Comment by myztic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by myztic | Hacker News Reader

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Regarding Iraq (since it comes up in some other comments) one could (I am playing devil's advocate here) make the argument that the Iraq war was a just war on false assumptions. What reasons do you need to remove a dictator?

0) He does not respect territorial integrity of neighbour states

1) He houses international wanted terrorists, makes it possible for them to hide

2) He commits crimes against humanity (unjust prison and death sentences, violent crimes against political opponents)

3) He is ignoring UN Resolutions

Saddam Hussein was guilty of all of the above, that said:

0) There was no direct connection between Hussein and 9/11

1) There were no WMDs found

Three questions:

Should the United States (and the other opposing parties in the Gulf War) have left him in power or removed him then? Maybe they should have removed him then

Was the Iraq war based on false information, false reasoning and some deception? I would say yes it was

Was it still "just" to remove Hussein? That's the 1 million dollar question, and I am not 100% certain how I should answer...

[And to clarify: I am no fan of George W. Bush, indeed no fan of the Bush family, I do think the Iraq war was wrong, but I am always open to other arguments. Christopher Hitchens made an interesting pro-Iraq war case, you should look some of his articles from that time up]

Saddam was a terrible dictator, but what the US created was much, much worse.

We can learn something from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Toppling a dictator doesn't automatically create a new, civilized society. Even promising uprisings like the Libyan uprising of 2011 don't guarantee a good outcome.

In Iraq, the US created a huge power vacuum by decapitating the state — removing not just Saddam, but the entire civil and military leadership, through Paul Bremer's completely misguided process of "de-Baathification". There was no power structure left to ensure the continuity of Iraqi society. Even clerk-level Baathists were dismissed, people in charged of everything from health care to utilities. It's like nobody on the US side had studied any history whatsoever.

> It's like nobody on the US side had studied any history whatsoever.

It certainly seemed like that, though its more likely the actual problem was that the people at the highest levels of authority on the US side consistently ignored and overrode the people that had studied history and learned from it, listening instead to the people that had not, because the latter were saying more pleasing to the decision-makers ideological preconceptions.

Its not like the uniformed military leadership of the time somehow, in a historical aberration, managed to include only people who were completely ignorant of every past experience of occupation of formerly-hostile territory everywhere, including the occupations of Japan and Germany after WWII.

A fair question, but who are we to answer it? Isn't it up to the people of Iraq to decide? Would you want them deciding for your country that invasion, war, and mass death and destruction are worthwhile?

I understand that most Iraqis couldn't express themselves politically under Hussein, but we have no business making this evaluation for them now.

Most importantly, as many do, the question omits what is by far the most important factor, the costs to the people living in Iraqi. Think about it: How many Iraqis died? Were injured? Lost their homes, livelihoods, and dreams? [1] Do you know? I doubt even 1% of people in the invading countries can answer the question, and (IIRC) the U.S. military didn't keep track. Think about that: We invaded their country, cause mass death, and nobody gives a shit about dead Iraqis. When discussing the Iraq War, when is the last time you heard someone even bring it up?

Let's also remember the other costs: Their nation, its economy and its institutions are in ruins for a generation at least. Their own government doesn't even control large parts of the country, other foriegn powers such as Iran and U.S. decide much of what happens in your own country, many Iraqis now live under ISIL's brutal oppression, and you can't even field an effective military. If you were and 18 year old Iraqi in 2003 and planned to go to college, maybe to become a developer or doctor, where are your dreams now? If you survived, maybe you are now a 30 year old former militia member with a high school education, without skills or prospects in a sea of economic and political desolation. [2]

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[1] Over 100,000 died, by the most conservative but serious estimates I've seen. I recently saw a politically conservative publication say it was 150,000.

[2] I don't know enough about Iraq to know what a typical life story would look like, and probably few went to college before the war. But whatever their dreams and plans, they certainly weren't this.

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