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Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

theguardian.com

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Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#281

Post by Clubber »

calsy wrote: post #277
jollybean wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people behind Iraq invasion were all part of 'Project for a New American Century' which promoted 'Pax Americana' in the Middle East, i.e. a stabilizing occupying force, probably the overthrow of Iraq and Syria. They envisioned Iraq being a little more like Gulf States i.e. more stable, allies, and a buffer between Israel/Iran/Saudi Arabia. And some nice construction contracts for Bechtel. And a geostrategic signa…

Sick of hearing these nonsense hidden reasons that are completely without merit. The reasons we went to war were very clear, 'Saddam was stockpiling WMDs and was a threat to world.'. They were wrong, they simply made a colossal mistake.

If you look on a map, Iraq and Afghanistan are both border states with Iran, one on either side. Do you think that's just a coincidence?

I'm not saying either was a good idea at the time, and they were both obviously bad ideas with hindsight, but it seems there was possibly a greater strategy at play.

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#282

Post by rrss »

linuxftw wrote: post #209
mschuster91 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO, "nation building" is always an impossible mission. The objective should have been to attack, destroy the enemy, and leave - immediately. Punishing the sponsors of the 9/11 attacks, not entrenching an ideological split. That's bollocks. I'm German, had the Allied Powers followed the Morgenthau plan Germany would be essentially an Afghanistan today - an agro state and nothing more. But you all followed through w…

Germany is still occupied by Americans. We're still defending you from the same foreign adversary, Russia. If the US pulled out of Germany in 1965, what would have become of the place? IMO, it's clear. The communists would have been conscripted into war, West Germany would have surrendered rather than fight their countrymen. This is exactly what happened in Vietnam and it's what is happening in Afghanistan now.

regardless of whether the US had a continuous military presence in west Germany, it is implausible to me that east Germany / the USSR could have taken over west germany without starting WWIII. West Germany was a NATO member state by 1955.

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#283

Post by michael1999 »

calsy wrote: post #277
jollybean wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people behind Iraq invasion were all part of 'Project for a New American Century' which promoted 'Pax Americana' in the Middle East, i.e. a stabilizing occupying force, probably the overthrow of Iraq and Syria. They envisioned Iraq being a little more like Gulf States i.e. more stable, allies, and a buffer between Israel/Iran/Saudi Arabia. And some nice construction contracts for Bechtel. And a geostrategic signa…

Sick of hearing these nonsense hidden reasons that are completely without merit. The reasons we went to war were very clear, 'Saddam was stockpiling WMDs and was a threat to world.'. They were wrong, they simply made a colossal mistake.

I'm sick of hearing weak US cope defending a sick crime perpetrated by know fabulators like Rumsfeld and Cheney. They ran a similar creating writing program back during the cold war, inventing the "missile gap" with similarly imaginary facts.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/missile-gap...

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#284

Post by michael1999 »

kodah wrote: post #258
croes wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US even sanctions investigators of the International Criminal Court if they try to investigate US war crimes. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/14/us-sanctions-internation... *Correction ICC not ICJ

US troops are held accountable for "war crimes" if that's what you're wondering. https://www.rt.com/usa/180692-marine-taliban-urinating-video... In that specific incident, such a degree of accountability was desired to be held that the Commandant of the Marine Corps is said to have attempted an influencing campaign around their trial: https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2017... I'm sure there are…

The USA ran torture sites around the world, and famously deleted the tapes. That would be a nice start.

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#285

Post by jollybean »

calsy wrote: post #277
jollybean wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people behind Iraq invasion were all part of 'Project for a New American Century' which promoted 'Pax Americana' in the Middle East, i.e. a stabilizing occupying force, probably the overthrow of Iraq and Syria. They envisioned Iraq being a little more like Gulf States i.e. more stable, allies, and a buffer between Israel/Iran/Saudi Arabia. And some nice construction contracts for Bechtel. And a geostrategic signa…

Sick of hearing these nonsense hidden reasons that are completely without merit. The reasons we went to war were very clear, 'Saddam was stockpiling WMDs and was a threat to world.'. They were wrong, they simply made a colossal mistake.

The publicly stated reasons for going to war, and the actual reasons, are different, though obviously related.

Regular citizens generally are not going to buy into complicated arguments or vague, geostrategic issues, they often need clear, more unambiguous line of reasoning. Especially those that align with their supposed values.

The proles need to hear stories about 'Freedom' and 'Democracy' and 'Evil Tyrants' and scary things about 'Masses of Chemical Weapons'.

US leadership wanted to enter WW2 long before the American public could be convinced. It took an attack on American soil, and dead Americans to tilt public opinion.

The US used a 'False Flag' (Gulf of Tonkin) operation in Vietnam to help build public support and credibility for intervention in Vietnam.

George Bush proposed a 'False Flag' UN airplane incident apparently, an idea that was quashed.

This is the case in every war, without getting too controversial, even the US revolutionary war.

It all seems kind of Machiavellian and duplicitous, and it is, but it's also the reality of leadership in ugly scenarios. Imagine that you're the leader of a nation that really, really needs to do something that the plebes don't want to do? It's a weird kind of moral dilemma.

FYI I'm not justifying any of these decisions, just illustrating the incongruity between actual planning, and the marketing / communicating of it.

COVID is an example of that, it's a massive exercise in 'Public Communications' where the stakes are existential. What we are being told publicly i.e. the 'Narrative' isn't a lie by any means, but it's definitely designed to create outcomes.

So:

" The reasons we went to war were very clear, 'Saddam was stockpiling WMDs and was a threat to world.'. "

No, that's just what they said publicly. That's how war was 'marketed'.

Also - they used the term 'Terrorism' a lot with respect to Saddam, i.e. 'War On Terror'. Of course, Saddam was definitely not a radical religious terrorist, he was basically the opposite of that.

Everyone pushing for the war knew that the material evidence for WMD's was pretty weak.

PNAC made several publications before Bush came to power, and the public members of PNAC literally filled the White House.

Those who were against (or more Dovish) on the war i.e. Colin Powell and Condi Rice - were the not part of PNAC.

So imagine if there was this 'Think Tank X' that wanted to push for some thing, 'X' and then when Biden comes to power, more than 1/2 of his Cabinet is literally from this special 'Think Tank X' and then after 1 year, the all push hard for this 'X thing' but communicate it to the public as 'Y'?

You can hardly say it's about 'Y'.

It's about 'X', it's fairly clear.

There were 17 members of PNAC in the White House. And the President's own Brother.

[1] https://gyaanipedia.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_PNAC_Members_ass...

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#286

Post by calsy »

noelsusman wrote: post #225
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #194

I'm amazed at how many people still see the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions as correct moves. Just last week I was having a friendly mostly non-political conversation with two of my coworkers and then the topic verged to the military and then to the Iraq wars. (For context, I'm Canadian and they're both US ex-pats in Canada.) Both had the opinion, still, that the Iraq war was the correct move at the time. But coul…

The original justification famously turned out to be complete nonsense, but Iraqi citizens are better off today than they were in 2002. That came with a huge cost, mostly born by Iraqi citizens, but it is true.

That is absolutely not true at all. Dropping bombs on things does not make them better. Large cities that were home to millions of people were bombed, vital utilities like power and water were 'taken out' for strategic purposes. Airports were destroyed, hospitals and schools accidentally bombed. The country fell into civil war. There are still many places that lack basic utilities like running water that existed prior to the 'liberation'. It is still a powder keg of factions fighting that include soldiers from neighbouring countries who have crossed the border.

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#287

Post by ASalazarMX »

jollybean wrote: post #273
sudosysgen wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an unfair answer. The Second Iraq War was not based on any altruistic motive. If it was, the US would say so, instead of manufacturing evidence for WMDs. We can safely conclude that the actual reasons for the invasions are something that the US government wanted to hide. Beyond that, the war in Iraq killed more people than Saddam Hussein's genocide, so that justification simply doesn't fly. It's complete bogu…

The people behind Iraq invasion were all part of 'Project for a New American Century' which promoted 'Pax Americana' in the Middle East, i.e. a stabilizing occupying force, probably the overthrow of Iraq and Syria. They envisioned Iraq being a little more like Gulf States i.e. more stable, allies, and a buffer between Israel/Iran/Saudi Arabia. And some nice construction contracts for Bechtel. And a geostrategic signa…

> promoted 'Pax Americana' in the Middle East

Is this another "Manifest Destiny" in disguise?

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#288

Post by bilvar »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #80
ordiel wrote: post #63

Why not ask Obama instead of Biden? ... It was his campaign promise... Twice... I mean Trump was an idiot and all but at least a part of the wall he promissed was build

Obama held a lot of his promises and he cleaned up much of what went wrong in the war on terror. He was kept from closing Guantanamo Bay by factors beyond his control.

> Obama held a lot of his promises and he cleaned up much of what went wrong in the war on terror.

How exactly did he do that? By arming ISIS and destabilizing a few extra countries around the region in the name of "Democracy"?

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#289

Post by lukifer »

calsy wrote: post #277
jollybean wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people behind Iraq invasion were all part of 'Project for a New American Century' which promoted 'Pax Americana' in the Middle East, i.e. a stabilizing occupying force, probably the overthrow of Iraq and Syria. They envisioned Iraq being a little more like Gulf States i.e. more stable, allies, and a buffer between Israel/Iran/Saudi Arabia. And some nice construction contracts for Bechtel. And a geostrategic signa…

Sick of hearing these nonsense hidden reasons that are completely without merit. The reasons we went to war were very clear, 'Saddam was stockpiling WMDs and was a threat to world.'. They were wrong, they simply made a colossal mistake.

That was the line they sold the public. But they knew the evidence was flimsy: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/06/lie-after-lie-what-colin...

Richard Clarke claims that the Bush administration began seeking pretexts for Iraq invasion from the morning of September 12th: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/us/president-asked-aide-t...

General Wesley Clark is on record with the claim that the administration had plans to invade "seven countries in five years": https://www.salon.com/2007/10/12/wesley_clark/

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#290

Post by Clubber »

bitwize wrote: post #149
Pet_Ant wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO, "nation building" is always an impossible mission. The objective should have been to attack, destroy the enemy, and leave - immediately. They should never do anything that makes the lives of ordinary Afghans worse who suffered more from the Taliban than the US. You can’t just bomb a country, create a power vacuum, and nope out of there. Moral cowardice in the extreme. As a counter example see Japan and Iraq.

Japan was "shock and awe" done (strategically, not morally) right. The US fire-bombed Tokyo and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaving no question in the Japanese mind of who was the overwhelmingly superior force. There was no honor in death fighting such a force; there was only oblivion with nothing left to remember you by. The Japanese happily accepted rule by a "gaijin shogun" rather than face that kind of defeat.…

We were very fortunate Japan surrendered. They certainly didn't after nearly a year of fire bombing, they didn't after Hiroshima, and they almost didn't after Nagasaki. In fact there was an attempted coup when it was discovered the emperor wanted to surrender.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident

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