DONALD

[Retsdon]

For anyone who is interested this is a pretty even-handed (if rather edited) history of US - Iranian relations and how we got where we are today. https://theglobepost.com/2019/10/03/history-iran-us-ties/

[NoBodyImportant]

38 minutes ago, treetree said:

A few stockpiles of old, degraded gas canisters is a bit different to the claim justifying the invasion that Saddam could unleash chemical weapons in 45 minutes.

 

Please give examples, and explain why sovereign nation states should roll over to American demands just to avoid America being 'humiliated

WHY?

Few stockpiles where actually tons, and it was perfectly viable. Sadam was ordered to hand it over and he refused so we took it to keep it out of the hands of those who wished harm on the western world.  One van with a few barrels would be catastrophic in down town London.  

 

29 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

No you're not. You're chomping at the bit to kill a lot of ordinary people who never did, and never could, do you any harm. Your last gung-ho adventure, which  everyone now acknowledges was undertaken on the back of a series of systematic lies,  set in motion a chain of events that was catastrophic for millions of people. 

 

 

And now you want to do it again to get your money's worth on your new shiny armaments? Well, you might want to consider the cost of these pointless wars to the US taxpayer. So far,  the adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost you nearly $6 trillion dollars and counting. - $5,900,000,000,000 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/14/us-has-spent-5point9-trillion-on-middle-east-asia-wars-since-2001-study.html That's a lot of money. And what have you achieved for it, other than spreading death, destruction and misery?  Nothing. 

But instead of ruining countless people's lives, for the same expenditure you could have:-

1. Put 59,000,000 American students through university completely free of charge. That not only would be of huge benefit to American citizens and the American economy, it would massively reduce the need for foreign  immigration.

OR

2. Built 600,000 miles of brand new interstate highway.

OR

3. Built  and equipped 22,000 brand new  high schools.

Or

4. Reduced every single US tax payment to zero for two years.

And so it goes. These wars that are fought to (supposedly) solve problems that could, with a bit of will and imagination, be solved far more quickly around a negotiating table are like urinating money down your own leg. But you want to get your money's worth on the pork barrel disaster that is the F35? Will you not listen to yourself?

 

We didn’t fight wars with that all that money,  we tried to win the hearts and minds of our enemy.  That’s not how a war under trump will play out. 

The F35 is a great plan,  one the US didn’t need as we have the F22.  But the F22 was to advance to export so the USA developed the F35 to give to our Allies. 

Edited January 4, 2020 by NoBodyImportant

[NoBodyImportant]

26 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

You mean the gas that Saddam used against Iran? At a time when it was OK to use gas if you were on the 'right' side?

Absolutely,      Saddam was told to hand them over,  he refused.  

[Mice!]

12 hours ago, Gu5 said:

But what was the Iranian doing in Iraq? They normally can’t stand each other. 

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. 

[NoBodyImportant]

Here is the problem in a nut shell.  In WW1 the Germans were not completely defeated.  So the Allies had to fight them again.  In WW2 Germany was crushed and built back up with economic dependence on Allied nations.  For a long term solution you have to establish complete dominance and build the country back from scratch.  We never did that in the Middle East.  Bush could have but didn’t.   The only other option is to setup a puppet dictator to rule them under a iron boot.  

6 minutes ago, Mice! said:

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. 

Yep, supporting terrorist.  Trump is not Obama.  He will not stand down.

[chrisjpainter]

I just wish the fallout from America's staggeringly ignorant misadventures in the middle east was on their doorstep, not Europe's. Then perhaps it might understand and feel the consequences a little more.

6 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

 

Yep, supporting terrorist.  Trump is not Obama.  He will not stand down.

He won't? So why did he order all those troops out of Syria when even his own generals said it was a stupid thing to do, thus allowing the Turkish army to attack the best ally the US had in the war against IS? At the very best, that's standing troops down...

[NoBodyImportant]

9 minutes ago, chrisjpainter said:

I just wish the fallout from America's staggeringly ignorant misadventures in the middle east was on their doorstep, not Europe's. Then perhaps it might understand and feel the consequences a little more.

He won't? So why did he order all those troops out of Syria when even his own generals said it was a stupid thing to do, thus allowing the Turkish army to attack the best ally the US had in the war against IS? At the very best, that's standing troops down...

Because he promised to get us out of Syria,  The PPK was warned time and time again to stop attacking Turkish forces.   When you little brother is a #### you only protect him for so long.  And we are only talking about a small percentage that was in Syria.   NATO was asked to step up but nothing.  Syria is not America’s problem.  How is this on your doorstep?  

Edited January 4, 2020 by NoBodyImportant

[chrisjpainter]

27 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

Because he promised to get us out of Syria,  The PPK was warned time and time again to stop attacking Turkish forces.   When you little brother is a #### you only protect him for so long.  And we are only talking about a small percentage that was in Syria.  

Seriously? Palm.to.face. 

Also, it's got very little to do with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (No need to bring James Bond into it), as they're based in Turkey, not Syria. It was an operation against the Kurds as a people - including the groups who'd done so much to defeat IS.

Small percentage or not, It still looks like standing down when the job's not done. So it looks like he's made a promise he was ill-equipped to make, then compounded the problem by keeping it, rather than admitting he'd misjudged the situation. Just as with this assassination. He can only cope with one thing at a time: He's naughty, so we'll get rid of him and that's job done. Except it really, REALLY isn't...a lesson not learnt from Saddam's removal

Edited January 4, 2020 by chrisjpainter

[Retsdon]

4 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

We didn’t fight wars with that all that money,  we tried to win the hearts and minds of our enemy.  

You mean all those people you killed were to get them on your side? What's so saddening is that the US military is almost wholly composed of honorable and decent people. But they'e being badly betrayed in these wars of adventure. If you haven't seen it, you should watch This is What Winning Looks Like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKHPTHx0ScQ .  A colleague and friend of mine, whose politics are probably similar to yours, sent it to me in order to demonstrate the hopelessness of trying to win hearts and minds among these ungrateful, stupid people. Because that's how he saw it.

I saw it differently. What I saw was that well-meaning but extremely naive young Americans were being put into situations where they had no real understanding of the dynamics of local loyalties and enmities. What I also saw was that, as would be the case in any invaded country, the real men were in the resistance and the collaborators were the weak opportunists who were in it for their own good. And that's why (with a couple of exceptions, the Afghan army is pretty much useless. It has no will to actually fight.

It's like, if the point is to win the war, the lessons of Vietnam have been totally forgotten. I say if the point is to win the war because I think that's doubtful. The real point is to bleed the war for profits that you, the American taxpayer, furnish. Who wants to end a war that suffers minimal domestic casualties but rakes in billions annually for the armaments industry? 

 

As for your 'gloves off' total war, here's Churchill - 

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

When Germany marched into Czechoslovakia in 1938 her military power was unmatched anywhere on the planet and we all know how it ended. 

And here's another one for you -

In war, moral power is to physical as three parts out of four. Napoleon Bonaparte

If you think you'll crush Iranian resistance  any better than you did Vietnamese, or the Germans did the Russian, or the British did the American, think again. All you'll do is (once again) sow a lot of death and misery.

There are more important issues facing mankind at the moment.

 

 

 

[treetree]

45 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

Here is the problem in a nut shell.  In WW1 the Germans were not completely defeated.  So the Allies had to fight them again.

Oh dear, no wonder your analysis of the current situation is so skewed when your understanding of history is so wrong.

[Mice!]

I've said before the only person to invade the middle east and win was Genghis Khan,  any resistance was brutally wiped out, entire cities rendered to dust.

That simply wouldn't happen in this day and age, unless someone did nuke the USA,  then all bets would be off.

The middle east will never be beaten by bombing them from the sky, and boots on the ground means young men dying, which the tax paying public soon get sick of.

[NoBodyImportant]

13 minutes ago, Mice! said:

I've said before the only person to invade the middle east and win was Genghis Khan,  any resistance was brutally wiped out, entire cities rendered to dust.

That simply wouldn't happen in this day and age, unless someone did nuke the USA,  then all bets would be off.

The middle east will never be beaten by bombing them from the sky, and boots on the ground means young men dying, which the tax paying public soon get sick of.

Exactly.    

[chrisjpainter]

4 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

Exactly.    

er...so why keep doing it then?!

[NoBodyImportant]

36 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

 

If you think you'll crush Iranian resistance  any better than you did Vietnamese, or the Germans did the Russian, or the British did the American, think again. All you'll do is (once again) sow a lot of death and misery.

There are more important issues facing mankind at the moment.

 

 

 

Could we? Absolutely.  Will we? Absolutely not.  This isn’t about crushing Iranian resistance. This is about Iran supporting our enemies and telling us we can’t do anything about it.  

1 minute ago, chrisjpainter said:

er...so why keep doing it then?!

Its not about invaded Iran,  it’s about getting Iran out of Iraq.  

[Retsdon]

1 minute ago, NoBodyImportant said:

This is about Iran supporting our enemies and telling us we can’t do anything about it.  

What enemies?

[NoBodyImportant]

28 minutes ago, treetree said:

Oh dear, no wonder your analysis of the current situation is so skewed when your understanding of history is so wrong.

Am I wrong?  Had the Allies crush Germany and built a codependent economy after WW1 the WW2 wouldn’t have been fought so soon.  

[treetree]

1 hour ago, NoBodyImportant said:

Few stockpiles where actually tons, and it was perfectly viable. Sadam was ordered to hand it over and he refused so we took it to keep it out of the hands of those who wished harm on the western world.  One van with a few barrels would be catastrophic in down town London.  

This is nonsense.The existence of these stockpiles was known about by the world and the weapons inspectors. Saddam knew that we knew, and had no intention of accessing it. Much of it had been sealed in bunkers as it was too dangerous to deal with, and the sheer volume of Iraq's previous and known chemical weapons programme meant getting rid was going to be a long process.

It was only the chaos unleashed by the invasion of Iraq that meant that insurgents were able to break into these bunkers to try and access these weapons.

[NoBodyImportant]

1 minute ago, Retsdon said:

What enemies?

Insurgents that threatens our puppet government in Iraq.  

[Retsdon]

1 minute ago, NoBodyImportant said:

Had the Allies crush Germany and built a codependent economy after WW1

It wasn't the loss of the war that gave rise to Hitler's popularity, it was the draconian terms of the Treaty of Versailles. If they'd held out the olive branch?

4 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

Insurgents that threatens our puppet government in Iraq.  

In case you hadn't noticed you don't have a puppet government in Iraq anymore. Any day now they're about to tell you to withdraw all your forces from Iraqi soil, that you're no longer welcome. And then what are you going to do?

[chrisjpainter]

2 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

Could we? Absolutely.  Will we? Absolutely not.  This isn’t about crushing Iranian resistance. This is about Iran supporting our enemies and telling us we can’t do anything about it.  

Its not about invaded Iran,  it’s about getting Iran out of Iraq.  

Which isn't actually what Iraq wants...as I've explained earlier. Iran and Iraq are getting closer together - and in order for there to be a stable Middle East, they have to be. They're bordering central nations. You won't get a stable middle east if the US is constantly keeping the centre of it weak and unstable. Keeping Iran weak keeps Iraq weak. You keep Iraq weak you have to constantly keep propping it up with foreign troops, meaning foreign troops are going to be constantly being killed, which means more troops, making the country weaker, which fuels the hatred against the government you're trying to prop up, which then drives people to the extremists, making the government even weaker and making the foreign soldiers more of a target, and so on and so on. The US is doing exactly the same in the Middle East as it is with the war on drugs along its southern border: funding both sides and wondering why you're a) not getting anywhere and b) hated by both sides

[NoBodyImportant]

Just now, treetree said:

This is nonsense.The existence of these stockpiles was known about by the world and the weapons inspectors. Saddam knew that we knew, and had no intention of accessing it. Much of it had been sealed in bunkers as it was too dangerous to deal with, and the sheer volume of Iraq's previous and known chemical weapons programme meant getting rid was going to be a long process.

It was only the chaos unleashed by the invasion of Iraq that meant that insurgents were able to break into these bunkers to try and access these weapons.

They either they exist or they didn’t.  Our soldiers had maps to the nonexistent WMDs.  Personally I didn’t care if Saddam murdered his on people.  They were his to murder and that’s not our problem.  What is our problem is when he blocked UN inspection teams and them refused to hand the gas over.  After the Gulf war he was left in position to do as he was told.  He did not do what he was told and he was hanged for it. Same with the German/Japanese governments after WW2,  they lost so shut up and take orders. 

[NoBodyImportant]

9 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

It wasn't the loss of the war that gave rise to Hitler's popularity, it was the draconian terms of the Treaty of Versailles. If they'd held out the olive branch?

In case you hadn't noticed you don't have a puppet government in Iraq anymore. Any day now they're about to tell you to withdraw all your forces from Iraqi soil, that you're no longer welcome. And then what are you going to do?

Germany agreed to an armistice not surrendering.  Surrendering you lose your right to rule. 

7 minutes ago, chrisjpainter said:

Which isn't actually what Iraq wants...as I've explained earlier. Iran and Iraq are getting closer together - and in order for there to be a stable Middle East, they have to be. They're bordering central nations. You won't get a stable middle east if the US is constantly keeping the centre of it weak and unstable. Keeping Iran weak keeps Iraq weak. You keep Iraq weak you have to constantly keep propping it up with foreign troops, meaning foreign troops are going to be constantly being killed, which means more troops, making the country weaker, which fuels the hatred against the government you're trying to prop up, which then drives people to the extremists, making the government even weaker and making the foreign soldiers more of a target, and so on and so on. The US is doing exactly the same in the Middle East as it is with the war on drugs along its southern border: funding both sides and wondering why you're a) not getting anywhere and b) hated by both sides

It doesn’t matter what Iraq wants.  But a majority, at least from the Iraqis I know hate the Iranian government, I mean hell, the Iranians I know hate the Iranian government.  

[chrisjpainter]

2 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

They either they exist or they didn’t.  Our soldiers had maps to the nonexistent WMDs.  Personally I didn’t care if Saddam murdered his on people.  They were his to murder and that’s not our problem.  What is our problem is when he blocked UN inspection teams and them refused to hand the gas over.  After the Gulf war he was left in position to do as he was told.  He did not do what he was told and he was hanged for it. Same with the German/Japanese governments after WW2,  they lost so shut up and take orders. 

That is disgraceful. No wonder the Americans are loathed all over the world if that's the kind of disgusting thing its citizens believe. That one statement makes your entire case utterly null and void. You have just said that the Holocaust doesn't matter, as long as it was German victims, that the Rwandan genocide wasn't important, because it was only Rwandans, that the Khmer Rouge's brutality isn't worth looking at because it was internal. 

[NoBodyImportant]

20 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

 

In case you hadn't noticed you don't have a puppet government in Iraq anymore. Any day now they're about to tell you to withdraw all your forces from Iraqi soil, that you're no longer welcome. And then what are you going to do?

Me? Nothing.  It doesn’t effect me.  But if America pulls out, which I’m in favor of, it because America decides to pull out and not because we were asked.  

4 minutes ago, chrisjpainter said:

That is disgraceful. No wonder the Americans are loathed all over the world if that's the kind of disgusting thing its citizens believe. That one statement makes your entire case utterly null and void. You have just said that the Holocaust doesn't matter, as long as it was German victims, that the Rwandan genocide wasn't important, because it was only Rwandans, that the Khmer Rouge's brutality isn't worth looking at because it was internal. 

Not saying Saddam should have murdered them.  I’m saying it wasn’t America’s problem,  it was a Nato problem. That’s exactly why Nato was formed.  Why should America pay in billions to Nato only to fight Nato’s Wars.  But you just made my point.  Everyone looks toward the Americans to solve everything.   It’s not Americans responsibility to shield Eastern Europe from Russia. Japan from China, ect........   

Edited January 4, 2020 by NoBodyImportant

[Retsdon]

4 minutes ago, NoBodyImportant said:

Personally I didn’t care if Saddam murdered his on people.  They were his to murder and that’s not our problem.

You see, that's the problem right there. At a tactical level politics might be about power. But at its root, politics is most definitely about morality, which in turn gives rise to political philosophy. And as Clausewitz observed, war is an extension of politics. So unless you have a viable, moral political philosophy underpinning your war effort you are, in effect, confusing tactics with strategy.

Ask any chess player how that works out.