7 ms·

Remembering the Iran-Iraq War

71 points by lermontov 11y ago

Synaesthesia 11y ago
What's effaced from history is how closely the US supported Hussein's Iraq throughout the 80's, right up to the invasion in 1991. The US removed Saddam from the official terrorists lists, sold him advanced weaponry and weapon producing capabilities, including chemical weapons, and nuclear capabilities, at a time when he committed his most egregious crimes, including the gassing of the Kurds. Just before he invaded Kuwait Saddam was even visited by a high level us delegation led by Bob Dole. https://chomsky.info/20020901/ https://chomsky.info/20020901/
- toyg 11y ago
  It's very ironic that most of these strategies were seen as ways to counter Soviet influence, whereas the opposite happened in practice: Moscow "lost" the Iranian revolution when it turned religious, and Iran went back to Russia only in order to counter US influence.
- arethuza 11y ago
  I can vividly remember watching reports of the Iran-Iraq war when I was at school in the UK - there was no doubt in my mind that at the time that Iraq was on "our" side. "Who controls the past controls the future...."
  - teh_klev 11y ago
    I remember this too when I was at school (I was ~12/13 at the time the war started). The British media and government were firmly onside with Iraq whilst writing up over egged horror stories of torture and depravity being inflicted by Iran on its own citizens, all the time ignoring Hussain's human rights violations (and those of the then exiled Shah of Iran). There was a palpable sense of glee that Iran might get it's comeuppance for having the audacity to overthrow the Shah. I bet the US and UK governments are ruing the day they decided to interfere in Iran's democratic affairs back in 1953. What with Reagan shooting his mouth off about the Russians, a deepening cold war (not helped by the Iran/Iraq war - US and allies backing Iraq, the Soviet Union backing Iran), the Soviets deploying to Afghanistan....all in all, not a great time to be growing up as a teenager aware of world affairs. I really thought the world was about to bite the big green nuclear banana between 1980 and 1985.
    - arethuza 11y ago
      It very nearly did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
- laotzu 11y ago
  For more reading, here is a Congressional report on the sale of those weapons and the resulting blowback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riegle_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riegle_Report
- berntb 11y ago
  "An enemy's enemy is my friend." Foreigners don't have a vote at home, so democracies often have as cynical foreign policy as any dictator. And lie as much about it. (At least during the cold war, today human rights considerations seems to carry a much larger weight.)
- TheGirondin 11y ago
  What's even more unbelive is that the US is allies with Germany and Japan after WWII, and relations with Cuba reversed after they allied themselves with the USSR. It's almost like nothing in international affairs is static, things change, and things being one way in one decade and another in a different decade doesn't mean anything or anyone is "wrong."
  - popmystack 11y ago
    None of those are really comparable. Nice try though.
  - Dr_tldr 11y ago
    Point ------> You -----> According to my projections, not only did you completely miss the point, it looks like you're on track to never getting it. The concept of "discontinuity versus continuity in governance" is apparently beyond you. Lurk more, post less?
    - dang 11y ago
      Personal attacks are not allowed on HN. We ban accounts that do that, and yours has done it more than once recently, so please stop.
  - cableshaft 11y ago
    This was due to the US seeing how the "punish the losers" strategy after WWI led directly to WWII and us trying not to repeat that same mistake after WWII (sorta kinda, there was more at stake, such as the Cold War, which helped shift alliances also). But basically the US decided helping the people who lost the war reconstruct can keep our influence in the area and reduce the desire to rise back up and retaliate against them. The US actually tried exactly this same approach after the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (remember all the money spent on rebuilding afterwards, training police forces, etc?), and it turned out to not work out so well for them this time around.
laotzu 11y ago
This is such an obvious example of the divide to conquer strategy which is still alive and well in the region. Iran Contra revealed the MIC was selling weapons to both Iran and Iraq at the same time. Profit from endless weapons sales, profit from cheap oil, and keep the dollar strong by only selling the oil for the dollar. 3 birds with one stone. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro And now here we are, oil is cheaper than it has been since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the dollar is more valuable than it has been in decades (relative to other currencies) all the while the instability in the middle east continues to increase. http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-char... "The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous."
- lintiness 11y ago
  basically every argument you make is cherry picked. the dollar was near multi-decade lows ~2 years ago. oil was at near multi-decade highs ~2 years ago. the only thing consistent in anything you said was mid-east instability. the mid-east has been unmanageable / unstable for several eons.
  - Cyph0n 11y ago
    And why do you think that is? Could it be the arbitrary borders drawn by the colonial powers? Or perhaps the carefully chosen dictators placed by some great power or other? I hate it when people make the instability in the Middle East seem like its entirely our (i.e. people of the Middle East) fault.
    - lintiness 11y ago
      i haven't presented anything remotely resembling an argument of causality for mid-east dysfunction, nor do i want to. what i'd like is for people with political axes to grind to back their arguments with facts instead of imagined nonsense.
      - 11y ago
lazyjones 11y ago
Let's see if history repeats itself. The "West" armed and supported Saddam Hussein's brutal regime and he went to war with Iran. Today, the West is arming the brutal regime of the Saudis and they just bombed Iran's embassy in Yemen, things are heating up.
- Cyph0n 11y ago
  Direct conflict is unlikely. Both sides are content with the proxy wars being waged in Yemen and Syria. Why involve your own army when you can pay some other country to do it? Besides, Saudia has a large Shia community, and Iran has a sizeable Sunni community, and I believe both countries are engaged in trade.
  - e12e 11y ago
    I hope you're right - but note that Russia and NATO are already too close for comfort in Syria. There’s a limit to the number of fighter jets that can be accidentially (or intentionally) shot down before escalation becomes almost inevitable. It's not inconceivable that we'll see NATO special forces casualities in Russian air raids (or vice-versa).
- douche 11y ago
  The House of Saud has been in UK and then US pockets since T.E. Lawrence. That's not a new development.
payamb 11y ago
The only way to stabilise middle east is to stop selling arms, I'm not a fan of conspiracy theory but there are parties benefiting from heating up shite and sunni confrontation, Not Middle eastern people definitely. I believe these two group can live in peace together if dictator regimes fueld by arms companies let them to do so. Its all about propaganda , Heating up emotion and selling more arms. - Iranian.
JBReefer 11y ago
Why does any discussion around the Middle East produce incredibly shallow, edgy comments? It's incredibly, incredibly, incredibly complicated stuff, and the discourse is all soundbites.
- Happydayz 11y ago
  There is a really strong bias among people in the west to overemphasize their role in complex international events. The US absolutely played both sides in the Iran-Iraq War. However, let's not strip the very real agency that Iraq and Iran exercised in the conduct of it. What the US did was tilt the scales in Iraq's favor when things were looking exceptionally grim for them. This probably prolonged the war or at least prevented it from reaching an early decisive end. However, this shouldn't be surprising given the events of '79 and what that did to the US's prior Middle Eastern strategy.
- Synaesthesia 11y ago
  Read Noam Chomsky, a lot of the facts aren't made public, particularly the huge US neocolonial interest in the region, spanning back a century.
  - JBReefer 11y ago
    Noam Chomsky doesn't have the answer. You'd need a PhD on the subject of a single conflict in order to talk about it with authority. He does not have that, though he is a gifted linguist. You're talking about conflicts that legitimately have roots to the beginning of human history.
transfire 11y ago
I don't think the fact that two armies fought a war across contrived borders makes them any less contrived.

71 points by lermontov 11y ago

What's effaced from history is how closely the US supported Hussein's Iraq throughout the 80's, right up to the invasion in 1991. The US removed Saddam from the official terrorists lists, sold him advanced weaponry and weapon producing capabilities, including chemical weapons, and nuclear capabilities, at a time when he committed his most egregious crimes, including the gassing of the Kurds. Just before he invaded Kuwait Saddam was even visited by a high level us delegation led by Bob Dole. https://chomsky.info/20020901/ https://chomsky.info/20020901/

toyg 11y ago
It's very ironic that most of these strategies were seen as ways to counter Soviet influence, whereas the opposite happened in practice: Moscow "lost" the Iranian revolution when it turned religious, and Iran went back to Russia only in order to counter US influence.
arethuza 11y ago
I can vividly remember watching reports of the Iran-Iraq war when I was at school in the UK - there was no doubt in my mind that at the time that Iraq was on "our" side. "Who controls the past controls the future...."
- teh_klev 11y ago
  I remember this too when I was at school (I was ~12/13 at the time the war started). The British media and government were firmly onside with Iraq whilst writing up over egged horror stories of torture and depravity being inflicted by Iran on its own citizens, all the time ignoring Hussain's human rights violations (and those of the then exiled Shah of Iran). There was a palpable sense of glee that Iran might get it's comeuppance for having the audacity to overthrow the Shah. I bet the US and UK governments are ruing the day they decided to interfere in Iran's democratic affairs back in 1953. What with Reagan shooting his mouth off about the Russians, a deepening cold war (not helped by the Iran/Iraq war - US and allies backing Iraq, the Soviet Union backing Iran), the Soviets deploying to Afghanistan....all in all, not a great time to be growing up as a teenager aware of world affairs. I really thought the world was about to bite the big green nuclear banana between 1980 and 1985.
  - arethuza 11y ago
    It very nearly did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
laotzu 11y ago
For more reading, here is a Congressional report on the sale of those weapons and the resulting blowback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riegle_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riegle_Report
berntb 11y ago
"An enemy's enemy is my friend." Foreigners don't have a vote at home, so democracies often have as cynical foreign policy as any dictator. And lie as much about it. (At least during the cold war, today human rights considerations seems to carry a much larger weight.)
TheGirondin 11y ago
What's even more unbelive is that the US is allies with Germany and Japan after WWII, and relations with Cuba reversed after they allied themselves with the USSR. It's almost like nothing in international affairs is static, things change, and things being one way in one decade and another in a different decade doesn't mean anything or anyone is "wrong."
- popmystack 11y ago
  None of those are really comparable. Nice try though.
- Dr_tldr 11y ago
  Point ------> You -----> According to my projections, not only did you completely miss the point, it looks like you're on track to never getting it. The concept of "discontinuity versus continuity in governance" is apparently beyond you. Lurk more, post less?
  - dang 11y ago
    Personal attacks are not allowed on HN. We ban accounts that do that, and yours has done it more than once recently, so please stop.
- cableshaft 11y ago
  This was due to the US seeing how the "punish the losers" strategy after WWI led directly to WWII and us trying not to repeat that same mistake after WWII (sorta kinda, there was more at stake, such as the Cold War, which helped shift alliances also). But basically the US decided helping the people who lost the war reconstruct can keep our influence in the area and reduce the desire to rise back up and retaliate against them. The US actually tried exactly this same approach after the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (remember all the money spent on rebuilding afterwards, training police forces, etc?), and it turned out to not work out so well for them this time around.

laotzu 11y ago

This is such an obvious example of the divide to conquer strategy which is still alive and well in the region. Iran Contra revealed the MIC was selling weapons to both Iran and Iraq at the same time. Profit from endless weapons sales, profit from cheap oil, and keep the dollar strong by only selling the oil for the dollar. 3 birds with one stone. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro And now here we are, oil is cheaper than it has been since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the dollar is more valuable than it has been in decades (relative to other currencies) all the while the instability in the middle east continues to increase. http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-char... "The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous."

lintiness 11y ago
basically every argument you make is cherry picked. the dollar was near multi-decade lows ~2 years ago. oil was at near multi-decade highs ~2 years ago. the only thing consistent in anything you said was mid-east instability. the mid-east has been unmanageable / unstable for several eons.
- Cyph0n 11y ago
  And why do you think that is? Could it be the arbitrary borders drawn by the colonial powers? Or perhaps the carefully chosen dictators placed by some great power or other? I hate it when people make the instability in the Middle East seem like its entirely our (i.e. people of the Middle East) fault.
  - lintiness 11y ago
    i haven't presented anything remotely resembling an argument of causality for mid-east dysfunction, nor do i want to. what i'd like is for people with political axes to grind to back their arguments with facts instead of imagined nonsense.
    - 11y ago

lazyjones 11y ago

Let's see if history repeats itself. The "West" armed and supported Saddam Hussein's brutal regime and he went to war with Iran. Today, the West is arming the brutal regime of the Saudis and they just bombed Iran's embassy in Yemen, things are heating up.

Cyph0n 11y ago
Direct conflict is unlikely. Both sides are content with the proxy wars being waged in Yemen and Syria. Why involve your own army when you can pay some other country to do it? Besides, Saudia has a large Shia community, and Iran has a sizeable Sunni community, and I believe both countries are engaged in trade.
- e12e 11y ago
  I hope you're right - but note that Russia and NATO are already too close for comfort in Syria. There’s a limit to the number of fighter jets that can be accidentially (or intentionally) shot down before escalation becomes almost inevitable. It's not inconceivable that we'll see NATO special forces casualities in Russian air raids (or vice-versa).
douche 11y ago
The House of Saud has been in UK and then US pockets since T.E. Lawrence. That's not a new development.

payamb 11y ago

The only way to stabilise middle east is to stop selling arms, I'm not a fan of conspiracy theory but there are parties benefiting from heating up shite and sunni confrontation, Not Middle eastern people definitely. I believe these two group can live in peace together if dictator regimes fueld by arms companies let them to do so. Its all about propaganda , Heating up emotion and selling more arms. - Iranian.

JBReefer 11y ago

Why does any discussion around the Middle East produce incredibly shallow, edgy comments? It's incredibly, incredibly, incredibly complicated stuff, and the discourse is all soundbites.

Happydayz 11y ago
There is a really strong bias among people in the west to overemphasize their role in complex international events. The US absolutely played both sides in the Iran-Iraq War. However, let's not strip the very real agency that Iraq and Iran exercised in the conduct of it. What the US did was tilt the scales in Iraq's favor when things were looking exceptionally grim for them. This probably prolonged the war or at least prevented it from reaching an early decisive end. However, this shouldn't be surprising given the events of '79 and what that did to the US's prior Middle Eastern strategy.
Synaesthesia 11y ago
Read Noam Chomsky, a lot of the facts aren't made public, particularly the huge US neocolonial interest in the region, spanning back a century.
- JBReefer 11y ago
  Noam Chomsky doesn't have the answer. You'd need a PhD on the subject of a single conflict in order to talk about it with authority. He does not have that, though he is a gifted linguist. You're talking about conflicts that legitimately have roots to the beginning of human history.

transfire 11y ago

I don't think the fact that two armies fought a war across contrived borders makes them any less contrived.