Yes, that was the problem.
Or you know, don't invade foreign countries, and lay down the disgusting imperialist mindset.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Or you know, don't invade foreign countries, and lay down the disgusting imperialist mindset.
The war would not have happened without the support of the American people, and the support was overwhelming. Talking to Americans online at that time was like talking to a fundamentalist christian. All reason was thrown out of the window and replaced by patriotic fervour.
I'd also like to point out that the people responsible got away with it and continue to get away with it. The American people have owned these atrocities as well as Russians have dealt with their own dirty past. Sorry, but this turd is on you, and you deserve to get your noses rubbed in it.
I was a French person against the war and living in the UK at the time. The amount of xenophobic insults thrown at me during that period even from my friends just totally turned me into a cynic. I couldn't believe how easily everyone believed the propaganda at the time and were for the war.
Edit: and everyone seems to have a short memory as well as they all have seemed to have forgotten they'd behaved that way back then and are all anti Iraq war retrospectively…
I remember seeing a Reddit post about people like that who did fuck all to help black people during the 60s and 70s and then tell their kids how they made a difference to the world. This reminds me of that.
Lol yeah, why would be actually read and try to understand a person that actually lived through the actual fact in first person, who btw is not excusing any of the historical facts, when we can talk shit from out ivory tower without having in mind all the personal and historical context that probably determined his actual actions and decisions at that time, twenty fucking years ago.
Y'all should try to spoke to actual humans in real life from time to time.
I'll only add one more thing to this thread: god bless the Dixie Chicks, Fogerty and all the folks that stood up against this bloodshed.
Y'all should try to spoke to actual humans in real life from time to time.
I'll only add one more thing to this thread: god bless the Dixie Chicks, Fogerty and all the folks that stood up against this bloodshed.
I installed gravity-fed water systems for villages in Honduras and never needed a gun to do it.
Yup. As a Canadian everyone I knew was convinced Bush would start a war if elected.
We learn nothing and we keep falling for propaganda and our old demons because we know nothing about ourselves. We should truly look at our education system and media. Fear, pride and hate are powerful tools people in power use again and again for terrible abuses.
We can all fall for it. I was ambiguous about that war because I knew Saddam was terrible and there was this fear another major terrorist attack was about to happen. I didn't want Canada to participate to the war but I didn't know what would happen.
Realizing we are all easily manipulated is a first step a lot of people will never do.
Nation building is a myth if the country themselves don't want you there helping them to rebuild, IE post WWII Germany or Japan, or you are sending your own population there to repopulate and control the country, IE all the atrocities of the ancient world after conquerors moved in. All you get when the USA invades countries like Iraq or Afghanistan is a situation that is worse then when you left because you destroy the structures of power, however fucked up they may be, and no one in the country actually wants to be a typical western nation so it turns to chaos when you leave. The biggest piece of propaganda about the US military we need to kill is the myth of nation building. It hasn't happened in the last 60 years anywhere.
...and the UK, and AUS, and the Netherlands, Poland, and other European participants
Trump is a prick, did a bunch of illegal shit, helped normalize fascism in the US, and is a Russian agent, but he's got nothing on W.
Bush is the worst president in modern US history (post-Nixon) and it's not even close. We're going to continue dealing with the fallout of his decisions for decades to come.
Of course the American people aren't blameless. Not sure why anyone would think they would be. It was Afghanistan that received broad support in the wake of 9/11. The invasion of Iraq was always a harder sell with much less support in comparison.
Bush is the worst president in modern US history (post-Nixon) and it's not even close. We're going to continue dealing with the fallout of his decisions for decades to come.
Of course the American people aren't blameless. Not sure why anyone would think they would be. It was Afghanistan that received broad support in the wake of 9/11. The invasion of Iraq was always a harder sell with much less support in comparison.
I don't care about people who had 20 years to reflect on their involvement in one of the worst wars in modern history and came away with anything less than abject horror.
This all started in the 80s with Reagan with the Iran-Conta affair
It was genuinely viewed as absurd at the time by many of us, with your exact reaction. But it's the perfect microcosm: much like the war itself there was little any of us could do to stop it, despite our many protests.
A question I have asked in threads about "cancel culture" is "Who has been 'canceled' and legitimately didn't deserve it?' I have gotten very few good answers, but a good one I didn't think of was The Chicks. Fortunately they still have a career, but IIRC they were blacklisted by most of the country music industry back then.
Same. The invasion started when I was in middle school and I lived in a VERY red area of Texas. Everyone drank the Koolaid there and it took me going to college to realize that this was wrong. It's no excuse, but it's still awful that everyone was like that.
To be fair this is still a meme today lol. I have seen this picture used plenty of timesIf the internet was bigger at the time, this would've been an even more legendary meme. I remember JD in Scrubs reading the "Iraq War for Dummies" book then saying "I got to the part where they said 'Mission Accomplished,' but I'm only a quarter of the way through the book"
Next up, a real lived-in experience from an IDF soldier building a hospital in occupied Palestine, followed by a Russian soldier setting up a drinking water system in Ukraine.
Nobody wants to read an invaders account unless there's self-reflection and contrition.
Plenty of people were bothered it, but they were completely drowned out by the much larger swath of vengeful people who wanted to slaughter X Arab and/or Muslim populace, and it didn't particularly matter which one. There wasn't any real distinction drawn; to some extent, there still isn't. And brainwashing was in full effect with many of the kids who enlisted.
This country was bloodthirsty and completely blinded by vengeance after 9/11, and it was far from just those on the right. The most otherwise innocuous popular media - fiction, news, everything - was incredibly and casually xenophobic and it was not only broadly accepted but even encouraged. It wasn't a fun time. I don't know that things have significantly improved.
Lol
Pure privilege being spoken here. Maybe having 19 years in the middle of an historical propaganda effort after a traumatizing once-in-a-century terrorist attack and with no other way to pay a degree could make yourself an "invader".
Blame the people that start and benefit from the wars, not the fucking pawns that put their bodies in the frontline. And btw I don't see the poster trying to do anything that telling its own first person experience.
Last edited:
I was probably about 14 or 15 when Iraq was invaded. The Bush presidency was the start of my awareness of politics. I grew up in Texas, so obviously the majority of people around me where all about the Bush presidency and the war, but thankfully my parents are pretty left leaning and helped provide another point of view. It was a mind boggling time. So many people were sold on this war and it seemed, even then, such an obvious lie. The rehabilitation of Bush is one of the more disgusting byproducts of the age of Trump.
I did not see the full context of that conversation thread. Um. I Maybe should have done so first.
I don't get why you used the quote to describe invaders, unless you think they were not?
Also: no one forces a 19 years old to go to war in a country so that they can pay their school. I don't understand how this is somehow a good excuse? Do we use the same for the conscripts Russians invading Ukraine? Because by reading the thread on this very forum, I can see double standards.
He does not owe you anything.
You don't speak for everyone. Several people have thanked him for his contributions to to this thread and evidently wanted to read his account.
The cognitive dissonance on this forum where people will say all Russians are responsible for Putin's war crimes but American soldiers are just poor victims of the U.S. war machine is wild, but completely unsurprising. American exceptionalism wraps around to become self-pitying.
Life can get way, way more complicated for someone to judge it so easily. Specially without knowing any of the specific factors such as race, wealth and so on. That ofc applies to any other case in the world, Russians, Israelis, whatever. And this case in particular had a full propaganda machine that back in the day worked extremely well.
Don't judge life's people so easily, specially when someone is simply sharing a first person POV. That's all I'm trying to say here.
As someone who's entire family was in Baghdad and Mosul at the time, just wanna say thanking anyone for their service in the war is truly brain dead.
You're right, he should have clarified that nobody who isn't a western chauvinist seeking absolution for the misdeeds of empire and assuagement for their own feelings of imperial humiliation wants to hear it
I remember seeing that on the news and feeling a fucking swell of relief.
I remember how bloodthirsty a lot of people were during the onset of the Iraq invasion, and how casual they were about it. "Nuke them," "Glass the entire country," "Wipe them off the map," were common sentiments I heard back in the day, without a single shred of irony. War propaganda is a helluva drug. Sentiments of course shifted once it became apparent how much of a farce the war was, but people were definitely giddy at the prospect of a slaughter.
Personally I just wouldn't have went to college but you do you.
Also fuck John Howard for getting Australia involved.
Let's also not forget the the Iraq war pretty much created ISIS
View: https://youtu.be/4yPTAxI8wTY
Let's also not forget the the Iraq war pretty much created ISIS
View: https://youtu.be/4yPTAxI8wTY
Nobody is judging that he joined the military at 19 and fought.
But it's been 20 years, maybe some introspective? We were an invading force, a person who served shouldn't sugarcoat it by saying "WELL I DID SOME GOOD".
Another soldier posted after recognizing that but this other dude is beyond reproach?
I dunno, maybe it's me but I don't see any sugarcoat, just a personal experience. The historical fact itself is horrific beyond doubt and I find very enlighting to know the first hand experience of someone that lived thru that well before that it turned into the bloodshed that we all know. He also talks about the wild differences between the two deployments. But yeah I kinda get your point.
Yep, this matches my memory too. I remember being dogpiled for merely posting an article critical of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq without even any commentary, and people who defended me, did so by saying "hey now she didn't say she agreed with the article, relax"... lol 💀 (Fake edit: I remember now, it was actually about Afghanistan and pre-Iraq in this particular case, but my overall point stands)
Comparisons to Christian fundies is honestly pretty accurate.
Also accurate, I remember talking with people about how he'd just return to Iraq "like his daddy did". Surprise surprise, that's exactly what he did. I was an older teenager at the time of his first election and not particularly politically savvy yet even I could smell the bullshit, it boggled my mind that he was not only elected, managed to convince everyone that his invasion of Iraq was justified, but also was RE-ELECTED afterwards too.
For real.
Couldn't agree more. But outside of maybe Allies of WW2 I've always felt that "thank you for your service" in general is brain dead, propaganda-guzzling, sheep mentality, tbh. >_>
You know I don't really disagree with any of this, and I appreciate you making this thread. But I admit it's kind of weird how you seem to routinely selectively apply your benefit of doubt towards brainwashed individuals depending on their affiliation. :\
Dubya ran on a pretty much non-interventionist policy during his 2000 campaign. He wasn't fond of nation-building.
THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: FOREIGN POLICY; A Delicate Dance of the Interventionist and the Reluctant Internationalist (Published 2000)
Analysis of foreign policy issues raised in presidential debate between Vice Pres Al Gore and Gov George W Bush; both candidates seem to see little electoral advantage in fighting over issue, with each politely warning of foreign entanglements they might avoid; Gore portrays self as...
That all changed with 9/11.
Sure. But once you realize that a bunch of his foreign policy guys were the same people that were working with Reagan (and his dad especially), the writing was on the wall.
Last edited:
yeah I was gonna add that having people like Rumsfeld or Cheney in the cabinet probably led to the decisions taken vis-a-vis Iraq. I think even Gore would have attacked Afghanistan, the Taliban and Al Qaeda after 9/11.
That whole nightmare taught us a valuable lesson. When emotions are running high, and you feel like you have to "do something", you always have the option to do nothing at all. It can be hard to remember that. But imagine if the psychological response to 9/11 was "do nothing at all". It's difficult to put into words how much better the world might be.
Hard to look back and believe it was 20 years ago already but yeah, sounds about right.
If there was any justice, Bush, Kissinger and Cheney would have all died in the Hague next to Milosevic.
If there was any justice, Bush, Kissinger and Cheney would have all died in the Hague next to Milosevic.
I hope this isn't what I think it is...Is it? Are you bringing up Shamima Begum's UK case?
You're right, he doesn't owe me anything. But he don't get to ride a chinook helicopter or land in a foreign country strapped with an M-16, go build a hospital and ignore everything that led up to that point. That's what I wanted to see - a self-reflection. Golly gee, Pakistanis! Syrians! How THE FUCK does he think they ended up in Iraq in the first place? If you create a problem, you don't fucking get a thank you card for attempting to clean it up.
People in America have been thanking people who served forever. An Invader's account of "how I built a hospital" might be a feelgood story of the year to people here, but not to million dead Muslims.
Last edited:
staff post - stay on topic
Official Staff Communication
Guys, how about we keep this thread on topic instead of talking about each other and making the thread into some navel-gazing metacommentary dumpsterfire.
This was a very horrible thing that happened and let's not cheapen it by redirecting our anger towards each other. If we can't do that, we will unfortunately need to lock the thread. Given how big an issue this war has been for so many, and how much it has affected the world, we'd like to avoid that.
Past few years it's still wracked by political instability and sectarian violence. Government still kills people who dissent and protest, political figures get assassinated.
I guess what I'm saying is it's an ongoing mess, not something that 'happened'. It's just not covered by the news anymore.
I guess what I'm saying is it's an ongoing mess, not something that 'happened'. It's just not covered by the news anymore.
Or that there are multiple bad guys, because Saddam sure as hell wasn't the good guy in this