Why are we in Iraq?

[pmb]

I was reading an argument and somebody suggested that if we disagreed with the Iraq war that we contact our legislators and tell them that we disagreed with the policy behind it. The policy was named in this post "strategic preemption". But that's not right.

Because it's not strategic preemption - that's the old rationale. Now we're there to free the Iraqi people and bring them democracy. But that's clearly not the whole story either. This leaves all of us who never bought the first reason scratching our heads and wondering what the hell the REAL reason is/was.

Because they never had any weapons of mass destruction, and we KNEW that, and we've pretty clearly preempted the hell out of any nascent WMD production in Iraq, but we're still there. And they've voted and have a nominal democracy that doesn't want us there anymore and we are still there. And Iraq didn't kill 3,000 people on US soil, but somehow the war in Iraq is/was crucial to the overall struggle in a way that has never been properly articulated.

So I would argue against the doctrine if only I knew what the doctrine was. Imperialism, maybe? Fascism? Corporatism? Stupidity? Bull-headedness? Crusadism? Anything besides the overly bland non-descriptor "neo conservatism".

I just don't know. I'm losing it, man.

Comments

[magicpacket.livejournal.com]

I believe the claim of "crucial to the overall struggle" goes something like this: Yes, they've had elections, but there is enough controversy about who and how to run the country that our troops are the only thing keeping a civil war at bay. If a civil war develops, Terrorist organizations will get into the fray and either emerge the victor or they'll have the victor by the balls and be in control in all but name.

I'm not sure how much I buy such an argument, but I'm pretty sure that's how it goes.

[pmb.livejournal.com]

But will having a foreign occupying military in place encourage or discourage acts of terrorism based on hypernationalism? Is Iraq even a country, or is it really Kurdistan, Fallujahville and Baghdadland and the 3 want nothing to do with each other? Is occupying and policing an entire country while rebuilding their national infrastructure and fanning the flames of nascent democracy and ensuring that only non-psycho leaders are elected really a doable job?

And why are we there in the first place? WMDs were the excuse, but what was the reason? That's the real question I want answered. Were the architects of the war evil or stupid? And what were their evil/stupid reasons?

Stupid *and* evil.

[flamingweasel.livejournal.com]

By annihilating the socialist government in Iraq, they could test two hypotheses. First, they could see if starting a democracy would cause a domino effect* among the countries in the region. Secondly, they could turn Iraq into a model neocon nation. Within a few months of taking over the provisional government (that is, Bremer) had destroyed the state-run infrastructure and was attempting to entirely rewrite the laws to turn Iraq into a model for conservative ideals (no taxes, no state services, no rules for businesses).

Apart from being entirely illegal -- that pesky Geneva convention has something to say about occupying armies turning lawful police actions into excuses to create client states, namely, it's not okay** -- it didn't work. At all. Our ham-handed occupation has turned the entire region against us, probably permanently. The democracies in the region have radicalized in the opposite direction we intended. And as soon as the young men who were pissed off because they're out of work because Bremer fucking fired not only them but their fathers and all their uncles, plus turned the water and electricity off, plus made them deal with a bunch of meatheads in humvees who weren't given any training in dealing with a pissed off population, once they (the pissed off young men) started cutting off people's heads, well, business decided that waiting a couple dozen years might be the best idea.

*: Note the allusion to Vietnam, which I've read from several sources. I'm fairly sure another reason for waging this war is to prove to ourselves that we could tell other countries what they wanted and win this time. Prove all those stupid hippies who ruined the real Vietnam wrong.

**: Check out this article for a lot more on this. Short version: remember how suddenly the provisional government under Bremer handed over power to a provisional Iraqi authority? Well, we couldn't directly rewrite their laws. But an "Iraqi" government could. So we just wrote the laws and tried to have them sign off on them. Cute, eh? Didn't actually work, because the Iraqis we put in power had a brain in their head and saw those pissed off young men who were about to start uniting would come after collaborators too.