Paris: You Don’t Want to Read This

Are you familiar with a country called Iraq? It is nearby to Syria, and was often in the news not too long ago, surely you must of heard of this place?

You want the UN to administer ethics, the organization that thinks Saudi Arabia should be in charge of human rights?[0]

But perphaps that's just the normal in an age when some western commenter still believes the developed world has any roll in lecturing others on ethics, should these lectures occur during or after the class on how to torture, or perhaps after the panel discussion of why Cuba is an excellent place to lock up foreigners indefinitely, foreigners we even admit aren't guilty of any crimes.

The extreme myopia on display in this thread is plenty of reason for why violence begets violence, its sad and laughable that commenters believes the western world played no role in the millions of deaths and refugees that have come about since 9-11.

What most commentators have wrong is that the violence in France wasn't an act of terrorism, but just another battle in the decade plus war that's been mostly happening in the Middle East, only this time the battle occurred on the streets of Paris instead of outside Kabul, or in Mosul, or in the outskirts of Damascus. Westerners seen to have forgotten that their politicians have been waging a war for them, and now their politicians want to engage in even more of the same. insanity.

[0]http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2015/09/20/saudi-arabia-wi...

https://www.nber.org/digest/sep02/w9074.html

http://www.economist.com/node/17730424

You're comparision between bombing terrorists in Syria and murdering civilists in French is.. (leaving out words what I really think)

I understand that most Iraqis couldn't express themselves politically under Hussein, but we have no business making this evaluation for them now.

Most importantly, as many do, the question omits what is by far the most important factor, the costs to the people living in Iraqi. Think about it: How many Iraqis died? Were injured? Lost their homes, livelihoods, and dreams? [1] Do you know? I doubt even 1% of people in the invading countries can answer the question, and (IIRC) the U.S. military didn't keep track. Think about that: We invaded their country, cause mass death, and nobody gives a shit about dead Iraqis. When discussing the Iraq War, when is the last time you heard someone even bring it up?

Let's also remember the other costs: Their nation, its economy and its institutions are in ruins for a generation at least. Their own government doesn't even control large parts of the country, other foriegn powers such as Iran and U.S. decide much of what happens in your own country, many Iraqis now live under ISIL's brutal oppression, and you can't even field an effective military. If you were and 18 year old Iraqi in 2003 and planned to go to college, maybe to become a developer or doctor, where are your dreams now? If you survived, maybe you are now a 30 year old former militia member with a high school education, without skills or prospects in a sea of economic and political desolation. [2]

-------------

[1] Over 100,000 died, by the most conservative but serious estimates I've seen. I recently saw a politically conservative publication say it was 150,000.

[2] I don't know enough about Iraq to know what a typical life story would look like, and probably few went to college before the war. But whatever their dreams and plans, they certainly weren't this.

We can learn something from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Toppling a dictator doesn't automatically create a new, civilized society. Even promising uprisings like the Libyan uprising of 2011 don't guarantee a good outcome.

In Iraq, the US created a huge power vacuum by decapitating the state — removing not just Saddam, but the entire civil and military leadership, through Paul Bremer's completely misguided process of "de-Baathification". There was no power structure left to ensure the continuity of Iraqi society. Even clerk-level Baathists were dismissed, people in charged of everything from health care to utilities. It's like nobody on the US side had studied any history whatsoever.