The "real" motivation for the invasion of Iraq
Nothing too serious or partisan here.
Just wondering...we all have our preferred theory on the origins and motivations for the invasion of Iraq.
I've just spent half a day arguing with a conservative fellow, who firmly believes it was motivated by and large by the thought of doing good for the Iraqi people, a view I find difficult to swallow.
So, tell me what you guys think?
While there were almost certainly other contributing factors, my understanding has always been that we went into Iraq because it was thought that Saddam very likely had weapons of mass destruction, and after 9/11 we didn't want to risk him being able to do anything "evil" with them.
I think doing good for the Iraqis was completely off the table (or regarded as an agreeable bonus by the administration); while I am nowhere near educated enough to formulate any intelligent theory about it, there's no doubt in my mind that everything that administration did was for the good of America, or the good of itself. The Republican party has spent the last twenty years (at least) in the control of American exceptionalists, or worse, people who claim to be. Nothing was done for the good of the Iraqi people.
Middle East destabilization followed by oil.
Like Gwahir, I'd have to say that I don't know enough about matters to say for definite why America went to Iraq. However I am quite prepared to say it was not for the good of the Iraqi people, nor for that matter the protection of the U.S people from terrorism.
We have all heard the reasons given by government for this and none of them hold water as far as I am concerned.
Originally Posted by coqauvin
It seems almost Orwellian that people really just remember the whole thing exactly the way that the government told them to, despite having seen Bush make his "give up ur weapz" speech. I've had the conversation with my mother numerous times - "Well we went there to free the Iraqis." "We did? I don't remember that part of the speech Bush made before the invasion." "Well it's why we're there."
Regardless of your feelings about Iraq or the Bush administration, the reality is that we never discussed "Iraqi freedom" until after we found an embarrassing lack of WMDs there. And if we had invaded just to free the Iraqi people, then that goes against just about everything that America prides itself on when it comes to war behavior - like not making unprovoked attacks on other countries.
I believe the basic reason is pretty simple. Money.
Since 1971 OPEC has traded oil in U.S. dollars. So any nation that buys oil has to have large reserves of our currency. As a side effect, since all developed nations have these reserves already, it is simpler to use the dollar as basis for other trade as well. Which requires them all to have even larger reserves. That is why the dollar is the dominant world currency. It is also one of the primary reasons other countries are willing to buy our "we need some cash, hey, let's print more" debt.
Iraq, which has the 2nd or 3rd largest oil reserves in the world, began trading in Euros in 1999. Iran and someone else, I think Venezuela, started talking about switching also.
I'm no financial expert, but can you imagine what would happen to the dollar and the US economy if the dollar were no longer the dominant currency? The currency market would be flooded with nations getting rid of their massive dollar reserves. It would be much harder to sell our debt. The dollar would tank. It would not be pretty.
The answer? Go to war with Iraq and make them trade oil in dollars again. Nip that Euro idea right in the bud. Problem solved ... for now at least.
Saddam may have been repressive, but to the best of my knowledge, he was one of the more liberal Middle Eastern leaders. I have heard people try to connect Islamic terrorism with Saddam, but this is just nonsense, he had no links with them. In many ways he was the glue that held that country together, for better or worse. His removal allowed for extremists to pour in. So I feel the claim that it was to stop terrorism has a weak justification.
I think Gwahir, despite what little I know, makes a very valid point regarding the welfare of the Iraqi people - this was at very best, a verbal afterthought to try and give the war some credence.
You really cannot avoid the oil question - just how much did this motivate the decision? We do know that much, if not all of Iraq's oil supplies have been bought up by foreign business. However I am sadly lacking in any facts regarding the oil situation prior to the war, so really do not know how much thought and attention should be given to this.
I know that the UK is to hold a semi public inquiry into the war and the reasons for going, which may or may not shed some light on the situation. I doubt many of the big questions will be given a satisfactory answer, at least not for a long time.
We went to war with iraq because old george believed that for a president to be great he needed to go to war. He thought iraq would be quick and easy.
I don't know if I believe that or not but apparently bush said that to a reporter back in 99.
He is also on camera, back when he was the governer of Texas stating that it wasn't the role of the US to go around nation building. Not sure what happened to him. Indeed I have seen several interview clips of him in his pre president days, the man came across as agreeable.
We went to war in Iraq because the people running our country at that time had a misguided view of how the world works, and a misguided view of what role America can realistically play, and thought that removing Saddam and installing a democratic government in Iraq would accomplish something good for America and the region (and, to unknown but probably differing degrees, for themselves and their buddies). I don't think that the term "neo-conservatism" has much descriptive power--in fact I think it's misleading--but that's what people use to talk about this kind of ideology, so whatever. That kind of thinking took an iron grip of the Bush white house after 9/11. It's intrinsically arrogant, which is bad enough, but in this case it was sadly coupled with incompetence and bad forecasting of what Iraq would look like without Saddam's government.
I do think that George W. Bush genuinely and honestly believed he was doing a good thing for the US, Iraq, and the region and the world by removing Saddam. I do also think that Dick Cheney believed the same thing, to some degree. As I said, I think that the ideas that underpinned these beliefs were and are terribly misguided. Neo-conservatism holds that using American power to spread democracy and economic liberalism is good for America, good for the countries these things are spread to, and good for the world. Its a nice theory but it's just not realistic. Bad intel about the WMDs (which the historical record indicates that Bush personally did believe) helped the case a lot too.
One theory that doesn't hold up, in my view, is that the war was predominantly about oil. It's obviously impossible to talk about military operations in a country like Iraq without considering the issue of the oil, but I've seen no evidence that the actual decision to go to war was made based on considerations of oil. It's easy to speculate, as we've seen in this thread and many other places, but speculation without evidence doesn't mean much. Taco, your idea is interesting, but I don't think it holds up. I've never seen any evidence that the possibility of Iraq selling their oil for Euros caused that much consternation for the US government.
Gismo: As for Saddam being one of the more "liberal" Middle Eastern leaders, I don't know if that's the word I'd use. His government was certainly one of the region's more secular, though; definitely no connection there between him and AQ or other Islamic fundamentalists groups, unlike the governments of several other Middle Eastern states. Ba'ath parties have always been explicitly secular and pan-Arabist, which puts them at the opposite end of the spectrum from, say, the Saudis. I assume this is what you meant?
Last edited by Syme; 07-19-2009 at 06:45 PM.
Question Syme:
If George Bush believed the bad intel, why do you think he and his top-level advisors also continue to use this bad intel even after it came to light that it was untrue?
I can get you some examples if you like.
Last edited by MrShrike; 07-19-2009 at 08:40 PM.
No need for examples, I know what you're talking about. Once the war had begun, I don't think it's hard to understand why they would continue arguing that there might be WMDs even after it came out that the initial analysis was bad. "Ass-covering" and "doctrinal inertia" are two phrases that come to mind. Obviously, at that point, it was irresponsible and reprehensible of them to continue trying to justify their pointless war with the obviously bogus WMD excuse; I'm not saying that the administration acted acceptably with regard to the WMD scare, I'm just saying that there was never a point before the war where George Bush knew that the Iraqis had no WMDs and decided to go ahead and invade them anyhow. It's unfortunate that the facts of the pre-war drumup have been simplified to the fact that people have that view. He uncritically accepted analysis to that effect, but that's not the same thing as knowing it was wrong. The information revealing the problems in the WMD theory did not percolate up to his level, which is one of the major intelligence failings that the Senate intel commitee identified with the CIA's dissemination practices in 2002-2003.
Last edited by Syme; 07-19-2009 at 11:14 PM.
Yes, this was what I was getting at. Liberal probably wasn't the best word to describe him, but you got what I meant so that is what matters.
I know this is just one of those conspiracy theories, but have you guys ever heard the people that say there WERE WMDs and the Govt. just didnt tell up because they didnt think we needed to know the mass numbers that he had/were being produced. Ill try and see if I can find it.
Im not saying this is true. Just that Ive heard this.
I have my doubts over that. The main one being that it killed Tony Blair's political career...he must have got paid alot to keep that one under wraps, if it were true.
If WMDs actually had been found in Iraq, it would have been incredibly beneficial to the US and UK governments to publicize the hell out of that fact, and would have done a lot to vindicate the decisions of Bush, Blair, and others. I find it hard to imagine any reason that they would want to keep any quantity of Iraqi WMDs, no matter how large, secret from the public. They more they found, the better it would be for them; why would they ever make a decision to cover up WMDs because there were too many of them?. It just doesn't make sense in the slightest. Does this conspiracy theory hold that the government was afraid people would panic if they knew that Iraq had lots of WMDs? We went for decades with everyone knowing that the Soviets had tens of thousands of the hydrogen bombs, as well as extensive nerve gas stockpiles. How much worse could Iraq's arsenal have been? I don't think Iraq would even have had the technical or economic ability to produce so many WMDs that the US government would decide their arsenal was literally too big for people to handle hearing about.
Even if they did find a shitload of WMDs and decided that the public shouldn't know the full scale of the findings, they probably would have at least revealed some of them and kept the rest secret, to cover their asses and justify a war that was desperately in need of justification. It just beggars belief that there could be any sensible reason to cover it up.
Overall, I'd say that this conspiracy theory is retarded and utterly implausible. Unlike some other conspiracy theories, there's not even any conceivable motive that makes a lick of sense.
Last edited by Syme; 07-21-2009 at 04:50 PM.
Let me bust out the whole conspiracy thing.
Bush was an oil man. So was Cheney.
They invaded Iraq which allowed the oil companies to price gouge whilst using the war as an excuse.
Both Bush and Cheney got kickbacks from this.
For a serious note, I dunno whether or not Bush did it for the good of anyone or if he honestly believed Sadam had weapons of mass destruction. However, I do find it fucking freaky that Rumsfeld sent Bush pictures of the war with bible passages on them. Just saying.
Meh. People got in such a tizzy about this. So what. Conservative Christians in a Republican administration, what a shock. Of all the fucked-up things about the Iraq war, it's pretty near the bottom of the list.
The thing about invading Iraq to jack up oil prices is retarded. If nothing else, if oil companies want to increase oil prices, they can do so a lot more easily and reliably than getting the US, the UK, and a bunch of other nations to invade an oil-producing country. And if they did want to do it that way for some reason, Iraq was a shitty choice of countries to invade. The oil price spike produced by the invasion of Iraq was brief anyhow. Like most Iraq invasion conspiracy theories, nothing adds up on this one. It would be an utterly stupid way to try to manipulate oil prices.
Last edited by Syme; 07-23-2009 at 01:00 PM.
Being blissfully ignorant of politics and the "reasons" for anything our government does, yet having been on the ground for the invasion, I'll offer my own insights.
If our leaders truly put us over there for reasons other than WMDs, I'd be surprised. Everything from our training to briefings indicated that we would likely face biological and/or chemical weapons. The precedent had been set during the Iran-Iraq war and Saddam's dealings with the Kurds. We carried gas masks during all the initial phases of operations and other MOPP gear was close at hand, including autoinjectors which were carried in the mask case. Every time a SCUD was launched we had to don masks and head to the rally point. My team leader counted 23 real life NBC alerts, each of which we prepared for possible biological or chemical contamination. Our orders were for six months with a "possible" extension up to 1 year and our leaders were telling us we would be home in four months. "Nation building" was a phase conducted after we destroyed the Baath regime in order to better quality of life for Iraqis. America being America, we then decided we had to not only help rebuild but to set up a new government, police the streets and effectively occupy Iraq for the foreseeable future. That precedent was set in WWII and carried through Korea, Vietnam, and other conflicts. Unless every level of military leadership was misled by our executive powers, our initial reason for invading was to topple Saddam due to his stubbornness when it came to disclosing info about possible WMDs.
No offence or disrespect FM but I honestly doubt any soldiers would be given any reason to think they were fighting for reasons other than WMDs. The motives of those in charge are virtually never the same as those on lower levels. This is true in virtually every area of society, from big business (where low-level employees believe their priority is the customer but those at the top only care about profits) to music (where bands/artists feel their creativity is the most important thing but to record companies it's the cash) all the way to fundamentalist muslim terrorists (where the suicide bombers and guerrilla soldiers believe they are fighting for Allah but, of course, to the clerics and leaders it almost always a much more political/financial battle [see: Bin Laden]).
FM, I hear what you're saying, but the decision to invade Iraq was made at a totally different level than the decision to take the potential battlefield NBC threat seriously, so I don't think they have much to do with each other. In other words, just because Gen. Franks and his staff (or whoever) decided to take that potential threat very seriously, and to pass down the word to unit commanders, that doesn't mean that the senior civilian officials of the Bush administration necessarily made their decision to invade based on fear of Iraqi WMD programs.
That said, I do agree that the decision was significantly influenced by WMD fears, albeit fears stemming from bad intelligence that Bush and his crew uncritically accepted because it squared up with their pre-existing desire to invade Iraq (something neocons have been wanting to do since 1991). And yeah, Saddam's stubborn refusal to comply fully with UN inspections certainly helped those fears to be trumped up, too.
We lost more money on the war then all the oil in the middle east could get us back. Your first part is a fine theory, but your second part? Try again.
I personally believe that destabilization was maybe not a priority, but at least a motive. I think the real reason was that Bush wanted to finish what daddy dearest had started a decade earlier.
It bothers me when people say America invaded for oil though, a simple review of the logistics and expenses reveals that it's pretty harebrained.
The country lost more money, the rich fuckers at the oil/construction companies made a shitload.
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