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Kuwait 1990 Haiti 1994 Bosnia and Herzegovina 1995 Kosovo 1999 Colombia 2000+ Afghanistan 2001 Libya 2011 Iraq 2014 There have been a lot of catastrophic $&@$
by ethbr0 5y ago
Kuwait 1990
Haiti 1994
Bosnia and Herzegovina 1995
Kosovo 1999
Colombia 2000+
Afghanistan 2001
Libya 2011
Iraq 2014
There have been a lot of catastrophic $&@$ ups and terrible ideas, but it's selective history to claim there have been no positive outcomes for the people who live there.
- hervature 5y agoSmall nitpick, the country is Colombia, the university is Columbia.
- ethbr0 5y agoThanks! Not enough coffee. Corrected!
- pydry 5y agoIraq? A million people died as a result of the Iraqi intervention.
- ethbr0 5y ago2014 was preventing the Iraqi government collapse to ISIL https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Iraq_(2013%E2%80%932017) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Iraq_(2013%E2%80%9320... IMHO, it seems like most Iraqis are better off living under a government than IS, but your opinion may differ.
- whydoibother 5y agoISIL existed/exists directly due to America’s waging of war on Iraq. It’s disingenuous to list that there.
- emn13 5y agoJust because a previous intervention was ill advised does not mean a later one was; quite the opposite; you could even consider it taking responsibility for damage caused. It's clearly not disingenuous to include the 2014 intervention in the list of the more reasonable ones. I mean, if you present it as somehow excusing the earlier mistake; that'd be a different issue.
- sudosysgen 5y agoISIS would never have been able to gain even a fraction of a foothold in the pre-Iraq war government, for all its ills.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y agoYou've got this exactly backwards. The invasion of Iraq was a contingent factor in the rise of ISIL. In particular Bremer's decision to disband the Iraqi regular army was incredibly stupid. The bulk of the regular army, not the republican guard, acted more as a nation wide police force than a military proper. Disbanding them meant there were now 100,000's of thousands of young men with basic military training with no more income to provide to their family. That became the recruiting pool for both the insurgency and ISIL.
- ethbr0 5y agoYes. And in 2014, what would you have proposed to do about decisions made in 2003?
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y agoI see no reason to limit discussion of the consequence of what we did in Iraq to 2014, but even then, it's not nearly as positive as what you're claiming. Iraq post 2014 is now effectively a client state of Iran, something that makes life much more dangerous for broad swaths of ordinary Iraqi citizens, as well as the region in general. I don't think it's reasonable to argue your intervention in my house fire was successful because you used your bulldozer to clean up the rubble, if you were the arsonist that set fire to it in the first place. If you'd like a particularly poignant "fly on the wall" style look into how ordinary Iraqi people saw the invasion in 2003, and their predictions for the future, check out Iraq in Fragments. Many of their predictions have come true in the years since. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu8cXhjpX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu8cXhjpX4
- ethbr0 5y agoSo, what do you think the international community should have done in 2014? Or are you advocating for non-intervention in what was unfolding at that point?