tidelwave said:
I have to debate on this topic in a few days, saying that the Iraq War WAS a mistake. I'm looking for suggestions on areas to focus on, maybe some helpful quotes.. any help that you people can give me would be excellent.
Thanks.
My view would be that you would firstly approach this by clarifying how you measure 'mistake'. I would take it to mean; "faced with the issues of proliferation of WMD and the "war on terrrr/ hunt for al-qaeda" was it a mistake to invade Iraq as an attempt to resolve these issues? ( The only other interpretation I can think of would be 'was it a mistake in that it was supposed to be an exercise in intimidation of SH to get him to comply with the terms of previous UN resolutions, which went too far.............although this sounds to me very much like Withnail's protestations that "we've come on holiday by
mistake"
).
Considering the arguments presented by Washington and London in an attempt to justify the invasion, and perhaps more pertinently, the complete contempt shown for the UN throughout the process leading to the invasion, I would suggest only the former interpretation need be considered.
In this context, then the answer is patently YES.
Has it resolved the issue of profiliferation of WMD? Obviously not! There weren't any in Iraq, so whether there was an invasion or not has no impact on this issue.........."Yes Gent", I hear you cry, "but we didn't know that beforehand!"
Well, that may be true but considering that there had been inspection teams (admittedly working with limited cooperation and in difficult circumstances) for over a decade monitoring the situation, who gave no indication that there was any greater threat of WMD than there had been at any time since the first Gulf war, coupled with other measures such as trade sanctions/embargos and the strict enforcement of no-fly zones over more than half of the country, effectively limiting the ability of SH to act as he pleased, I think it would be fair to say there was about an even chance of finding a nuclear warhead/chemical weapon programme or a duck-billed platypus! That is to say, the 'evidence' (in inverted commas, as what passes for evidence in this debate is a bit of a moveable feast) almost definitely would lead a reasonable person to conclude that there were no WMD, without the need to invade, (just as there were no duck-billed platypi.)
With reference to the 'war on terrrr', the West was faced with a threat from a specific group; al-qaeda, who were the instigators of the Sept 11 attacks, so it would seem logical that, if they were the enemy, you attack targets that have some connection or military significance to your enemy.
Enter Coleeeeeeen Powell, with his presentation on the 'links between SH and OBL'. This presentation dwelled on the existence of a group called Ansar al-Islam, who had a base in the Kurdish Autonomous Area of Northern Iraq (can't remember whether it was the region controlled by the PUK or KDP, but prior to the war these two sectors of the KAA were more or less governed independently of each other as the PUK and KDP were long-standing enemies). Ansar al-Islam had in effect taken over a small region of the KAA, but certainly did not have the strength or support to do much more and were pretty well boxed in by the
peshmergar, or Kurdish militias, in
de facto control of the area. In all probability, they were supported or at least influenced by Al-Qaeda, and there are credible reports of foreign fighters present in the tiny enclave they occupied. (see
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/ansarbk020503.htm , for HRW report on this.)
However to leap from the presence of a group such as this in the insignificant numbers and area in which they existed to a tangible connection between SH and OBL is frankly, pardon my French, fucking idiotic.
Firstly, they were in an area in which SH had had no influence whatsoever since the end of the first Gulf war and the consequent Kurdish uprising. It happened to be called Iraq on a map but in effect was an entirely separate entity, and I would hope that the US State Department would have known this, particularly as any of their annual human rights reports for the last decade referred to it as such.
Secondly, SH's regime for all it's manifest evil was an entirely secular administration, whereas OBL operates within a hyper extreme muslim philosophy, which was an anathema to the Ba'ath Party. To suggest that they would come together in any sort of alliance is pure fantasy, presumably based on the 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' type of logic employed frequently by the CIA, (particularly, but not exclusively, in Afghanistan, when they faced invasion from the Soviet Union and Iraq, when they faced Iran in the 80's
). Sadly, Washington appears to have learnt nothing from the debacles created by the application of this philosophy ie the arming of OBL and SH, if I need to spell it out, and applied it once more to Ansar/ SH/ Al Q in an attempt to conjure up an alliance to justify an attack on Iraq, (with, as it turns out, even more catastrophic results).
For these reasons alone (and there are I'm sure others, but I'm getting bored now), to invade Iraq in order to address either WMD proliferation or 'the war on terrrr' was clearly not the right thing to do; imagine if the resources wasted in Iraq had been applied to Afghanistan, we may well have caught OBL, smashed Al Q and created a fledgling democracy in a country which had never had one...and made the west look good into the bargain! Or imagine if all the horse-trading/diplomacy employed to establish the rather laughable 'co-alition of the willing' had been applied to, I dunno, say, the situations in Saudi Arabia or Israel/Palestine or Sudan or Somalia or another failed state where the conditions were such that extremism could flourish? The benefits would have been enormous and the world really would have been a safer place.
Now to return to the question, was it a mistake? Well it was a mistake if the intention was to address the security of the world, but because it so obviously failed (and was always going to fail) to do so, I'm inclined to conclude that it was not a mistake. It was an entirely deliberate manufacturing of an argument to invade Iraq for (insert your reason here) purposes. In this sense it was NOT a mistake, just a really fucking stupid thing to do, which has had terrible consequences for Iraq, US, UK and all of the other countries who have lost their citizens and will continue to have terrible consequences for the fore seeable future.
Oh and in future do your own fucking homework you slacker!
