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The US should not have done that, and most of us know that. That has no bearing on and is no excuse for what is happening right now. But at the time you speak

by blunte 5y ago

The US should not have done that, and most of us know that. That has no bearing on and is no excuse for what is happening right now. But at the time you speak of, there was a concerted disinformation scheme which led many people, likely including troops and certainly including the US Congress, to believe that Iraq was becoming a nuclear threat led by a power-hungry man. Troops probably believed they were fighting for the freedom and safety of the world.

scaramanga 5y ago
I hope nothing in my comment could be interpreted as excusing criminal wars of aggression. I am just trying to understand and make sense of why people tacitly support, or even actively participate in them.
- blunte 5y ago
  > I am just trying to understand and make sense of why people tacitly support, or even actively participate in them. That is a huge topic which I cannot hope to explain (or mostly understand). If you look at the shift in US political ideology in the last 5-10 years, particularly during the Trump era (which still continues), it is clear that some masterful manipulation scheme has been operating effectively. It is clearly possible to groom a significant percentage of a population to believe in absolute lies. This happened in the US after 9/11 (and surely in previous periods); but it was never so effective as it has been lately. The war in Iraq was easy to justify to Americans, even without WMD lies. Hussein was a very bad man by our standards. That alone, of course, does not justify invasion. So other threats must be illustrated, legitimate or not. But to the point of understanding, you have to realize that people (particularly older ones?) get their information from very few sources; and they communicate with the same few people. It is much easier to sell disinformation and have them repeat it amongst themselves than for younger, more internet-active people.
  - scaramanga 5y ago
    The rise of Trumpist political forces is extremely alarming. But they stem from somewhere: mistrust in institutions which correlates hugely with support for people like Trump. If people cannot trust their leaders, they cannot trust institutions, they cannot trust reality itself, it leads them to exhaustion, defeatism, and towards supporting personalist rulers. When Trump lies he says "well everyone else is lying, the media is fake news, the government is the deep-state, but when I lie, at least I am honest that I am a liar" and that gives him a legitimacy in the eyes of his followers because all the complex issues boil down to "do you trust big brother or not?". So yes, the new era is worse than the old Bush era where Rumsfeld was a circus clown feeding us bullshit, but behind the scenes the institutions basically functioned properly. Because in that world that we have left behind now, we still had wars of aggression, we still had robber barons, but the institutions had a veneer of legitimacy which the public, and the people in the institutions believed in enough that you had countervailing political forces that could protect you from the worst excesses. But that past was a mirage, because during that time, the leaders were draining out that trust like siphoning gas out of your tank (eg. in the Iraq war, NAFTA, on and on..), and they were trading it for political power and dollars. Now the tank is empty, and US institutions are extremely vulnerable to collapse. And I think that Trump was just the last drop of gas escaping.
    - blunte 5y ago
      What a disappointingly accurate assessment. I think I'll hasten my 2-backpack relocation to a Thai beach and enjoy the last couple of decades.
    - nradov 5y ago
      If you actually pay close attention to what Donald Rumsfeld said and wrote, he wasn't a circus clown at all. He was actually quite intelligent and sincere. But he was also completely wrong about everything important. Is that better or worse?
      - scaramanga 5y ago
        I actually agree with you about him being intelligent and sincere. I am actually fascinated by people like him. The fact that he believes those idiotic things while having a seemingly very reasonable belief system around the goals and functions of the institutions he serves, and what his role is in them, is something I find quite darkly comical. Actually I think his sincerity makes his one-off performances laugh-out-loud funny. Watching the Errol Morris documentary with him is tragic and comic at the same time. I mean, take for instance his view on the Vietnam war. He goes from a very touching and thoughtful personal recollection of the evacuation to Saigon to telling us that his reflection over the entire decades-long US involvement in a conflict that murdered 4 million people as being "some things work out, some things don't." And this appears to be after quite a lot of prompting. It is profound, and inane in equal measure. Hannah Arendt would be slack-jawed.
stickfigure 5y ago
> believe that Iraq was becoming a nuclear threat led by a power-hungry man I presume you mean chemical threat? Let's not forget that Saddam seems to have done his best to encourage that belief, and actually had a verified history of gassing the Kurds. As someone who was opposed to the Iraq war at the time, I'm still not sure history has fully weighed in on that particular (mis)adventure... the Kurds certainly are entitled to their strong endorsement.
- scaramanga 5y ago
  The minor complication there is that the US defence establishment produced intelligence reports (available under FOIA) blaming the Iranians for chemical attacks. I think it wasn't until 2002 when the US intelligence agencies finally switched to publicly/officially recognising Saddam as the culprit.

by blunte 5y ago

scaramanga 5y ago

I hope nothing in my comment could be interpreted as excusing criminal wars of aggression. I am just trying to understand and make sense of why people tacitly support, or even actively participate in them.

blunte 5y ago
> I am just trying to understand and make sense of why people tacitly support, or even actively participate in them. That is a huge topic which I cannot hope to explain (or mostly understand). If you look at the shift in US political ideology in the last 5-10 years, particularly during the Trump era (which still continues), it is clear that some masterful manipulation scheme has been operating effectively. It is clearly possible to groom a significant percentage of a population to believe in absolute lies. This happened in the US after 9/11 (and surely in previous periods); but it was never so effective as it has been lately. The war in Iraq was easy to justify to Americans, even without WMD lies. Hussein was a very bad man by our standards. That alone, of course, does not justify invasion. So other threats must be illustrated, legitimate or not. But to the point of understanding, you have to realize that people (particularly older ones?) get their information from very few sources; and they communicate with the same few people. It is much easier to sell disinformation and have them repeat it amongst themselves than for younger, more internet-active people.
- scaramanga 5y ago
  The rise of Trumpist political forces is extremely alarming. But they stem from somewhere: mistrust in institutions which correlates hugely with support for people like Trump. If people cannot trust their leaders, they cannot trust institutions, they cannot trust reality itself, it leads them to exhaustion, defeatism, and towards supporting personalist rulers. When Trump lies he says "well everyone else is lying, the media is fake news, the government is the deep-state, but when I lie, at least I am honest that I am a liar" and that gives him a legitimacy in the eyes of his followers because all the complex issues boil down to "do you trust big brother or not?". So yes, the new era is worse than the old Bush era where Rumsfeld was a circus clown feeding us bullshit, but behind the scenes the institutions basically functioned properly. Because in that world that we have left behind now, we still had wars of aggression, we still had robber barons, but the institutions had a veneer of legitimacy which the public, and the people in the institutions believed in enough that you had countervailing political forces that could protect you from the worst excesses. But that past was a mirage, because during that time, the leaders were draining out that trust like siphoning gas out of your tank (eg. in the Iraq war, NAFTA, on and on..), and they were trading it for political power and dollars. Now the tank is empty, and US institutions are extremely vulnerable to collapse. And I think that Trump was just the last drop of gas escaping.
  - blunte 5y ago
    What a disappointingly accurate assessment. I think I'll hasten my 2-backpack relocation to a Thai beach and enjoy the last couple of decades.
  - nradov 5y ago
    If you actually pay close attention to what Donald Rumsfeld said and wrote, he wasn't a circus clown at all. He was actually quite intelligent and sincere. But he was also completely wrong about everything important. Is that better or worse?
    - scaramanga 5y ago
      I actually agree with you about him being intelligent and sincere. I am actually fascinated by people like him. The fact that he believes those idiotic things while having a seemingly very reasonable belief system around the goals and functions of the institutions he serves, and what his role is in them, is something I find quite darkly comical. Actually I think his sincerity makes his one-off performances laugh-out-loud funny. Watching the Errol Morris documentary with him is tragic and comic at the same time. I mean, take for instance his view on the Vietnam war. He goes from a very touching and thoughtful personal recollection of the evacuation to Saigon to telling us that his reflection over the entire decades-long US involvement in a conflict that murdered 4 million people as being "some things work out, some things don't." And this appears to be after quite a lot of prompting. It is profound, and inane in equal measure. Hannah Arendt would be slack-jawed.

stickfigure 5y ago

> believe that Iraq was becoming a nuclear threat led by a power-hungry man I presume you mean chemical threat? Let's not forget that Saddam seems to have done his best to encourage that belief, and actually had a verified history of gassing the Kurds. As someone who was opposed to the Iraq war at the time, I'm still not sure history has fully weighed in on that particular (mis)adventure... the Kurds certainly are entitled to their strong endorsement.

scaramanga 5y ago
The minor complication there is that the US defence establishment produced intelligence reports (available under FOIA) blaming the Iranians for chemical attacks. I think it wasn't until 2002 when the US intelligence agencies finally switched to publicly/officially recognising Saddam as the culprit.