but its who I am.

All I and several are pointing out is that violating this principle and dictating to them what they should prefer is what caused the Hell that is today's Middle East, a Hell that wouldn't have been possible if we had left them alone. A Hell that makes whatever they had before look vastly preferable in comparison.

Again, better does not equal good enough.

But as I have said repeatedly, I think the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

However, I also feel that we should be fighting ISIS. Partly because the mess in Iraq is partly of our making and Iraq was clearly unable to handle it on its own, so leaving them to face it on their own would be cowardly and selfish. And partly because ISIS meets the genocide caveat to letting other countries run themselves. And partly because ISIS is not simply an internal Iraqi problem- it is an organization full of foreign fighters waging war against numerous countries.

[Joun_Lord]

Actually, he's saying that whatever bullshit the Iraqis had to suffer under Saddam and his crazy sons was still vastly superior to what the benevolent intervention of Bush and his Bushmen wrought and that this is a pretty shameful accomplishment on behalf of those gentlemen.
Yeah, Bush's actions caused more pain, death and suffering than the antics of Uday Hussein, who was probably one of the most disturbed motherfuckers on this planet, Junior Bush can be so proud of himself.

And what I'm saying is that is was superior......for some people. For some people it was just as bad if not worse.

The situation now is beyond fucked up, the country is a mess and overwhelmed by foreign invaders and homegrown psychos. That doesn't mean Saddam's regime was a better alternative. Sure it was better for some people but for others not so much.

Hence my comparison to Nutzi Germany and the attitudes some people adopted in the wake of having the shit kicked out of them by the Yankees and the Commies, under Hitler things were better, some people had it better, and overall it was superior to what they had then while ignoring the legions of the dead made by Hitlers Funhouse and Genocide Emporium.

It might have been better for Iraq under Hussein in the membrane and better for Germany under Chaplin but it certainly wasn't good enough and it most certainly wasn't good for everyone and definitely certainly not something intelligent people should be defending.

[Channel72]

The situation now is beyond fucked up, the country is a mess and overwhelmed by foreign invaders and homegrown psychos. That doesn't mean Saddam's regime was a better alternative. Sure it was better for some people but for others not so much.

Wrong. Life under Saddam was qualitatively better for most people by any objectively measureable standard, including HDI, per capita income, literacy rate, public services, women's rights, religious freedom, and chances of not being shot in the face on your way to work.

The large scale massacres like the 1991 Shia/Kurd killings or any of the many other various atrocities and human rights violations committed by Saddam do not change this average experience.

[Joun_Lord]

[Wrong. Life under Saddam was qualitatively better for most people by any objectively measureable standard, including HDI, per capita income, literacy rate, public services, women's rights, religious freedom, and chances of not being shot in the face on your way to work.

The large scale massacres like the 1991 Shia/Kurd killings or any of the many other various atrocities and human rights violations committed by Saddam do not change this average experience.

And you can say the same thing about Nazi Germany, the average experience was better for many despite the mass killings and death camps and all that.

Does that mean Nazi Germany was better then post WWI buttfucked Germany or post WWII buttfucked Germany?

[K. A. Pital]

With Nazi Germany, the situation was clear: it was attacking everyone around it and directly slaughtered 20 million civilians in E. Europe (Poland, Yugoslavia, occupied parts of USSR). If Nazi Germany kept their Nazi thing to itself, sadly, I think it might have survived.

Should it have been destroyed? My opinion is yes.

But should Iraq have been destroyed? Can Iraq theoretically take over a landmass as huge as Europe and start slaughtering every Jew, Slav and other "subhuman" who looks at them funny? I think not.

That's why I think this is a bit of a false dilemma here. Let's see recent history. Sukharto's Indonesia, an undeniably fascist state, which also mass murdered like 1,5 million leftists and other "sympathizers" (liberals, feminists, etc.) in just two years, openly invades East Timor in a war of aggression. After the invasion? Genocide. The local population is being exterminated. Personally Sukharto is way above Hussein's rank here.

The question is, would attacking Indonesia directly at this point improved things? No idea. My opinion, of course, is that in such cases intervention is warranted. But... intervention by whom?

Let's look at Cambodia. It was invaded by Vietnam, who stopped Pol Pot's massacre - which really was a slaughterhouse, one third of the population destroyed. Surely people in Cambodia wanted this to end. But perhaps the fact that it was Vietnam (not the US) is what led to the later stability of the solution. Vietnam kept an eye on the Khmer Rouge, made sure it doesn't come back.

You see where this is going? If Saddam's regime had to fall, it would be good if it was done by someone who knows the land, its people, the customs. By the locals. Or at least with mass dedication of an army that could rebuild the place from the ground up: like the twenty or so million various occupant personnel that was poured into the Third Reich (Germany, Austria, etc.) by the USSR, US, France and Britain. Seriously: that's how you do it if you really want to do it right.

Hope that wasn't too complicated. In the end, intervention caused the worst of both worlds: the regime was not ended by its own population (outside aggression) or even by neighbors, not enough effort was dedicated to reconstruction and finally, nobody cared about the fact that the population is being massacred during the "occupation" and afterwards by various militias and islamist paramilitary forces. The result is not the fall of fascism to internal forces, like in Greece, or Portugal, or Chile, where the population or the Army ended it, but, instead, the rise of ISIS.

[Broomstick]

With Nazi Germany, the situation was clear: it was attacking everyone around it and directly slaughtered 20 million civilians in E. Europe (Poland, Yugoslavia, occupied parts of USSR). If Nazi Germany kept their Nazi thing to itself, sadly, I think it might have survived.

Should it have been destroyed? My opinion is yes.

But should Iraq have been destroyed? Can Iraq theoretically take over a landmass as huge as Europe and start slaughtering every Jew, Slav and other "subhuman" who looks at them funny? I think not.

I doubt it, too, but a major trigger for the 1990-1991 Gulf War was Iraq crossing over the border and invading Kuwait. Pretty much no one in the greater world gave a fuck what Saddam did in his own country, it was when it started to spill over into someone else's territory that the world woke up and said "no".

For a long time the rule has been you can do what you want to your own and no one will do anything, but step over the line into your neighbor's territory the greater global community will see you as a threat and you risk multi-national coalitions getting in your face or handing your ass to you.

That is, of course, a very rough generalization. There are always multiple factors at work in any conflict that involves bullets and more than two nations.

Ditto for something like Al Qaeda or ISIS - until they start becoming a problem in more than one nation they're generally ignored by the world at large.

[K. A. Pital]

Other recent examples (Sukharto invading Timor - tolerated, although sparked genocide, Vietnam invading Cambodia - tolerated, because it basically stopped genocide) show that even invading others is not actually a direct cause for invasion. Or even attack. Nobody attacked Indonesia over Timor. Vietnam had to fight a war with China, but won (even though most Western powers at the time did take the side of China and the Khmer Rouge - Vietnam and the USSR were basically on the other side).

What matters is the timing of invasion, the relations and such. Hitler went batshit crazy. Had he kept to the normal imperialism in less developed parts of the world (less densely populated, less industrial) he may have never run into trouble, sad as this sounds.

I don't think the West can do much about ISIS. The West has only created massive failure in the Arab Middle Eastern nations. The Western countries need to seriously rethink their approach and try to work with whatever remains of secularism still stand in the Middle East. It is pointless now to talk about what could have been done.

The invasion of Iraq and Western involvement in the Arab Spring were massive failures that have, and it's ongoing, a colossal cost in human lives. Even if there was a war that happened in the Middle East due to Western inaction, at most the Western nations would be accused of doing nothing (like with Rwanda - albeit the truth is way more sinister there).

But now, its best to just take the blame and get out. And this time to get out means to get out.

[The Romulan Republic]

That's completely ass-backwards and missing the point by several zip-codes.

Here's a fact: what Middle Easterners have to settle for is ultimately for them alone to decide. It doesn't matter what you or I or the US President or the Easterbunny think about it, it's irrelevant. What kind of country or society they want to live in is their decision. If Space Aliens came deploring the lack of universal healthcare and the wealth gap in the US with the firm intention to violently "rectify" the situation you'd probably be in resistance too, no matter how benevolent the intentions of the meddlers.

I already addressed this, but I want to comment further on the last bit specifically.

Metahive, in that bullshit attempt at an analogy (perhaps crafted to try to attack my supposed hypocrisy on the subject of invading countries because for some reason people seem to think that I support the invasion of Iraq despite my repeated statements to the contrary), are you suggesting that ISIS, and/or others like it, constitute a "resistance" against the American invasion?

If so, let me tell you something: ISIS is not about defending Iraq against America. ISIS, as far as I can tell, scarcely gives a shit weather America is in Iraq or not- in fact, if anything, they'd benefit from another American invasion of Iraq. From what I see, their goal is pretty much to kill or enslave and rape anyone who isn't loyal to them for the "crime" of not being loyal to them. Its also full of foreign fighters, who are every bit as much invaders of Iraq as the Americans were.

Hopefully you have brains and conscience enough to know this, but I felt I should leave no ambiguity on that point.

Also, if you are trying to compare the situation in America to the situation in Iraq under Saddam Hussein with your stupid alien analogy, you're an imbecile. America has a lot of faults, but its not a dictatorship. I'll take our lack of decent health care over outright tyranny thank you very much.

But I'm not sure what your intent was here, so clarification would be appreciated.

Edit: At best, I'd say you're comparing apples and oranges.

[The Romulan Republic]

To clarify what I mean about ISIS benefitting from another American invasion of Iraq, since I know that sounds kind of counter-intuitive, it would simultaneously give ISIS more targets to fight that they could actually hurt, unlike American planes, and a tremendous source of propaganda for recruitment. It would also be incredibly costly for America, though I don't know that that would help them.

Of course, it would cost them their ability to openly hold and rule territory, so there's that downside for them.

[ray245]

You see where this is going? If Saddam's regime had to fall, it would be good if it was done by someone who knows the land, its people, the customs. By the locals. Or at least with mass dedication of an army that could rebuild the place from the ground up: like the twenty or so million various occupant personnel that was poured into the Third Reich (Germany, Austria, etc.) by the USSR, US, France and Britain. Seriously: that's how you do it if you really want to do it right.

Hope that wasn't too complicated. In the end, intervention caused the worst of both worlds: the regime was not ended by its own population (outside aggression) or even by neighbors, not enough effort was dedicated to reconstruction and finally, nobody cared about the fact that the population is being massacred during the "occupation" and afterwards by various militias and islamist paramilitary forces. The result is not the fall of fascism to internal forces, like in Greece, or Portugal, or Chile, where the population or the Army ended it, but, instead, the rise of ISIS.

Even that might not be enough. Iraq did not really have the consciousness of being a nation that can be comparable to nations like Germany and Japan post-WW2. Saddam was literally the only nationalistic binding force that was holding Iraq together by sheer force and violence. Ending Saddam and dictatorship in the Arab world essentially de-legitimised the secular governments in favour of Islamic government like ISIS.

At the least Germany and Japan have a recent cultural memory of being a prosperous nation before fascists took over. I don't think we can really compare rebuilding Germany after destroying its nazi-era government the same way we can compare it to Iraq. We cannot assume that rebuilding Iraq would be easy even if the coalition forces devoted as much resources into rebuilding Iraq on the same level the Allies did after the war.

The post-Arab spring movement has highlighted one crucial point, which is states like Libya, Syria and Iraq are states that could easily splinter apart into sectarian violence once the dictator is gone. Believing that a liberal, secular and democratic movement could take over the country effectively is simply a fool's dream, and should not be considered as a credible outcome once you offed the dictators.

We are literally stuck with two bad options, with the ideal option being so out of reach that we should not even consider it to begin with. There has been zero indicators to suggest to us that we could ensure the countries would stay together peacefully without any extremist taking over when the people hardly share the idea of being a nation in the first place.

I don't think the West can do much about ISIS. The West has only created massive failure in the Arab Middle Eastern nations. The Western countries need to seriously rethink their approach and try to work with whatever remains of secularism still stand in the Middle East. It is pointless now to talk about what could have been done.

The invasion of Iraq and Western involvement in the Arab Spring were massive failures that have, and it's ongoing, a colossal cost in human lives. Even if there was a war that happened in the Middle East due to Western inaction, at most the Western nations would be accused of doing nothing (like with Rwanda - albeit the truth is way more sinister there).

But now, its best to just take the blame and get out. And this time to get out means to get out.

Well, in this case, they can't really afford to ignore ISIS simply because of the scale of humanitarian crisis that is going on in Syria. European countries are either struggling to cope with the amount of refugees they could take in (like Germany), or simply become increasingly xenophobic about refugees and erecting more barriers and not spending enough effort to help the people who are drowning in the Mediterranean. Europe needs a largely stable middle east in the same way China is happy with a North Korea under strong and brutal rule of the Kim dynasty.

[K. A. Pital]

You're right, ray. But I think that we'll have to learn to live with the situation. The refugee crisis will get worse no matter if Western forces roll over the place or not. If they do, very likely it will be a grand war in Syria and Iraq, the "big Mid-East war" every conservative idiot was dreaming about. If they do not intervene, do not invade... well, then the situation will develop as it does now. There does not seem to be a huge difference between "ignore" and "not ignore" in this case.

I think the clock's still ticking on some of the "prophecies" made on this forum about the rapid and soon-to-come demise of IS.

I hate to say, but it looks like IS is here to stay; refugees will keep pouring, and right-wingers will milk every bit of it and xenophobes will win.

[ray245]

You're right, ray. But I think that we'll have to learn to live with the situation. The refugee crisis will get worse no matter if Western forces roll over the place or not. If they do, very likely it will be a grand war in Syria and Iraq, the "big Mid-East war" every conservative idiot was dreaming about. If they do not intervene, do not invade... well, then the situation will develop as it does now. There does not seem to be a huge difference between "ignore" and "not ignore" in this case.

I think the clock's still ticking on some of the "prophecies" made on this forum about the rapid and soon-to-come demise of IS.

I hate to say, but it looks like IS is here to stay; refugees will keep pouring, and right-wingers will milk every bit of it and xenophobes will win.

The question is how long will the conflict last? It could easily go on for decades, which by that point in time I shudder to thing how bad things would get for migrants fleeing the region, with all other countries erecting even more massive fences to keep them out. Letting things fester will have negative domestic consequences for Europe as well. ISIS will continue to be a problem for the international body simply because they are basically ignoring every single international law and basic ideas about International Relations that came about since the treaty of Westphalia. They are basically ignoring the notion of borders and boundaries of nation-state, and believing they have a right to spread their ideas via conquest.

Totally ignoring ISIS would help to legitimise them in the eyes the radicalised because it shows to the world that it is possible to build a new kind of state that ignores international conventions. The Assad regime is largely holding on because of the aid given to them by the Russians, so I doubt it is true that the non-Arab world isn't making a difference in prolonging or shortening the war.

[AniThyng]

This is getting annoying. Nobody is saying Saddam's Iraq was nice, it was just massively better than what we have now. Yes, Saddam's Iraq stunk. But back then SOME people having it nice meant a LOT of people did. Currently, NOBODY does.

I don't think anyone is saying Saddam Hussein's Iraq wasn't better. Just that it wasn't good enough.

Why should the people of Iraq be expected to settle for "Well, most of you aren't suffering too much as long as you don't piss off the government somehow"?

Edits: It doesn't mean it was right for America to invade Iraq, but is that really how low you want the bar to be set for a government? Or does that only apply to an Iraqi or Middle Eastern government? Because I can't help suspecting that people who are holding up Saddam Hussein's regime as a better option, or treating it like the only alternative to the horrors of ISIS, would never accept such a regime for their own countries no matter how bad things got (I certainly hope they wouldn't), but have much lower expectations of what them backward Middle Easterners can do or what is good enough for them.

Metahive got the point. No matter how much you think my third world shithole is a third world shithole, and I may even agree on some points, you have no right march in and forcibly wrench my government from power and take the decision out of my hands. There is a reason I object massively to overt and covert American political donations to local political parties and ngos no matter how well intentioned. We had this discussion before. Morality differs by region and culture and people generally will sooner be fucked over by their own than by others.

I mean come on, despite being the only thing between north Korea rolling up the entire Korean peninsula some Koreans still want American troops out. Why do you think such attitudes exist?

[Channel72]

[Wrong. Life under Saddam was qualitatively better for most people by any objectively measureable standard, including HDI, per capita income, literacy rate, public services, women's rights, religious freedom, and chances of not being shot in the face on your way to work.

The large scale massacres like the 1991 Shia/Kurd killings or any of the many other various atrocities and human rights violations committed by Saddam do not change this average experience.

And you can say the same thing about Nazi Germany, the average experience was better for many despite the mass killings and death camps and all that.

Does that mean Nazi Germany was better then post WWI buttfucked Germany or post WWII buttfucked Germany?

That analogy sucks, and it's especially ironically bad considering that, unlike in Nazi Germany, Jews enjoyed religious freedom and tolerance in Saddam's Iraq, as did Christians. Nazi Germany was actively engaged in genocide as part of their ideology and policy, Saddam was not. Saddam's party represented secular Pan-Arabism (which is a good thing) and socialism - Hitler's party represented right-wing fascism and Aryan Supremacism and was ideologically genocidal.

Saddam's brutal crimes are way more comparable to something like Stalin's purges, rather than anything Hitler did, and even in that case on a much smaller scale. What Iraq needed was a Khrushchev - somebody to come along and "de-Saddamify" Iraq by dismantling the police-state, but keeping the existing social and technological infrastructure.

If anything is comparable to Nazi Germany, it's ISIS, with their ideological commitment to genocide.

[Broomstick]

Well, in this case, they can't really afford to ignore ISIS simply because of the scale of humanitarian crisis that is going on in Syria. European countries are either struggling to cope with the amount of refugees they could take in (like Germany), or simply become increasingly xenophobic about refugees and erecting more barriers and not spending enough effort to help the people who are drowning in the Mediterranean.

Keep in mind that no European nation has to accept refugees or do a goddamned thing about the humanitarian crisis. They might feel bad about it or not, other nations might scold them or not, but it's not like we're going to issue sanctions against nations that don't take in a boatload.

Is that a horrible thought? Of course it is. And it's to the credit of Europe that that is not happening at this point. But it could. I really hope it doesn't.

The question is how long will the conflict last? It could easily go on for decades, which by that point in time I shudder to thing how bad things would get for migrants fleeing the region, with all other countries erecting even more massive fences to keep them out.

Decades? This could go on for generations.

Letting things fester will have negative domestic consequences for Europe as well. ISIS will continue to be a problem for the international body simply because they are basically ignoring every single international law and basic ideas about International Relations that came about since the treaty of Westphalia. They are basically ignoring the notion of borders and boundaries of nation-state, and believing they have a right to spread their ideas via conquest.

Yep, that's the way of it - they believe they have the right to rule over everyone else and they're willing to torture and kill to do it. Barbarians at the gate of civilization. They sack cities and if they had their way they sack entire nations.

I don't know whether it would be better to try to contain these fuckers or argue in favor of overwhelming force to completely wipe them out. The former is tempting for those outside the crisis because it protects their own, the latter would require a major, major world effort. If it weren't for oil I think the world would opt for the first choice, while shedding tears over the horror of it all, but our civilization runs on oil and ISIS knows that. If they take over the oil fields yes, there will be a "Grand Mid-East War" and yes it will be in part over oil.

Would an invasion to root out ISIS be morally justified? I don't know, argue the point. At what point does that become justifiable?

[Channel72]

I hate to say, but it looks like IS is here to stay; refugees will keep pouring, and right-wingers will milk every bit of it and xenophobes will win.

ISIS has hung around in Iraq for much longer than I thought they would, mostly because the US seems absolutely committed to sitting around playing chess with various Iraqi forces and militias rather than doing anything ourselves.

With that said, the end outcome is pretty clear. There's no viable outcome here other than ISIS' expulsion from Iraq. They've already lost most of their initial territory in Iraq. The major holdouts were Tikrit, Ramadi and Mosul, and Tikrit was retaken a few months ago. So that leaves Ramadi and Mosul, and an operation to retake Mosul is in the planning stages, and Ramadi is pretty much quarantined, with certain parts of the city already being retaken last month.

After that, what's left? If you look at a map of ISIS territory in Iraq, you see this large blotch in the north, around the Mosul area. But that's misleading because most of that "territory" is empty desert. ISIS simply controls the few roads that go from North Iraq into Syria. Once Mosul is retaken, ISIS will have basically zero foothold in Iraq, and no supply line to Syria.

That outcome is pretty much a given. I'm still extremely upset, because there's no reason it had to take this long, and Obama should have committed ground troops from day one so ISIS would have been pushed out of Iraq last year rather than now. Now, thousands have died while the US has been dragging it's feet.

Anyway, after the Iraqi army retakes Mosul, ISIS will be contained in Syria. At that point, they'll continue to spew propaganda over facebook and inflict endless suffering in Syria, and the US will do nothing except inconvenience them somewhat with airstrikes until it gets boring. But it's unlikely they'll ever gain a serious foothold in Iraq again, and it's likely their GCC donors will also grow tired of their failures and lack of progress and begin to diversify their "investment" to include other militant groups or causes.

(Hint to any crazy fanatic rich GCC donors reading this: the Taliban is probably a better long-term investment than ISIS if you want to continue the spread of Islamic bullshit throughout the world. Yeah, ISIS is the not new "startup", but I don't see longterm growth here.)

[Joun_Lord]

With Nazi Germany, the situation was clear: it was attacking everyone around it and directly slaughtered 20 million civilians in E. Europe (Poland, Yugoslavia, occupied parts of USSR). If Nazi Germany kept their Nazi thing to itself, sadly, I think it might have survived.

Should it have been destroyed? My opinion is yes.

But should Iraq have been destroyed? Can Iraq theoretically take over a landmass as huge as Europe and start slaughtering every Jew, Slav and other "subhuman" who looks at them funny? I think not.

That's why I think this is a bit of a false dilemma here. Let's see recent history. Sukharto's Indonesia, an undeniably fascist state, which also mass murdered like 1,5 million leftists and other "sympathizers" (liberals, feminists, etc.) in just two years, openly invades East Timor in a war of aggression. After the invasion? Genocide. The local population is being exterminated. Personally Sukharto is way above Hussein's rank here.

The question is, would attacking Indonesia directly at this point improved things? No idea. My opinion, of course, is that in such cases intervention is warranted. But... intervention by whom?

Let's look at Cambodia. It was invaded by Vietnam, who stopped Pol Pot's massacre - which really was a slaughterhouse, one third of the population destroyed. Surely people in Cambodia wanted this to end. But perhaps the fact that it was Vietnam (not the US) is what led to the later stability of the solution. Vietnam kept an eye on the Khmer Rouge, made sure it doesn't come back.

You see where this is going? If Saddam's regime had to fall, it would be good if it was done by someone who knows the land, its people, the customs. By the locals. Or at least with mass dedication of an army that could rebuild the place from the ground up: like the twenty or so million various occupant personnel that was poured into the Third Reich (Germany, Austria, etc.) by the USSR, US, France and Britain. Seriously: that's how you do it if you really want to do it right.

Hope that wasn't too complicated. In the end, intervention caused the worst of both worlds: the regime was not ended by its own population (outside aggression) or even by neighbors, not enough effort was dedicated to reconstruction and finally, nobody cared about the fact that the population is being massacred during the "occupation" and afterwards by various militias and islamist paramilitary forces. The result is not the fall of fascism to internal forces, like in Greece, or Portugal, or Chile, where the population or the Army ended it, but, instead, the rise of ISIS.

I ain't saying we had to intervene or that Iraq was a threat beyond its borders (though it was, it attacked its neighbors).

Saddams crimes were mostly an internal matter and while in a perfect world the UN or Team America would go in and fix that situation we don't live in a perfect world and their is no easy solution. Meddling in other peoples affairs, especially when half-cocked and unwilling to fully commit, can make a situation worse.

But all that is aside from what has my ass blasted. What has me butt hurt is the defense of Saddam.

If you think Saddam was an internal matter, fine I partially agree, but I don't agree that Saddam wasn't a monster, wasn't a genocidal piece of shit, wasn't a blight on his country.

He murdered 100s of thousands of people. Not people killed in wars, not soldiers on the other side, people he ordered to be killed, civilians, women and children targeted on purpose. He tortured and maimed scores of others. Sure he lifted up the lives of alot of Iraqi but that doesn't mean shit to all those people he killed. Where was their education, where was their freedoms, where was their happy lives? Nowhere, because all they could look forward to was to be shot and dumped in a mass grave.

That infuriates me that people defend that piece of human garbage, say people had it better under his rule while ignoring the huge numbers of dead. Its a bit like when some fuckwad Confederate apologist tries to defend the South by pointing to all the rights and freedoms people enjoyed under the stars and bars while ignoring the human beings treated as cattle. Its goddamn insane and pretty disgusting.

That analogy sucks, and it's especially ironically bad considering that, unlike in Nazi Germany, Jews enjoyed religious freedom and tolerance in Saddam's Iraq, as did Christians. Nazi Germany was actively engaged in genocide as part of their ideology and policy, Saddam was not. Saddam's party represented secular Pan-Arabism (which is a good thing) and socialism - Hitler's party represented right-wing fascism and Aryan Supremacism and was ideologically genocidal.

Saddam's brutal crimes are way more comparable to something like Stalin's purges, rather than anything Hitler did, and even in that case on a much smaller scale. What Iraq needed was a Khrushchev - somebody to come along and "de-Saddamify" Iraq by dismantling the police-state, but keeping the existing social and technological infrastructure.

If anything is comparable to Nazi Germany, it's ISIS, with their ideological commitment to genocide.

Wow the Jews enjoyed freedom in Saddam's Iraq? Well good for freaking them, that must make the TENS OF THOUSANDS of Kurds killed feel great. His treatment of Christians must be a great relief to those stuffed inside mass graves.

My analogy isn't that Saddam was a Hitler clone, my analogy implies he was a freaking genocidal madman who murdered, killified, brutalized, and deaded 100s of thousands of Kurds, Shites, Iranians, Kuwait people, and his own people during vicious campaigns of torture, murder, and genocide. He, like Hitler, targeted entire groups for extermination. He like Hitler has his crimes ignored by retar......... people who apparently don't know the extent of his crime or disbelieve them because for the people still alive in the country everything was honky doory.

Genocide might not have been part of their ideology but Saddam and his people damn sure acted like it was. They might have believed in different things but the results are the same, piles and piles and mounds and metric fuck tons of dead people.

Saddam might have even had some good ideas. Hitler had some pretty good ones too, that autobahn is pretty sweet and assault rifles are fun for the whole family except in schools and theaters. But any good ideas either man had are kinda meaningless when compared to their crimes.

And I don't mean to attack you personally with my angry anger but this shit pisses me off. I've known people who's families had to escape the horrible carnage unleashed by Saddam Hussein Obama, people who've had their family tree snipped by the progressive and joyous state you seem so keen to defend. To ignore the suffering they had to endure because other people were comfortable, other people had it nice, other people weren't being tortured, raped, and murdered.

Its the same damn anger I feel when fellow Mountainer Americans and others ignore or outright lie about the deaths of 6 million jews (and 6 million people nobody gives a shit about) and the suffering of countless others while they jack off over how totally awesome the fucking Nazis are, how stable and ordered their society was.

[Broomstick]

That outcome is pretty much a given. I'm still extremely upset, because there's no reason it had to take this long, and Obama should have committed ground troops from day one so ISIS would have been pushed out of Iraq last year rather than now. Now, thousands have died while the US has been dragging it's feet.

The problem with "Obama should have done something" is that Obama is not a dictator. Politically it couldn't be done. Sure, thousands died - in Iraq. A lot of Americans are happy thousands of Americans got to stay safely at home while that happened. Selfish? Yep. Then again, are you willing to give YOUR family members to a conflict half a world away?

A lot of the lack of enthusiasm with marching back into Iraq has to do with how fucked up things were under Obama's predecessor. Sure, there are some bloodthirsty souls still eager to fight but a lot fewer of them than 10-12 years ago.

[The Romulan Republic]

You're right, ray. But I think that we'll have to learn to live with the situation. The refugee crisis will get worse no matter if Western forces roll over the place or not. If they do, very likely it will be a grand war in Syria and Iraq, the "big Mid-East war" every conservative idiot was dreaming about. If they do not intervene, do not invade... well, then the situation will develop as it does now. There does not seem to be a huge difference between "ignore" and "not ignore" in this case.

I think the clock's still ticking on some of the "prophecies" made on this forum about the rapid and soon-to-come demise of IS.

I hate to say, but it looks like IS is here to stay; refugees will keep pouring, and right-wingers will milk every bit of it and xenophobes will win.

Such assumptions of failure are pointless. They serve no end but helping us marinate in self-satisfied cynicism and discouraging people from actually trying to achieve anything positive. History is full of surprises, both positive and negative.

What we need to do is figure out what we want to achieve, figure out what we can do to achieve it without violating our principles or making the situation worse, and then do our best to persuade those in power to follow that course of action. We might succeed, we might fail- unless you're psychic, their are no guarantees regarding the future.

For my part, I think that to some extent we need to be doing what we've been doing only more so. More aid, accepting more refugees, and yes, sadly, more bombing (though care should always be taken to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible). However, we also need to be very careful in choosing our allies. And we need to be doing far better on the propaganda and information front. Personally, I think we need to stop treating ISIS as a huge threat to the West (it isn't, except insofar as it might provoke the West into destroying itself through authoritarianism, bigotry, and warmongering). It feeds into ISIS's image of strength and power. I would wish to see them portrayed as a pathetic joke, centuries out of date and utterly obsolete. We also need to fight back hard against those in the West who are exploiting the situation to advance xenophobic and authoritarian agendas, because those people very much can destroy us if the more extreme varieties are allowed to gain power, just as they destroyed Germany in the 1930s and 40s.

And above all, we must avoid another occupation. We really can't afford it, economically or politically, especially if we end up having to go fight Kim Jong Fat Fuck in North Korea.

[The Romulan Republic]

This is getting annoying. Nobody is saying Saddam's Iraq was nice, it was just massively better than what we have now. Yes, Saddam's Iraq stunk. But back then SOME people having it nice meant a LOT of people did. Currently, NOBODY does.

I don't think anyone is saying Saddam Hussein's Iraq wasn't better. Just that it wasn't good enough.

Why should the people of Iraq be expected to settle for "Well, most of you aren't suffering too much as long as you don't piss off the government somehow"?

Edits: It doesn't mean it was right for America to invade Iraq, but is that really how low you want the bar to be set for a government? Or does that only apply to an Iraqi or Middle Eastern government? Because I can't help suspecting that people who are holding up Saddam Hussein's regime as a better option, or treating it like the only alternative to the horrors of ISIS, would never accept such a regime for their own countries no matter how bad things got (I certainly hope they wouldn't), but have much lower expectations of what them backward Middle Easterners can do or what is good enough for them.

Metahive got the point. No matter how much you think my third world shithole is a third world shithole, and I may even agree on some points, you have no right march in and forcibly wrench my government from power and take the decision out of my hands. There is a reason I object massively to overt and covert American political donations to local political parties and ngos no matter how well intentioned. We had this discussion before. Morality differs by region and culture and people generally will sooner be fucked over by their own than by others.

In general, I believe in live and let live. However, I would like you to address the caveats I mentioned. Ie, do you feel it is appropriate for a country to intervene in another country to prevent a genocide or similar atrocity? Or in response to aggression?

That said, I will reiterate what I have already said: the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. I do not believe intervention is always wrong, but that one was.

I mean come on, despite being the only thing between north Korea rolling up the entire Korean peninsula some Koreans still want American troops out. Why do you think such attitudes exist?

I think you might be selling the South Korean military short their.

But I know the answer. Stupid nationalism. I believe I've already expressed my opinion of that quite clearly.

[Edi]

He murdered 100s of thousands of people. Not people killed in wars, not soldiers on the other side, people he ordered to be killed, civilians, women and children targeted on purpose. He tortured and maimed scores of others. Sure he lifted up the lives of alot of Iraqi but that doesn't mean shit to all those people he killed. Where was their education, where was their freedoms, where was their happy lives? Nowhere, because all they could look forward to was to be shot and dumped in a mass grave.

That infuriates me that people defend that piece of human garbage, say people had it better under his rule while ignoring the huge numbers of dead. Its a bit like when some fuckwad Confederate apologist tries to defend the South by pointing to all the rights and freedoms people enjoyed under the stars and bars while ignoring the human beings treated as cattle. Its goddamn insane and pretty disgusting.

You're still goddamn missing the point that even given all of this, by comparison that outcome was preferable to what the US caused. Your invasion caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, let loose the sectarian ethnic cleansing demon which resulted in thousands of more deaths and threw the entire region into a chaotic downward spiral that allowed ISIS to form and all the other things related to that.

It doesn't make Saddam any less monstrous than he was, but it does paint out in vivid color that he was the lesser evil. You have probably heard that phrase somewhere?


In response to The Romulan Republic and any others who might share his blinkered stupidity in "doing what we have done, only more", this is the kind of competence you can expect. Which means that even if the US does deal with ISIS now, they will fuck things up beyond even any unreasonable expectations because the political leadership and the top level military leadership is comprised of morons.

One of the key quotes from that article (too long to post in full, but required reading for anyone who wants to discuss the mess in Iraq) is this:

Bizarrely, the tactical excellence of enlisted soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan may have enabled and amplified the strategic incompetence of the generals in those wars, allowing long-running problems in the military’s leadership culture to reach their full expression. The Army’s combat effectiveness let its generals dither for much longer than they could have if the Army had been suffering clear tactical setbacks. “One of the reasons we were able to hold on despite a failing strategy, and then turn the situation around, was that our soldiers continued to be led by highly competent, professional junior officers and noncommissioned officers whom they respected,” Sean MacFarland, who as a brigade commander in Ramadi in 2006 was responsible for a major counterinsurgency success, said at a 2010 Army symposium on leadership. “And they gave us senior officers the breathing space that we needed, but probably didn’t deserve, to properly understand the fight we were in.”

[Alyrium Denryle]

In response to The Romulan Republic and any others who might share his blinkered stupidity in "doing what we have done, only more", this is the kind of competence you can expect. Which means that even if the US does deal with ISIS now, they will fuck things up beyond even any unreasonable expectations because the political leadership and the top level military leadership is comprised of morons.

One of the key quotes from that article (too long to post in full, but required reading for anyone who wants to discuss the mess in Iraq) is this:

Oh Shit. We have become the Roman Republic. Not only do we have rampant inequality etc etc etc but we have reached the point that the romans were in that the soldiers are so good tactically that generals who completely fail strategically can come out smelling like roses because the actual troops manage to compress shit sandwiches into synthetic diamonds.

And they get left out in the cold when they get out of the army. Just like the Roman Republic.

Fuck.

In general, I believe in live and let live. However, I would like you to address the caveats I mentioned. Ie, do you feel it is appropriate for a country to intervene in another country to prevent a genocide or similar atrocity?

Yes. But only if the cure is better than the disease, like with any other intervention. Saddam was bad, but the majority of his population had running water, food, an education, and healthcare. But getting rid of him created an even bigger monster. We bungled the occupation in every way imaginable other than that sharp end shooty parts, because we dont have a strategic doctrine for regime change. We have a tactical counter-insurgency doctrine, but we dont have the political will, the resources (not in terms of GDP, but specially designed equipment and logistic mechanisms), or the organization to deal with the vacuum in politically legitimate power and civic infrastructure that results from an invasion.

[Knife]

That outcome is pretty much a given. I'm still extremely upset, because there's no reason it had to take this long, and Obama should have committed ground troops from day one so ISIS would have been pushed out of Iraq last year rather than now. Now, thousands have died while the US has been dragging it's feet.

The problem with "Obama should have done something" is that Obama is not a dictator. Politically it couldn't be done. Sure, thousands died - in Iraq. A lot of Americans are happy thousands of Americans got to stay safely at home while that happened. Selfish? Yep. Then again, are you willing to give YOUR family members to a conflict half a world away?

A lot of the lack of enthusiasm with marching back into Iraq has to do with how fucked up things were under Obama's predecessor. Sure, there are some bloodthirsty souls still eager to fight but a lot fewer of them than 10-12 years ago.

Other than that, what should have Obama done? It is easy to say 'do something' or 'you broke it, fix it'. It's entirely different to actual do something effective. ISIS has the same problems, when it comes to addressing it, as an insurgency. Small units that blend into the local populace with huge support of a lot of that populace, either by fear or loyalty. There are few hard targets to take out and what there are span boarders.

Yes. But only if the cure is better than the disease, like with any other intervention. Saddam was bad, but the majority of his population had running water, food, an education, and healthcare. But getting rid of him created an even bigger monster. We bungled the occupation in every way imaginable other than that sharp end shooty parts, because we dont have a strategic doctrine for regime change. We have a tactical counter-insurgency doctrine, but we dont have the political will, the resources (not in terms of GDP, but specially designed equipment and logistic mechanisms), or the organization to deal with the vacuum in politically legitimate power and civic infrastructure that results from an invasion.

The US bungled the whole thing badly, I won't disagree. Since the instant they dispand the Army, to not having enough troops and eventually needing the surge. It was a cluster fuck.

That being said, the people of Iraq are not analogous to a bunch of 7 year old's. The Sunni's and Shia only wanted to be Iraqi's if their own particular sect was in charge and oppressing the others. The situation isn't as simple as, if the US did ABC, then Iraq would be awesome right now. The place was a festering shit hole held together because one group dominated the others. Yes, over a decade we broke the shit out of it, but very few who actual live there want to put it back together. I'm not entirely sure how we would put it back together and make it work at this point.

[The Romulan Republic]

In response to The Romulan Republic and any others who might share his blinkered stupidity in "doing what we have done, only more", this is the kind of competence you can expect. Which means that even if the US does deal with ISIS now, they will fuck things up beyond even any unreasonable expectations because the political leadership and the top level military leadership is comprised of morons.

One of the key quotes from that article (too long to post in full, but required reading for anyone who wants to discuss the mess in Iraq) is this:

Bizarrely, the tactical excellence of enlisted soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan may have enabled and amplified the strategic incompetence of the generals in those wars, allowing long-running problems in the military’s leadership culture to reach their full expression. The Army’s combat effectiveness let its generals dither for much longer than they could have if the Army had been suffering clear tactical setbacks. “One of the reasons we were able to hold on despite a failing strategy, and then turn the situation around, was that our soldiers continued to be led by highly competent, professional junior officers and noncommissioned officers whom they respected,” Sean MacFarland, who as a brigade commander in Ramadi in 2006 was responsible for a major counterinsurgency success, said at a 2010 Army symposium on leadership. “And they gave us senior officers the breathing space that we needed, but probably didn’t deserve, to properly understand the fight we were in.”

When I said "...doing what we've been doing only more so.", I was referring to certain policies, which I elaborated on. I was also speaking fairly broadly, not asserting that every individual action carried out by the American government was the epitome of competence. Moreover, I specified a number of points where I felt we needed to do differently.

All this was clearly laid out in the post in question.

I'll admit I'm not entirely confident that our current leadership can pull off what we need to do effectively, and sadly, I'm not sure any Presidential candidate will be very good either. Sanders has balls and character, but he's fairly anti-war- I suspect he'd probably go for a complete withdrawl from Iraq, the GOP is riddled with war mongering bigots, Trump in particularly is an arrogant asshole with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and I while I'm not sure what Clinton's ISIS policy is, I expect it wouldn't be too far off Obama's, which thus far has been inadequate.

Frankly, we need a leader of the caliber of FDR or Lincoln, and instead we're stuck with... this lot.

Edit: Still, what else can we do? Pull out completely? That'll please the anti-war and anti-West crowds, perhaps, but it won't stop ISIS attacking us and it certainly won't stop them raping and murdering through Iraq and Syria. Limit our involvement to non-military assistance? Maybe. Perhaps at some point ISIS will be weak enough that we can do that without them resurging and defeating the local governments, even if I'm not confident that we're their yet.