251–260 of 341 posts
How did it come apart? Almost exactly like Dick Cheney thought it would 20 years before cheering for the invasion. From an episode of Meet The Press in 2014[1]: CHUCK TODD: All right, let me ask you a couple of quick questions. I want to play for you an interesting clip of you 20 years ago about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Take a look. DICK CHENEY (ON TAPE): That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down…
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It seems they are missing an important factor, namely 4) the personal, cultural and economical impairment due to the religion of Islam. Nobody has time to thrive when they have to pray five times a day, when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book and when half of their human potential is hidden in cloth bags.
How long is a prayer in Islam ? it's an interesting idea but it's hard to believe that this has such a significant impact.
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praying is not a problem. The biggest problem is lack of debt. Wanna open a new business? You can't take credit. Problems with cashflow? You can go to a debt prison. Forget about mortgage for a house etc.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. But mortgages exist in lots of Muslim majority countries. Are you really suggesting that Muslims don't take on debt? You can take out a mortgage in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bangladesh, Morocco.. They were the first four I checked.
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legal: 1) of, based on, or concerned with the law; 2) appointed or required by the law. [1] Military force was authorized by Public Law 107-243 AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002 [2]. [1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legal [2] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ243/html/PLAW-107p...
How beautiful! Congress voted to invade another country. That makes it legal. Next you'll get together with your wife and make the decision to invade your next door neighbor. That should be legal, right?
If you're looking for morality, you're in the wrong department.
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Agreed on this point. The NY Times is the newspaper of record in the United States. And as such they hold responsibility both for their editorial policy that allowed Judith Miller's stories about WMDs. What's more remarkable is how unapologetic she is about her own involvement. This is worth a listen(the second half) http://www.wnyc.org/story/bobs-grill-1-judith-miller/
Iraq, the surprising arrival of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Brexit shock, rise of Trump...the commentator classes of New York, DC, London and other "tastemaker" cities need to reckon with their failures and understand why they were so utterly wrong. Instead, in most cases, we see doubling down and demonization of the other side. It's quite extraordinary. The black swans are coming fast and…
New York, DC and London are responsible for the worlds problems?
I honestly have no idea what you are are talking about.
Long piece , but it fails in that it does not give a coherent message. Pieces of stories here and there are not history. First of all , lets stop calling it Arab Spring. If anything it's the arab Autumn of civil wars, where all arabs are united only in their resentment of the west. Secondly, let's talk about people, their souls, aspirations, and culture instead of political history. Given that these states were built…
> "where all arabs are united only in their resentment of the west" Is that how you view the political movements happening in the Arabic-speaking majority world - Sorry for the pedantry - from 2011 onward that we're consumed by resentment toward the West? It's gotta be about you, right? > "The arab world has always been far too divided to able to draw clear borders around their states" I had no idea that these politi…
I m not american. This is a cynical view from Europe. Believe it or not it's closer to the truth rather than believing that having elections suddenly would fix all the problems in countries like egypt, libya, syria.
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The invasion of Iraq was stupid. It was likely illegal, based on false pretenses, and well....shouldn't have happened. The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days). The US Military performed splendidly. The follow through (driven by political leaders) was idiotic. Stupid decisions like not listening to his generals (Bush), disbanding the Iraqi security forces (Paul Bremer), and the odd focus on turn…
It's sick to call war "beautiful" especially given that in those first few days innocent people were bombed out of existence along with bridges and infrastructure vital to the subsistence of millions of people. I didn't expect a sick comment to be rewarded on HN. But now I see the blatant and racist hypocrisy.
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The invasion of Iraq was a stupid idea, and the NYTimes should be ashamed for that. But the real problems occurred in the disastrous power vacuum and complete lack of a plan that occurred after the war was won. That's what tore Iraq and the Middle East apart. I don't think the NYTimes has any responsibility for that.
Indeed. I can't recommend this Frontline piece highly enough - "Losing Iraq". Its practically a case book study on the missteps that took place under the leadership of Paul Bremmer a Kissinger associate and who was chosen to lead the CPA - Coalition Provisional Authority(the transition government) after the US took Baghdad. Bremmer knew nothing of Iraqi politics and was only briefed on them on the flight to Baghdad.…
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imperial-Life-Emerald-City-Baghdads...
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>Long piece, [...] This piece may be fun to get through your flight, Yes, it's ~43000 words and at 250wpm, it would be a 3 hour read! I think I'll wait to collect some more opinions/tldrs like yours before reading it myself. Three hours would be a terrible waste of time on a substandard article. Open question: Are there better articles on the topic that use that would use that finite reading time better?
Is there a decent way to save the article as a PDF to read later, say on an ipad? I tried Safari's 'Export as PDF' but the formatting is too mangled. Safari can also save as a single 'web archive' file but I can't get that file to open on my ipad. Firefox has a save option of 'Web page, complete', but you end up with lots of files, impractical to move around to other devices. Printing as a PDF also mangles the format…