Mosul has fallen … "Its a crisis"

[JudgeDredd]

Al Qaeda-linked militants have seized the Iraqi city of Mosul.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/islamic-militants-seize-iraqi-city-mosul-article-1.1823862

We warned you. You didn't listen.

You destroyed Iraq under false pretences, and it's only served to spread radical Islam throughout the wider region.

Sitting in your SUVs in some traffic jam.. trying to get home to watch some propagandist war movie on your over-sized plasma screens .. are you happy now?

Good, because it ain't over.. American arrogance.. all your military might.. a million dead.. and for what??

Worse than if you had just left Saddam waving his fist in the air denouncing Imperialist America.

Worse than if you had spent a fraction of the military budget on alternative energy research.

Worst of all for the people of Iraq who have suffered so many decades of war, bloodshed, and death.

...and for what?? So war criminal Bush can paint shit on canvas? Is that what this was all for??

..well Hoo-Fucken-Rah for him! The War oF Terror continues...

.

[yurgenburgen]

"When the battle got tough in the city of Mosul, the troops dropped their weapons and abandoned their posts"

yeah it's definitely the U.S.' fault that the Iraqi soldiers they left in charge ended up surrendering

[JudgeDredd]

At 6/11/14 09:03 AM, yurgenburgen wrote: "When the battle got tough in the city of Mosul, the troops dropped their weapons and abandoned their posts"

yeah it's definitely the U.S.' fault that the Iraqi soldiers they left in charge ended up surrendering

"You break it, you own it"

[yurgenburgen]

At 6/11/14 09:17 AM, JudgeDredd wrote: "You break it, you own it"

Iraqi society was not functioning brilliantly before the U.S. invaded
I'm not saying the invasion was necessarily justified, but I dislike the lie that the U.S. "broke" something that had once "worked" and that the thing in question would still "work" if the U.S. hadn't "broke" it

[JudgeDredd]

At 6/11/14 09:27 AM, yurgenburgen wrote: Iraqi society was not functioning brilliantly before the U.S. invaded

"The sanctions against Iraq were a near-total financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council on the nation of Iraq. They began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, stayed largely in force until May 2003"

[yurgenburgen]

At 6/11/14 09:36 AM, JudgeDredd wrote: "They began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait"

I don't see how a complete trade embargo is anything but justified in this case. It's a way of trying to keep idiots in line. No country has the 'right' to trade with any other country if either side don't want it.

Had the U.S. continued to trade with Iraq after the Kuwait invasion you'd be slamming the U.S. for propping up a terrorist state.

When the trade embargoes were imposed, the Ba'ath party had already been in power for eleven years, and they'd spent their whole time in power thus far committing indescribable crimes to their own citizens and grinding their nation into one of abject despair and corruption. But I suppose that was the U.S.' fault in some way as well.

[JudgeDredd]

At 6/11/14 09:50 AM, yurgenburgen wrote:

At 6/11/14 09:36 AM, JudgeDredd wrote: "They began August 6, 1990, .... until May 2003.

I don't see how a complete trade embargo is anything but justified in this case.

If we don't learn from history, history repeats.

"The Treaty of Versailles and the 1921 London Schedule of Payments required Germany to pay 132 billion gold marks (US$33 billion) in reparations to cover civilian damage caused during World War One. The German people saw reparations as a national humiliation.. " Many historians believe there is a direct causal link between the unfolding events in Germany in the decades between Versailles and the outbreak of the Second World War. It lead to hyper-inflation and total economic collapse, thus sowing the seeds for World War Two.

[yurgenburgen]

At 6/11/14 10:19 AM, JudgeDredd wrote: If we don't learn from history, history repeats.
Many historians believe there is a direct causal link between the unfolding events in Germany in the decades between Versailles and the outbreak of the Second World War.

What brilliant alternative have you dreamed up, if making criminals and warmongers take responsibility for their actions is far too extreme for your liking?

What would have been a more humane way of dealing with the perpetrators of the first world war if "charging them money" isn't good enough for you?
When someone attempts to carve up your country for itself and murder off as much of your population as possible, I would expect at the very least for my nation to be compensated for it.

Also still not sure what your point is in all of this. You started off blaming the surrender of Iraqi soldiers in 2014 on a 2003 invasion led by the U.S., and have then just backpedaled through time casting vague allusions to some root cause involving Capital which you didn't mention once during your opening post.

[orangebomb]

At 6/11/14 08:47 AM, JudgeDredd wrote: Al Qaeda-linked militants have seized the Iraqi city of Mosul.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/islamic-militants-seize-iraqi-city-mosul-article-1.1823862

We warned you. You didn't listen.

Not exactly, it was the new Iraqi government's responsibility to to stop them, and they didn't. Let's not start passing the blame on who should do what.

You destroyed Iraq under false pretences, and it's only served to spread radical Islam throughout the wider region.

Saddam Hussein was far from a false pretense, and Iraq was better off without him. Plus, radical Islam has been around long before the 2003 invasion.

Sitting in your SUVs in some traffic jam.. trying to get home to watch some propagandist war movie on your over-sized plasma screens .. are you happy now?

What does that have to do with anything? It's pretty hard to buy in to what you're saying already, adding irrelevant details is only digging yourself deeper.

Good, because it ain't over.. American arrogance.. all your military might.. a million dead.. and for what??

Stabilization of a country that was a massive threat to itself and others, it's not our fault that Iraqi forces couldn't get the job done against a rag-tag group of terrorists. The Iraq war was over long ago, we're not responsible for what they do or don't do from now on, aside from not falling apart and turning back into a de-stabilizing dictatorship.

Worse than if you had just left Saddam waving his fist in the air denouncing Imperialist America.

And kill millions of more people? You sure you want to live with that on your conscience?

Worse than if you had spent a fraction of the military budget on alternative energy research.

That wouldn't matter, oil is used for maintaining society and will be for the next couple of decades, why do you think China is making serious inroads in Africa, specifically the ones that have oil? You can't just cut one part of the budget and put it another without serious politicking.

Worst of all for the people of Iraq who have suffered so many decades of war, bloodshed, and death.

The vast majority of that was under Saddam Hussein's rule.

...and for what?? So war criminal Bush can paint shit on canvas? Is that what this was all for??

Ok, we really need to stop accusing Bush of being a war criminal. The Iraq war was completely legal under both international law and with the UN, even if it was unnecessarily dragged out longer than it really should. (Mostly because few people wanted to get with the program) Adding a bunch of details that are irrelevant to the main point doesn't help.

..well Hoo-Fucken-Rah for him! The War oF Terror continues...

Wow, this was so relevant in 2005, but we're about halfway into 2014 and the Iraq War was over for years, and the war on terror is winding down. Obviously, you must've been living under a rock and now you decide to be a Johnny-come-lately, with opinions that have been shot down many times by pundits and people here.

[Warforger]

At 6/11/14 10:19 AM, JudgeDredd wrote: If we don't learn from history, history repeats.

"The Treaty of Versailles and the 1921 London Schedule of Payments required Germany to pay 132 billion gold marks (US$33 billion) in reparations to cover civilian damage caused during World War One. The German people saw reparations as a national humiliation.. " Many historians believe there is a direct causal link between the unfolding events in Germany in the decades between Versailles and the outbreak of the Second World War. It lead to hyper-inflation and total economic collapse, thus sowing the seeds for World War Two.

......And we have the Congress of Vienna which did pretty much the same thing but instead of leading to another gigantic European war it lead to 100 years of relative peace. This is my issue with people's criticism of the Treaty of Versailles, yes Germans were angry about it, then again they would've been angry with any treaty that came out with them as the losers. When the Allies were too weak and divided to stop them they were able to rise up again.

The Iraq War on the other hand is nothing like that.

At 6/11/14 11:44 AM, orangebomb wrote: Saddam Hussein was far from a false pretense, and Iraq was better off without him. Plus, radical Islam has been around long before the 2003 invasion.

That's a matter of contention honestly. For Palestinians living in Iraq that's certainly not the case and for Sunni Arabs in general. The problem is that the 2003 Invasion was the wrong way to topple a dictator (not that that's the real reason for the war, the US generally has no problem with brutal dictatorships as long as they're Pro-US see; Central Asia) and just made so many mistakes that fucked up Iraq. And the worst part is, like I keep hearing people speak in the Bergdahl issue, people don't seem to care in the US how many Iraqi's died, only Americans. If there's something the war did it brought forward the sectarian violence that Saddam Hussein was holding back, much like Josip Tito in Yugoslavia before him.

Stabilization of a country that was a massive threat to itself and others, it's not our fault that Iraqi forces couldn't get the job done against a rag-tag group of terrorists. The Iraq war was over long ago, we're not responsible for what they do or don't do from now on, aside from not falling apart and turning back into a de-stabilizing dictatorship.

To some extent we are; we helped write their Constitution which was based off of the US Constitution and the issue of state vs. federal government is making it a total failure in Iraq. On top of this the US was responsible for training their military. The problem is always the Right Wing optimism during the whole thing, at least when Bush Sr. watched Eastern Europe break away from Communism he encouraged a Parliamentary system over the US style Federalism because it gave more power to the Parliament, Bush Jr. seemed to think he could just invade a country, set up a US style government, and everything would work out.

And kill millions of more people? You sure you want to live with that on your conscience?

Islam Karimov, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, Saparamut Niyazov, Hu Jintao, Xi Jingpin, oh look at all these corrupt dictators who murder millions of their own people and the US does nothing but give them money and weapons! That was always the issue in the Iraqi war, you can't just say you'll invade every goddamn country ruled by a dictatorship because it's just not feasible. Pretty much everyone I mentioned was just as bad if not worse (Turkmenistan is as oppressive as North Korea, it does many of the same practices like not allowing anyone outside of the Capital and it's a strong US ally) and we do nothing but support them. The only reason Saddam was targeted was because he was anti-US and was a strong symbol of the fight against American Imperialism.

[animehater]

Saigon 2.0.

Let it be known that there was nothing inherently wrong with disposing Saddam Hussein, we just fucked it up big time. Kind of Ironic though how it was the civil war in Syria that had the biggest contribution to this disaster. Sad to say but between this and Syria I kind of lost hope that my country can do anything good in the world.

[lapis]

At 6/11/14 09:36 AM, JudgeDredd wrote: "The sanctions against Iraq were a near-total financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council on the nation of Iraq. They began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, stayed largely in force until May 2003"

I don't see what an embargo mandated by the UN Security Council (hence carrying a stamp of approval of both the Russians and the Chinese) has to do with the US "breaking" Iraq.

At 6/11/14 10:19 AM, JudgeDredd wrote: "The Treaty of Versailles and the 1921 London Schedule of Payments required Germany to pay 132 billion gold marks (US$33 billion) in reparations to cover civilian damage caused during World War One.

The biggest long-term destabilising effect of the Versailles treaty wasn't even the money; it was the fact that the new borders of Germany were drawn such that large German-speaking populations (Sudetenland, Danzig, Memelland) were not included.

At 6/11/14 10:43 AM, yurgenburgen wrote: What would have been a more humane way of dealing with the perpetrators of the first world war if "charging them money" isn't good enough for you?

The Germans weren't "the" perpetrators of the first world war.

At 6/11/14 11:44 AM, orangebomb wrote: Ok, we really need to stop accusing Bush of being a war criminal. The Iraq war was completely legal under both international law and with the UN,

That's pretty controversial; I'm relatively sure that the majority of legal experts are of the opinion that Bush needed another UNSC mandate for an invasion; he never got one.

[Tony-DarkGrave]

Call in some drones and some bombers and just area bomb the shithole and be done with it.

[animehater]

At 6/11/14 01:09 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote: Call in some drones and some bombers and just area bomb the shithole and be done with it.

That's worked so well before...

[Tony-DarkGrave]

At 6/11/14 01:24 PM, animehater wrote:

At 6/11/14 01:09 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote: Call in some drones and some bombers and just area bomb the shithole and be done with it.

That's worked so well before...

the place is already destroyed just target the remaining stragglers.

[Feoric]

At 6/11/14 09:27 AM, yurgenburgen wrote:

At 6/11/14 09:17 AM, JudgeDredd wrote: "You break it, you own it"

Iraqi society was not functioning brilliantly before the U.S. invaded
I'm not saying the invasion was necessarily justified, but I dislike the lie that the U.S. "broke" something that had once "worked" and that the thing in question would still "work" if the U.S. hadn't "broke" it

Just because the system is oppressive and inherently evil doesn't mean it isn't working -- Anbar province, which is overwhelmingly Sunni in a majority Shia country, benefited greatly from the Ba'athist regime. When the Saddam government was dismantled, the region became rife with insurgents. It's completely fair to point out the cause and effect of the invasion of Iraq in order to understand how we got to where we are now; overthrowing governments and disrupting age-old power dynamics have real life consequences. It's unlikely that ISIS would be as emboldened in Iraq right now had we not pursued de-Ba'athification as a policy goal, especially when you consider Gulf state financiers. Saudi Arabia is actively fighting a cold war with Iran right now, so it makes complete sense for them to fund the one group that is the most capable of disrupting any potential ally for Iran -- Iraq would make a great buffer state for them. The Bush administration absolutely broke Iraq, and while I won't put blame on him 100% for the situation with ISIS, there is definately a degree of culpability.

[aviewaskewed]

At 6/11/14 01:51 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote: the place is already destroyed just target the remaining stragglers.

Bomb the place strategies haven't worked because the only way "shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out" works is if you well, shoot 'em all. Which we won't be doing because then the other Western powers will turn on us. It's about time we simply admitted we don't understand that region, we can't impose Western ideals into it and we focus more on a strategy of containment on extremists and garbage then regime change and endless bombings and such. It doesn't work, it just leads to black markets, crime, and more recruits for Al Qaieda and others to strike back at us with.

[lapis]

800 ISIS fighters managed to rout 30,000 Iraqi soldiers; it's akin to Pizarro's conquest of the Inca empire. This despite the fact that the US trained the Iraqi army for about a decade and sank billions it. It just shows how weak of an idea Iraqi nationhood is. All that matters in Iraq is whether you're an Arab Shi`ite, Arab Sunni or a Kurd (or some other irrelevant religion like Christianity or Mandaeism). Maybe a typically American mistake to think that the inclusivity that has become a cornerstone of US nationhood in the past decades could straightforwardly be applied to a Middle Eastern context?

[LazyDrunk]

At 6/11/14 03:37 PM, aviewaskewed wrote:

At 6/11/14 01:51 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote: the place is already destroyed just target the remaining stragglers.

Bomb the place strategies haven't worked

Hiroshima and Nagasaki say otherwise.

Oh you don't have the balls for a nuclear attack?

Then quit your whiny little bitch liberal spineless tantrum about how war sucks.

It's always sucked.

[JudgeDredd]

At 6/11/14 10:43 AM, yurgenburgen wrote:

Also still not sure what your point is in all of this. You started off blaming the surrender of Iraqi soldiers in 2014 on a 2003 invasion led by the U.S., and have then just backpedaled through time casting vague allusions to some root cause involving Capital which you didn't mention once during your opening post.

You said Iraq wasn't functioning, as if they could under 13 years of complete economic embargo... a predominantly desert nation whose primary export is oil.

It's a joke to ignore the indefinite embargo and say the country was fucked. Yes they (the people) were fucked. And what does that have to do with the 2003 invasion? Softening them up for conquest? Did the embargo fail so bad that WMD were flowing across the border?

The poor condition of Iraq goes back to the Iran/Iraq war, and even then Russia and America were proxying their own war by supplying each side with weapons, just as is happening in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere today.

Both the United States and West Germany sold Iraq dual-use pesticides and poisons that would be used to create chemical and other weapons....

http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php

..."July, 1984. CIA begins giving Iraq intelligence necessary to calibrate its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops."

..."March, 1986. The United States with Great Britain block all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and on March 21 the US becomes the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of these weapons. "

..."May, 1986. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade botulin poison to Iraq."

..."April, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of chemicals used in manufacture of mustard gas."

...AND the stated reason for the 2003 invasion? ^THESE^ ...and America found NONE. Case closed.

[Warforger]

At 6/11/14 07:22 PM, LazyDrunk wrote: Hiroshima and Nagasaki say otherwise.

Oh you don't have the balls for a nuclear attack?

Then quit your whiny little bitch liberal spineless tantrum about how war sucks.

It's always sucked.

That's why we don't want "Compassionate Conservatives" approaching it with the mental age of a toddler. "Imma gonna put mah tank in their country and they gonna be all democracy an like MURICA". The Iraq war was just stupid, the Bush administration lied through its teeth and was caught lying and scaring people to motivate them to go to war, which in itself should've been grounds for declaring him morally bankrupt but whatever this is the darling of the right wing. Approaching Human rights as some optional legal restriction, war as some fun activity to do when you can and setting up governments as a goddamn wishlist of everything a child who loves America would want, was all part of the reason that not only the Iraq War was a failure, but the whole Conservative foreign policy philosophy up to that point. It just demonstrated that being so war hawky was even more delusional and unrealistic than being a total foreign policy wimp.

We're not arguing why war is bad, we're arguing that the Iraq War was unjustified.

[JudgeDredd]

At 6/11/14 11:44 AM, orangebomb wrote: Saddam Hussein was far from a false pretense, and Iraq was better off without him.

Like now in Mosul?

Plus, radical Islam has been around long before the 2003 invasion.

The 2003 invasion made conditions perfect for the spread of radical Islam. America destroyed all infrastructure and systems, and disbanded and outlawed the army. It put 250,000 young Iraqi men out of a job, out on the streets, angry, and armed. A decade later Iraq still doesn't have the army it had in 2003, and people saying "it's their army surrendering" is another whitewash of this simple fact.

[yurgenburgen]

At 6/11/14 08:22 PM, JudgeDredd wrote: The poor condition of Iraq goes back to the Iran/Iraq war

Then why were you pointing the finger at the U.S. invasion (23 years after the Iraq invasion of Iran), the U.N. sanctions imposed in 1990, and somehow the Treaty of Versailles, as being the primary causes for Iraq's shitty condition?

Both the United States and West Germany sold Iraq dual-use pesticides and poisons that would be used to create chemical and other weapons....

The problem for you is that it doesn't support your original claim that Iraq is now "worse than if you had just left Saddam waving his fist in the air denouncing Imperialist America" (your words)

I'd say that selling chemical weapons by the U.S. to Iraq is deplorable, but also that Iraq's invasion of Iran in 1980 which caused (in total) $1.2 trillion dollars worth of damage also had something to do with its decline.

Maybe the U.S. isn't totally to blame for Iraq's situation?
Maybe Iraq isn't totally to blame either?
Maybe pushing edgy anti-U.S. agendas isn't working as well as you'd hoped?
Maybe refusing to sell to Iraq materials that were later converted into weapons could have been prevented by some form of restriction on trade (which if it had happened, you'd be blaming those sanctions for something or other)?

Case closed.

Doesn't work like that kid.

[Ranger2]

Dredd I understand your point but there are better ways to argue it. Make a statement, and go beyond ad hominem. Otherwise you seem less like an intellectual debater and more of a troll.

[Ranger2]

At 6/11/14 09:27 AM, yurgenburgen wrote: I'm not saying the invasion was necessarily justified, but I dislike the lie that the U.S. "broke" something that had once "worked" and that the thing in question would still "work" if the U.S. hadn't "broke" it

That all depends on your definition of "working." By Weber's definition of a state - maintaining a monopoly of violence - Saddam's Iraq was working perfectly. As for its economy, the sanctions had crippled the Iraqi economy, but oil revenues still kept it to a certain standard of living. As for democracy, of course there was none, but should that be a criteria for a failing state? Maybe to you it does, and I'm sure there are a million heartfelt reasons why. In my book, the state's primary goal is getting people out of the State of Nature and suppressing domestic violence. So as far as I'm concerned, we did break something that was working.

[Ranger2]

At 6/11/14 07:22 PM, LazyDrunk wrote:

Bomb the place strategies haven't worked

Hiroshima and Nagasaki say otherwise.

Actually, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not good examples in this scenario, because there is a difference between winning the war and winning the peace. Yes, the two (justified) atomic bombings won us the war, but after a war comes occupation. The reason why Japanese occupation went smoothly was not because the Japanese were terrified we might nuke them a third time, but because MacArthur used the Emperor to stifle dissent.

ISIS is an insurgency, which means it has the support of the people in the area. That means bombing alone won't solve anything. In the short term, bombing Mosul and Fallujah could drive them out, but it won't keep them out. We need to find ways to incentivize the locals to fight against ISIS in addition to bombing strikes. Otherwise, the moment we stop bombing, ISIS will come back and we'd be back where we started.

[JudgeDredd]

At 6/12/14 01:32 AM, Ranger2 wrote: Dredd I understand your point but there are better ways to argue it. Make a statement, and go beyond ad hominem. Otherwise you seem less like an intellectual debater and more of a troll.

I did my debating here before the war started.. check my posts. (but i don't really expect you to)
It sounds trollish cos i don't expect anyone to change their minds after the fact.
I'm purely stating this was my (and others) position here on NG leading up to 2003 invasion.
Time has proven us right, and you could say it's a moot point mentioning that this current situation is why we wasted our time debating here on NG at all, but yeah, that's exactly why we said it. Warnings always go unheeded. Only after the fact can you say "i told you so".

[JudgeDredd]

At 6/12/14 12:53 AM, yurgenburgen wrote:

At 6/11/14 08:22 PM, JudgeDredd wrote: Case closed.

Doesn't work like that kid.

America supplies Iraq with chemical weapons then invade them years later on the false pretext of finding chemical weapons, and don't find any. Is there anything left to say? It's the military version of Economic Hitmen. Who are the Terrorists?

[JudgeDredd]

At 6/11/14 03:43 PM, lapis wrote: 800 ISIS fighters managed to rout 30,000 Iraqi soldiers; it's akin to Pizarro's conquest of the Inca empire. This despite the fact that the US trained the Iraqi army for about a decade and sank billions it. It just shows how weak of an idea Iraqi nationhood is. All that matters in Iraq is whether you're an Arab Shi`ite, Arab Sunni or a Kurd (or some other irrelevant religion like Christianity or Mandaeism). Maybe a typically American mistake to think that the inclusivity that has become a cornerstone of US nationhood in the past decades could straightforwardly be applied to a Middle Eastern context?

Indeed. It's becoming a rout. The two views in this thread are "leave them to their own destruction" or "bomb them all to hell". This also implies that the US leaving Afghanistan any time soon is set to repeat. We could expect America to continue to mechanize their approach to such conflicts, an automated shooting range of possible targets, but increasingly leaving politics completely out it.

[lapis]

At 6/12/14 04:47 AM, JudgeDredd wrote: Indeed. It's becoming a rout.

They're marching on Baghdad at the moment; I'm not sure if there are still parts of the Iraqi military that have the morale necessary to stop them from taking at least the Sunni parts of the city. ISIS is apparently urging its fighters to also march on Karbala and Najaf, but that's silly; they'll have to deal with the Shi'ite militias if they get too close and the militiamen won't crumble as easily as the Iraqi military. Then again, maybe I'm being overly negative about the Iraqi military; I also expected the Ukrainian military to fall apart and it didn't, so maybe the Iraqi military can pull itself together in a similar fashion. But the words of Napoleon still largely ring true: "A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him".