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To me the lynchpin is the monumental catastrophe represented by Iraq War II and the entire decades-long Middle East quagmire in general. It's been nothing short
by api 9y ago
To me the lynchpin is the monumental catastrophe represented by Iraq War II and the entire decades-long Middle East quagmire in general. It's been nothing short of national suicide, especially when one considers what else might have been done with all that money. We almost literally set the surplus of an entire American generation on fire and watched it burn.
The neocons are the worst villains but not the only ones. They just represent the peak of a flow of lemmings over that cliff that began in the 1970s and 1980s.
We will be repaying the cost of these wars both in absolute terms and in terms of lost opportunity for generations, and we have absolutely nothing to show for it. We will pay not only with money but with internal strife, political extremism, and lost international prestige. Our involvement in the Middle East may be the worst series of decisions in the history of human civilization when considered in terms of the magnitude of that which was lost.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoNot Germany waging two world wars? Germany in 1910 was dynamic, and due to those wars they lost multiple generations and at least a third of their land. Germany recovered from that within 40 years. The Iraq war was a disaster, but there's nothing especially trying about recovering from that given time.
- throwawayjava 9y agoGermany was rebuilt from that, first through a brutal dictatorship and then, after that, with enormous assistance from the largest and strongest economies in the world, powered by a demographic boom in the richest parts of the world. And no matter how much progress has been made between 1950 and 2017, there's so little comfort in drawing a parallel between our present situation and the trajectory Germany from 1910 to 1945.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoIf you compare Clojure and PHP, it doesn't mean that you think Clojure is like PHP. Germany is just a reference, many countries have rebuilt themselves after disasters.
- bmm6o 9y agoNot only was the disaster entirely predictable, they themselves predicted it. For Gulf War I, Cheney (then Secretary of Defense) explained why they left Saddam in power - that removing him would create a power vacuum and a civil war leading to regional instability. Gulf War II - with Cheney as VP - has exactly this outcome, leading us to dump blood and money (ours and others) in the desert sands.
- jancsika 9y agoSo who was the mastermind? Wolfowitz?
- empath75 9y agoI’m not sure there was _a_ mastermind. More of a confluence of economic and political incentives combined with a bloodthirsty populace post-911.
- bmm6o 9y agoI don't even know all of the players, and don't claim to know their motivations. I will say that you don't need a mastermind or a conspiracy if your incentives are shared or aligned. Some may have done it for money, some for power, some to prop up W's popularity in order to pass a domestic agenda.
- jancsika 9y ago> I don't even know all of the players, and don't claim to know their motivations. I'm asking for a response from someone who knows the players and can give convincing evidence for their motivations. I mention Wolfowitz because as I remember it he was one of the chief writers of the PNAC policy pieces[1] that were urging for a ground war in Iraq during Clinton's second term. I'd be interested in reading more from an expert on the chief movers and shakers in buildup to the Iraq War, especially since almost all of those neo-cons involved have done a lot to distance themselves from it over the last decade. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...
- empath75 9y agoNot only that but the torrent of lies used to sell it and the torture regime that went along with it destroyed the ability of the populist right wing to discern the difference between truth and reality and led directly to Trumpism. The failure of the policy led people to look for scapegoats and trump handed them to them. Ironically the people who pushed the policy were the first victims and I can’t think of anyone more deserving.