Don't Forget How We Destroyed Iraq. No Victory There

I am not ripping the middle east. My wife is Assyrian, and I find the cultures to be very rich, and long lived. However, the middle east is not any more intelligent than the West or Asia.

Also, very unlikely that the Mid East will ever unite, especially in light of their history and the external pressures and influences on it.

In some ways oil is the worst thing to ever happen to the Mid East, it has been used as a crutch for too long.

 

who thought that the polish, british, frensh, germans, and others would ever unite????. Dont forget that the middle east was one for hundreds of years except for the last 70 or so.

 

Among other similar economic reasons, yes.

 

The Polish, French, British and Germans are not really united... the EU has some serious problems that make the issues in the USA minor by comparison.

 

I'm sure big govt dems & repubs all agree. Keep the war machine moving at the expense of social spending because social spending doesn't line the pockets of the politicians. Ike warned us.

 

Why were they united? The Middle East was one because one of those ethnic groups throughout its history ( first the Persians, then the Arabs, then the Mongols, then the Turks) came along and forced everyone else at swordpoint to bow down to the new king - the Middle East has never been unified because they all wanted to be unified. The West, heck the UN in general with its prattling about the importance of self-determination would never accept that.

Not to mention this is a really, really bad time to making that point given what's going on over there in Europe. Though I'll admit I would be pretty happy to see the EU break up.

 

the persians never crossed and took power in the middle east. it always remained in the far east, Iran, Afghanistan, india pakistan region. Mongols only occupid modern day iraq and their empire was broken at the syrian end of the middle east.
I disagree with you that power always gor established at swordpoint in the whole region vs. a particular capital, but if this is true this takes us back to my original post of why this region had so many conflict and occupation because of its richness.

 

Completely wrong on the Persians. It's well known that Cyrus beat the crap out of Babylon and Egypt. It's why the Jews love him so much. And the Persian Wars began because the Greeks were screwing around with what Darius controlled in Western Turkey. Go take a look at the map of the Achaemenid Empire on Google.

Furthermore, the Middle East's richness back then was because it served as a trade route between Europeans and the rest of the world, but the Europeans eventually got fed up with it and took over the ocean and began the Age of Discovery as a result, which really hurt the Middle East along with fundamentalism. This is pretty basic history - Columbus didn't set sail because he wanted to prove the world was round or some elementary school story like that, after all.

 

A victory? Really, KC? It has been an unmitigated disaster for the United States and our armed forces. We are seen as weaker by our enemies, not stronger. Our military is exhausted from endless deployments. Equipment that needed to be replaced isn't being replaced because of this black hole known as Iraq. Before Iraq, and post-Gulf War, we were feared. Iran was weaker. Now we are not feared nearly as much, because we have been stretched so thin for so long, bleeding from a thousand cuts right there in Iraq. Iran is stronger today than she was when Bush made the decision to launch a war based on lies before the American people and the world. The debt run up during this war that didn't need to be fought is a millstone around the neck of America. That Bush cut taxes while we both fought this war, and the very much different war in Afghanistan, was an act of incredible recklessness, the fruits of which we are seeing today. Cutting taxes while we fought two wars was an act never seen before in American history. It was brutal stupidity by a Republican President who is the living embodiment of The Peter Principal.

We would have a stronger America, a stronger military, and a stronger presence on the world stage had Bush just left Iraq to sort out its own problems. Saddam was no threat to the United States and our allies. Iran was and is, and Saddam's Iraq checked Iranian influence. We threw all of that away. That some see this as a sort of "victory" is obscene. In my opinion.