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> America was wrong. Was it? Getting rid of dictators should never be wrong in itself, and the US military can steamroll just about everyone than Russia and Ch

> America was wrong. Was it? Getting rid of dictators should never be wrong in itself, and the US military can steamroll just about everyone than Russia and China. The thing that the US did fuck up - both in Iraq and Afghanistan - was the post-war / recovery / rebuild phase. They didn't provide a clear path towards success for the everyday people.

vundercind 3y ago
We killed a hell of a lot of civilians and destabilized the area in predictable ways, while giving Iran a new playground (also, predictably). There’s a straight line between this, to Syria, to the immigrant crisis in Europe. Hell, Brexit may have failed or not even gotten momentum to become A Thing if not for it. So yes, we were wrong. And we should have known it at the time. It didn’t exactly take a crystal ball to tell what the likely outcomes were (though I admit I didn’t see the effects bleeding over to Europe so strongly!)
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > There’s a straight line between this, to Syria, to the immigrant crisis in Europe. Syria was a result of the Arab Spring, people were fed up with Assad, and instead of supporting the opposition Obama didn't care about any "red lines" and eventually Russia moved in. Iraq, I partially agree - had the West actually done something to mediate the old conflicts, to provide the people with a source of income, or to prosecute corruption, the country would have had a way better run. The entire Arab Spring's handling by the West was madness. We could have helped actual, legitimate democracy grow on the foundations of the fed-up masses in the region, by providing aid and assistance as well as act as an oversight authority to keep corruption and crime in check, but no, we just looked the other way as many thousands were killed or tortured, and eventually the old elites took power again - and the "soft power", the prestige the US enjoyed, all went down the drain, with the final nail in the coffin being the handling of the Kurds in Syria.
  - vundercind 3y ago
    The Syrian civil war was cross-border. ISIS held a large chunk of Iraq at one point. I doubt it’d have lasted as long as it has if that hadn’t been a factor (and the US deliberately making it last longer but not acting decisively enough to end it in victory for “our” side, but that’s a separate matter)
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      Yeah, but now imagine that Iraq had been a decently stable country... there's a reason why ISIS was able to take that much of the country.
arp242 3y ago
My impression was that they always imaged something like occupied Europe after the second world war, where everyone would line up on the streets with US flags, all the girls would fuck the soldiers, and then things would sort itself out in a relatively short amount of time. Of course none of that happened because the situations just aren't comparable in any meaningful way. --- Before one of the Dutch missions to Afghanistan there was a lot of talk of "winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people". Unlike the strict and "mean" US we'd be more friendly and charming. There is perhaps some truth to that, but none of that really changes the fundamentals. One of the reports about this had some embedded journalist accompanying Dutch troops doing their patrols in the Afghan villages checking for Taliban. They knock on a door. No one answers. They kick in the door and search the house. Later the owner comes back so they explain the situation and give him some money for the door after which they leave, having found nothing. The journalist asks the man what he thought of the Dutch troops to see if we had "won the hearts and minds". He stands there, with the money in his hand, and just says "they just destroyed my door". And what more is there to say? Imagine something like that would happen to you or me: the military would completely wreck our door and search our house while we're at work. No warrant. No probably cause. No nothing. Only "we were just checking". We'd cry authoritarian jackbooted fascists, and rightfully so. Now imagine they're foreign soldiers from the other side of the world who don't even speak your language. My point being: I'm not sure if it was ever going to be a success unless control could be handed over very quickly, and it always unlikely that was going to result in success – Afghanistan had been in a civil war for 10 years already, and Iraq is one of those fundamentally unstable post-colonial countries.

vundercind 3y ago

We killed a hell of a lot of civilians and destabilized the area in predictable ways, while giving Iran a new playground (also, predictably). There’s a straight line between this, to Syria, to the immigrant crisis in Europe. Hell, Brexit may have failed or not even gotten momentum to become A Thing if not for it. So yes, we were wrong. And we should have known it at the time. It didn’t exactly take a crystal ball to tell what the likely outcomes were (though I admit I didn’t see the effects bleeding over to Europe so strongly!)

mschuster91 3y ago
> There’s a straight line between this, to Syria, to the immigrant crisis in Europe. Syria was a result of the Arab Spring, people were fed up with Assad, and instead of supporting the opposition Obama didn't care about any "red lines" and eventually Russia moved in. Iraq, I partially agree - had the West actually done something to mediate the old conflicts, to provide the people with a source of income, or to prosecute corruption, the country would have had a way better run. The entire Arab Spring's handling by the West was madness. We could have helped actual, legitimate democracy grow on the foundations of the fed-up masses in the region, by providing aid and assistance as well as act as an oversight authority to keep corruption and crime in check, but no, we just looked the other way as many thousands were killed or tortured, and eventually the old elites took power again - and the "soft power", the prestige the US enjoyed, all went down the drain, with the final nail in the coffin being the handling of the Kurds in Syria.
- vundercind 3y ago
  The Syrian civil war was cross-border. ISIS held a large chunk of Iraq at one point. I doubt it’d have lasted as long as it has if that hadn’t been a factor (and the US deliberately making it last longer but not acting decisively enough to end it in victory for “our” side, but that’s a separate matter)
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    Yeah, but now imagine that Iraq had been a decently stable country... there's a reason why ISIS was able to take that much of the country.

arp242 3y ago

My impression was that they always imaged something like occupied Europe after the second world war, where everyone would line up on the streets with US flags, all the girls would fuck the soldiers, and then things would sort itself out in a relatively short amount of time. Of course none of that happened because the situations just aren't comparable in any meaningful way. --- Before one of the Dutch missions to Afghanistan there was a lot of talk of "winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people". Unlike the strict and "mean" US we'd be more friendly and charming. There is perhaps some truth to that, but none of that really changes the fundamentals. One of the reports about this had some embedded journalist accompanying Dutch troops doing their patrols in the Afghan villages checking for Taliban. They knock on a door. No one answers. They kick in the door and search the house. Later the owner comes back so they explain the situation and give him some money for the door after which they leave, having found nothing. The journalist asks the man what he thought of the Dutch troops to see if we had "won the hearts and minds". He stands there, with the money in his hand, and just says "they just destroyed my door". And what more is there to say? Imagine something like that would happen to you or me: the military would completely wreck our door and search our house while we're at work. No warrant. No probably cause. No nothing. Only "we were just checking". We'd cry authoritarian jackbooted fascists, and rightfully so. Now imagine they're foreign soldiers from the other side of the world who don't even speak your language. My point being: I'm not sure if it was ever going to be a success unless control could be handed over very quickly, and it always unlikely that was going to result in success – Afghanistan had been in a civil war for 10 years already, and Iraq is one of those fundamentally unstable post-colonial countries.