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Volkerball posted:That's not what you argued. You claimed Saddam made calculations like agreeing to the oil for food program in order to ease the burden on the Iraqi people to maintain stability. That is false. The oil for food program was an opportunity for the regime to benefit itself, and Saddam took it. If he could've taken 100% of the proceeds, he would've done it. quote:On rare and isolated occasions, he found using oil money to toss food/water/buildings at people slightly more useful than putting the boot in. No poo poo the regime profited, I never accused the corpse whose mind you have evidently read of being altruistic. But when he saw he could two-birds-with-one-stone by using oil to buy food, he did it.
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Aug 7, 2016 06:33
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Oh god this is what I was afraid of. You nerds are still bad at telling stories.
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Aug 7, 2016 06:35
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Lightning Knight posted:Oh god this is what I was afraid of. You nerds are still bad at telling stories. They're great at telling stories, they just end when Aragorn defeats Sauron.
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Aug 7, 2016 06:38
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OK, since we're doing story time. I was in my third year of a computer science degree, back in South Africa. When 9/11 started, I was hanging around the computer lab. Almost nobody had have always-on internet at home (these were the days of dial-up), and almost nobody had access to international news channels (satellite TV was just starting to be a thing, cable didn't exist), so we hung around in the computer lab using the university internet to try and stream coverage from the CNN website. We didn't really get to see the towers fall, though we did kinda recover, through massively overwhelmed news sites, the extent of it all. I remember a black guy saying "I was wondering how long it would be before something like this happened." A few months later, in December, I went to the UK, for what ended up being a gap year. On the flight out (my first flight on my own, and only about the third time flying), I had to be careful not to put my tweezers in my hand luggage, because bullshit security theatre had started happening. When I got to London, the economy had taken a huge beating, and the IT industry was pretty wrecked, so my dream of getting a job based on 3/4 of a CS degree didn't pan out. I remember in one of my early jobs stacking boxes in a Marks and Spencer warehouse, one of my co-workers was a recently laid-off Nigerian web developer. I did random jobs -- data entry, working in a library, a sewing shop, an alternative clothing store. I kinda tuned things out for most of that year, since I was running around London, discovering everything a big city had to offer after a life in a small town. I remember being annoyed at having to call the thing "9/11", since this emphasised the backwards American date format. But, towards the end of the year (2002), it became increasingly clear that the UK was going to join the US in invading Iraq. Some friends were going to an anti-war protest outside parliament, and I joined them. Counts varied between 100,000 and 500,000 people, but it was a massive protest, representing a significant fraction of the UK population. The march itself was pretty subdued. We strolled slowly through a course lined with police officers. I do remember a pair of (presumably Palestinian) girls with some banners and chants equating Ariel Sharon with George Bush, both as butchers of Muslims. A few weeks later I flew home to South Africa to finish my degree and get on with my masters. By this time security screenings had increased to removing shoes (porno-scanners weren't a thing yet). A few months on from that, the invasion happened. The night of the invasion, our independent TV channel screened "Wag the Dog" as its Saturday-night movie. Our government leaders strongly denounced the war. Hmm ... oh yeah, one other anecdote. The following year, my parents decided to have a belated 21st birthday party for me, since I'd turned 21 while in the UK. There was a guy I and some of my friends knew from our local hangout in my home town, who came to the party. He'd been a medic in Iraq, so I guess he must have been American, though I kinda remember him having a South African accent. Maybe he was with a mercenary outfit? I don't know. Anyway, he had fun stories, about being in a vehicle hit by an IED, and trying to put his friend's skull together after it was shattered by shrapnel. I remember at my party, my mother remarking that he had jumped when we popped the champagne. The PTSDers had started to return. I guess maybe to round it off, my first experience of visiting the US: Back in 2005, in the first year of my masters, some of us had the opportunity to travel to the big international conference in our field. That year it was held in Detroit. I have both UK and South African citizenship, but I decided to get a visa on my South African passport rather than use the visa-free entry my UK passport afforded me. Mainly this was because my aunt (also a dual national) had travelled to a proton radiotherapy conference in the US recently, and been given poo poo at the border for coming from South Africa on a UK passport. Of course, the same border agent apparently asked her "you didn't bring any of these 'protons' with you, did you?" so maybe that wasn't the best reference point for that decision. All in all, getting a visa wasn't too bad, though it was kinda funny that, as a South African male aged 21-45, I had to fill out and sign a special form, attesting that I was not a terrorist, and had not been involved in the war crimes of Nazi Germany (how that even added up is a mystery). The flight in was fairly uneventful, though long -- 23 hours in the plane for the main hop. We had to stop to refuel in the Canary Islands, but they wouldn't let us out. I remember during this, a pair of American women behind me, speculating about how they could maybe let us out of the plane, but inside a pen, to stretch our legs. They then dismissed this, and accepted the situation as part of the "war on terror". "Whatever it takes", said the one. "Whatever it takes", repeated the other, without a hint of irony. The only other related note would be that on the flight from Atlanta to Detroit, there was a guy sitting behind us having a conversation with someone he'd met about his job as a US Army mortician, which mostly involved rebuilding and airbrushing the mutilated bodies of soldiers so the funeral could be open casket. Border security was gruff, but not too bad, and on the way there was some discussion with the (American) head of our research group, who was comparing it to a conference he'd been to recently in Israel, which is much more stringent. I'd also dated a Russian girl in London, and she had storied about Russian border security (which didn't sound like it had gotten much better since the fall of the Soviet Union). So, US border security -- not quite as invasive as Israel or Russia. Way to go, guys. During the trip, I wanted to go and get some gifts for my girlfriend. I also wanted to buy a digital camera, which due to import duty would be way cheaper over there. I'd gone to a mall in Detroit without much luck, then realised I could bus over the border to Windsor, where there was a mall closer than any on the US side. I did this, and spent a few hours wandering around the bustling Metropolis of Windsor, before heading back. Now, I wanted to be able to claim back my federal sales tax on the stuff I bought in Canada, which required stopping at the duty free, which was in the weird no-man's-land between borders. Only, the bus driver forgot to stop at the duty free. Now I was living on a South African grad student's stipend, so the $40 that I could claim back was kind of a lot of money to me at the time. So, when I reached the other side, I told the agents that I wanted to go back. Welp. They escorted me to the bus stop, in a "we don't have our weapons drawn, but you're under armed guard" kind of way. There was a glass bus shelter there, mostly enclosed, and sweltering hot in the Detroit summer. "Have a seat sir!" "It's kinda hot, can I not stand outside?" "We'd prefer it if you were seated!" (the last was said in a tone that left no doubt that it was an order). I remember the guards having a conversation about having seen me on the CCTV earlier. I took the bus back, got to the Canadian side, and also explained that I needed to turn around to claim my duty free. They were slightly perplexed, but fairly chill about the whole thing. They looked at my paperwork, led me through to where I could turn around, and let me get on the bus back. I went to the duty free, claimed my tax back, got back on the bus, then went to the official entry point back into the US. The lady I got started yelling at me almost from the get-go. I'm pretty sure she was told to look out for me, and give me a hard time. "Why are you coming to America?!" "How much money have you brought with?!" I showed her the $40 US and $20 Canadian I had on me. She threw the $20 Canadian bill back at me and yelled "That's play money!" I was pretty jetlagged, and had started repeating her questions to myself before answering them. "Stop repeating my questions!" I hadn't brought the little green slip of paper they give you at the border back then when you entered the US. "Where's the green slip of paper?!" After some conversation, slightly more calmly, "I need it to know how long you're allowed to remain in the country." "Can't you look it up in your computer system?", I ask. "I'm not allowed to discuss what we can look up in our computers!" On looking through my receipts from my mall trip, "what's a scissorlunch?!" "It's an Edward Scissorhands lunch tin", I reply, producing it from my bag. Even the (Canadian) bus driver was a little surprised by the whole episode. "What was that all about?" On the way out of the country, myself and two other South African guys I was travelling with were all "randomly selected" for intensive security screening. It was pretty funny, really. The airline lady issuing the boarding pass was really friendly, then her eyes went wide after she entered the information into the computer, and highlighted a cluster of stars on my boarding pass with a red highlighter. All our boarding passes had that, and we were all told that it was "random". Lol. We got patted down, and our hand luggage swabbed for explosives. Anyway, since then I've been pretty stressed every time I've had to go to the US. I've also avoided at every turn coming to live in the country. I could almost certainly have done my PhD there, but I ended up in Canada instead. I'm also potentially looking at pursuing a career in academia, and could do post-docs in the US (which would have some benefits to my career), but won't. Maybe I've read too much hacker bullshit about the actual rights of foreigners in the country. Maybe it's from the experiences I've had in coming to it. But yeah. That's my story. PS: I'm a white guy, with plenty of privilege. I can't even imagine how lovely it is for people of colour, and/or women.
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Aug 7, 2016 07:04
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Mofabio posted:What? You said "then apart from the odd smuggling incident Saddam would have kept all of it, no?", which isn't what nationalization is. What are you talking about? A nationalized industry under a dictatorship is something entirely different from a nationalized industry under a democracy. What are you talking about drawing a parallel between Iraq's oil industry to Norway's? Hobologist fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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Aug 7, 2016 07:40
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Hobologist posted:A nationalized industry under a dictatorship is something entirely different from a nationalized industry under a democracy. What are you talking about drawing a parallel between Iraq's oil industry to Norway's? You're trying to make the Iraq war about Saddam, the big bad man. History didn't stop in 2003, when he was captured. He was a footnote in the war, a non-participant, from 2003-present. Again, the Iraq democracy passed a deeply unpopular law (>60% against) which de-nationalized all its oil. The oil is now owned by private corporations, and it is sold back to Iraqis at a profit.
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Aug 7, 2016 19:16
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Mofabio posted:I'm discussing the fact that currently, 97-99% of the price of an Iraqi barrel of oil goes to multinational oil companies - their employees, their profits Source for that? Everything I can find says the Iraqi government is receiving $200 billion a year in oil revenue. If that is only 1% of the total, then the total is something like 20% of world GDP...
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Aug 8, 2016 00:43
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radmonger posted:Source for that? Everything I can find says the Iraqi government is receiving $200 billion a year in oil revenue. If that is only 1% of the total, then the total is something like 20% of world GDP... 4m barrels a day at $50/bbl is only $73 billion though so that can't be right either
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Aug 8, 2016 01:00
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radmonger posted:Source for that? Everything I can find says the Iraqi government is receiving $200 billion a year in oil revenue. If that is only 1% of the total, then the total is something like 20% of world GDP... Right, some of the money goes through the companies, out as Iraqi worker wages and taxes. As these companies now own the Iraqi oil fields, they tend to hire from the cheap, war-ravaged, and desparate local pool. At a remuneration fee of $1.75 per barrel (this is in the hydrocarbon law, it fluctuates between 1.75 and 2 depending on the contract. It does not count oil worker wages.), times 2.4 million barrels per day, times 365 days, you're looking at remuneration revenue of around $1.5 billion USD. Total revenue (as in all wages, not just taxes) in 2007 was $41 billion USD. At the other estimate end, you can assume that Iraq has no refining capacity (it does- about 0.94 mbd, or around 40% its 2007 crude output). The market price of May 2007 oil (IIRC) is $60/barrel, which means Iraq is capturing around 80%. But again, refined products sell for more than crude, so 80% capture by Iraq, based on just multiplying out market price of crude, is an absolute high-end estimate. Regardless: before, it was 100%, minus some rare revenue capture by foreign contracts, with contracts much more freely negotiated. Whether it was a communist paradise where all this wealth was evenly distributed, or it went to a dictator's military, it was near 100%, which is higher than 80%, which is higher than 2%.
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Aug 8, 2016 01:29
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I think when he asks for a source he wants more than your math. ^^^rscott posted:4m barrels a day at $50/bbl is only $73 billion though so that can't be right either 50/bbl is a super recent thing isn't it? A year ago it was above 100 if my brain works
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Aug 8, 2016 01:31
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A big flaming stink posted:50/bbl is a super recent thing isn't it? A year ago it was above 100 if my brain works Probably closer to two years by now.
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Aug 8, 2016 01:39
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A big flaming stink posted:I think when he asks for a source he wants more than your math. ^^^ OK sure whatever, the point is oil isn't $150/bbl so the $200 billion number can't possibly be true
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Aug 8, 2016 01:45
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A big flaming stink posted:I think when he asks for a source he wants more than your math. ^^^ Sure, $41 bUSD oil revenue, 2.4 mbd, etc is from here, which in turn sources the State Department. $1.75-$2/barrel is the standard remuneration fee that Iraq receives. Basically before, this was just "market price of whatever we're selling", because in nationalization, the money flows into the state, and from there into a bunch of things, from wages to roads to prisons to jets to capital improvements to whatever. Refining capacity is the sum of INOC refinery capacity, from wiki. bbl/d = barrel/day. Market price of oil in 2007 is easily googleable. edit: yeah, Iraq isn't making $200 billion/yr, it's still around $40 billion/yr, and that's with the 50% production growth. Mofabio fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 02:06
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Mofabio could you just go ahead and post a link to whatever conspiracy rabbit hole you're getting all this info from? Iraq never passed a hydrocarbon law, and a lot of companies in Iraq are nationalized under the Ministry of Oil. And they're making a hell of a lot more than a billion dollars a year off of Iraqi oil.
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Aug 8, 2016 02:41
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Volkerball posted:Iraq never passed a hydrocarbon law Jesus, this is embarrassing. You're right. A lot of the sources I'm reading are from '03-'07 (these state department weekly reports and summaries to congress) and are treating the oil law as de jure. Oops. It doesn't change the math much, since that $1.75/barrel is around what Iraq is currently contracting. This is, from what I can tell, paid to the government. The government gets additional taxes from their flat income tax and social security, and many workers are employed in oil. But thanks for the correction. I started down this research hole trying to figure out carbon emission changes post-Iraq, spent a bit more time on that than the oil law.
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Aug 8, 2016 03:23
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I remember in my freshman dorm watching Colin Powell speaking to the UN and thinking to myself, "He does not believe a single word of what he is saying." I was also a Republican at that time (mostly because my dad was/is), and the fact that no other Republicans I knew or saw in congress were questioning the need to go to war at all made me completely reexamine my values and political affiliations.
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Aug 8, 2016 03:58
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Mofabio posted:
Err no, that is the fee that _the multinationals_ receive for each barrel they produce. From which they pay wages, buy equipment and make profits. For most contracts it is a bit higher, say $5. Easily extracted oil is an inherently profitable business. The particularly dodgy deal it sounds like you are half remembering from 2007 was considered dodgy for other reasons. http://platformlondon.org/documents/glass-box-print-low-res.pdf Iraq keeps all of the value of the sale apart from that fee (and I think 5% they are still paying in compensation to Kuwait, unless that has been dropped recently). I've always thought a lot of the 70% us support for the invasion was based on the premise that Bush was lying about the things he was lying about. Many people were hoping it really would be the kind of profitable war you get in computer games. Like suddenly the US Budget would have a new line item to report, 'stolen oil', which could be spent on social security, lowering taxes, or whatever. And because Bush never claimed it was, and they rarely came out and explicitly said it themselves, it was difficult to argue with anyone who thought that way. Kind of a prototype of Trump's communication strategy; if you are obviously and visibly lying, the listener is compelled to ask 'what is their real plan?' Which primes the listener to fill in the details with whatever it is _they_ want.
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Aug 8, 2016 08:22
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I supported intervention all along (and still do) on the simple ground that someone like Saddam, who had used gas on his own people, was just too dangerous to have around. I lived the build up and the attack and "victory" with a sense of sorrow for the innocent and pride we still had the stomach to "do something". I just didn't know yet that we had no plan for "after"...if we had, the Iraq War would be seen very differently. For this mistrust (no follow up plan) I have been very much against intervention in Syria...but fact is that no intervention hasn't been any better than intervention.
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Aug 8, 2016 12:00
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radmonger posted:I've always thought a lot of the 70% us support for the invasion was based on the premise that Bush was lying about the things he was lying about. Many people were hoping it really would be the kind of profitable war you get in computer games. Like suddenly the US Budget would have a new line item to report, 'stolen oil', which could be spent on social security, lowering taxes, or whatever. Paul Wolfowitz, then undersecretary of defense, told Congress that Iraq would be happy to use its own oil money to pay for its own occupation.
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Aug 8, 2016 21:08
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radmonger posted:Err no, that is the fee that _the multinationals_ receive for each barrel they produce. From which they pay wages, buy equipment and make profits. For most contracts it is a bit higher, say $5. Easily extracted oil is an inherently profitable business. The particularly dodgy deal it sounds like you are half remembering from 2007 was considered dodgy for other reasons. There is also this weird pervasive myth that percolates whenever a major war rolls along about stimulating the economy and people use it to discredit military engagement. This was especially pervasive during the Afghanistan and Iraq invasion. My young high school liberal friends talked about how Bush was doing this to distract from the bad economy. And it just didn't really track as an argument for me. The problem was exactly what you said, Bush was lying about something but because they lied about most of the invasion there was no cohesive way to oppose it.
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Aug 8, 2016 23:39
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Orange Devil posted:I remember the Iraq war protests as a 1 day event after which everyone went home and laughed it up because by golly Bush is just so dumb look he even looks like a monkey. Maybe if people could've been bothered to stay in the streets as long as was necessary, but only a literal handful was, and so Iraq happened. Dude, the 2004 election was Karl Rove's magnum opus. He's a truly repellent piece of poo poo, but I can almost muster up a tiny bit of grudging respect for what he pulled. Iraq should have been the main issue, he managed to turn it into an election about gay marriage. Yeah, Kerry sucked, but he served honorably, and the Bush side still managed to smear him despite bush being a straight up draft dodger. Please don't mistake this for adoration, it's pure loving cynical evil bullshit, but having come of voting age around 1999, I was amazed at how they managed to completely change the national conversation to, as you said domestic issues. I really think the whole ordeal goes to show how much 9/11 hosed the American psyche. I'm still not sure we're over it. It's hard to justify now, but pre 9/11, it really was pretty easy to not find much difference between Republicans and Democrats. Ever since (and I'm still not that enthused by most Dems) it seems like Republicans have just gotten comically evil.
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Aug 9, 2016 00:16
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I was out of work (thanks, 2001 tech bust!) when 9-11 happened, which gave me plenty of time to sit around watching the world go completely apeshit. We'd been sucker-punched and obviously had NO idea what to do. Comparisons to Pearl Harbor got bandied about a lot, especially the one quote about awakening a dragon "with terrible resolve," but this wasn't an attack by one sovereign nation against another, this was a rag-tag group of civilians kicking the US in the nuts. We ended up invading Afghanistan because they vaguely supported al-Qaeda and, well, we gotta invade somebody. It wasn't really that satisfying, though. We did kill a lot of people and all, but then we had the anthrax letters and Bin Ladin making spooky scary cave videos and nothing really happened to assuage America's paranoia. Into all this, the administration decided to channel our fury into a different campaign against an old enemy. It was incredibly obvious from the start that we were champing at the bit for war and didn't give two shits about why. UN inspections, who cares. Hussein constantly saying "We don't have anything, seriously, look anywhere you like," didn't matter. He was a Bad Guy. Not THE Bad Guy, but we had a history with him, sort of a Bad Guy Classic, and we took what we could get. So we burned a bunch of diplomatic bridges, invaded, destabilized the region, were not greeted as liberators, created a gigantic quagmire that benefited nobody but arms manufacturers, and pretty much anger-hosed everything. What really got me, and apparently a lot of you guys too, was the 2004 election. Now I live in Oklahoma, the reddest state in the Universe, and even my conservative rear end in a top hat boss at the time was incredibly tepid about Bush. His best argument was a sort of eyes-averted "we shouldn't change horses in mid-stream" mumble. He knew he was backing the worse choice but doubled down on it because he felt obligated, like he'd be forced to turn in his True American Patriot Card if he voted for Kerry. Also, by 2004, the war hadn't really gotten bloody and there were still some hopes that we could pull it off without being there forever. Meanwhile, Congress' strong support of the Iraq War on both sites of the aisle left a lot of liberals feeling disenfranchised. How could our "hippie-dippy" party support such an obvious act of wrong-headed aggression? What did they trade our soldiers' lives for? Access? Influence? Votes? Promises to push social agendas? Had they been so repeatedly told that it would be a cakewalk and America would be loved and respected for doing this that they finally fell for it? Whatever the cause, it was incredibly disappointing to their base, and it showed in the polls. 2008 was the election that finally demonstrated that the American people realized this whole thing was a giant boondoggle. A lot of damage had been done in the meantime, but now it seemed like maybe the other party could actually turn things around. Of course, by then it was such a dense tangle that it still took us a long time to get out of it, which was (and still is) frustrating for everybody. Then suddenly there's ISIS, and whoops, it's STILL not over? Son of a --
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Aug 9, 2016 19:00
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HorseLord posted:It's self evident that the foreign policy of the US Government barely changes along with the President. Socialist Afghanistan fuckery was first under a democrat, then a republican. Iraq fuckery started under a republican, continued low key under a democrat, and then erupted again under a republican, (with bonus Afghanistan part II). That then carried on under a Democrat. Read this, fool: https://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/11022104/iraq-war-neoconservatives?utm_campaign=vox
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Aug 9, 2016 19:22
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Mirage posted:Then suddenly there's ISIS, and whoops, it's STILL not over? Son of a -- I remember I was completely out of politics for 2014 and most of 2015 and then what brought me back was hearing about these ISIS people who inexplicably took over half the Middle East (the last time I had cared, the Iraqi president was arresting their Vice President the day after we left or some such), and Republicans were saber rattling for war with Iran and it didn't seem like Hillary really opposed them. That was what made me super  like what the gently caress has been happening in the last two years, and go hard for support for Bernie. Obviously I've gotten up to speed, but for me ISIS came out of goddamn nowhere and I was baffled, cause I'm dumb.
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Aug 9, 2016 19:29
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Oh man, great thread idea. So this is my 9/11/Iraq War story. I was in 8th grade when the towers fell. I remember hearing about it in shop class and figured people were joking, until we turned on the TV and saw it was real. Our principal ordered all the TVs turned off, but our math teacher said "gently caress that" because she knew it was a huge, huge thing. A lot of kids were really worried or scared as we were an exurb of NYC and people's parents would commute to NYC for work. I mostly just remember being confused. Politics was a big joke, we had just had the 2000 election and I was getting into it. I remember I had a joke bumper-sticker type thing about the US-Chinese spy plane incident on my door at home and I would tell jokes about hanging chads and Florida being idiots. After 9/11 politics weren't really funny any more. I remember hearing about the Patriot Act and being really concerned. Also John Ashcroft being a religious weirdo. But even though the mood was dark all the time, things kept on moving on. By the time the Iraq War was getting going I remember following all the stuff about the run-up to the war. And I bought it, because hey Collin Powell is a respected guy and if he said so, it must be right, right? In some alternate universe I probably ended up a Republican, but instead the topic came up while I was driving around with my confirmation sponsor who was a super liberal lady. She asked me why I believed that the war was just and I explained, and she very calmly showed me how complete and utter bullshit it all was. And when that happened I went from pro-war to anti-war. I remember watching CNN as we blew everything up, and I got the "Iraq playing cards" with the names/faces of all the most wanted Iraqi leaders. I also remember the 2004 election and Dean and how I adored him and then how he completely flamed out. And then how John Kerry seemed like the perfect antidote to Bush, and he lost after getting dragged through the mud.  And then there was Katrina and the Dems taking Congress in 2006. And a memory I have that most don't is Alberto Gonzalez's Congressional hearing. The one where he said "I do not recall" to every single question about the purge of his staff and missing emails. And it was right then that I knew that he was going to get away with it and that no one from the Iraq War era was going to see any repercussions for their actions. Stuff like that is probably why I'm such a moderate liberal these days, and why I'm skeptical of any idealism in politics. I think the OP put it best by saying that people who remember the 90s and the world pre-9/11/Iraq were Clinton supporters and those who don't remember that were Bernie. It makes sense, if you never knew a time of optimism and hope and fun silliness in politics that ended with war and horror, you'd probably be drawn to idealism. But not me. I saw what happened when you believed in idealism over cynical, slow advancement. I hope I got across just how crazy hosed up the 2001-2008 era was in American politics. It was super depressing and the memory of it will be carried by anyone over the age of 25 or so. edit: I was in New York City in the spring of 2001 and took a bunch of photos of the skyline, including a really good shot of the WTC. I'll be giving that picture to my son or daughter if and when I ever have one when they're old enough for me to explain what happened and why it was A Big Deal and why people my age get sad when they see pictures like that. axeil fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Aug 9, 2016 |
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Aug 9, 2016 19:51
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I was 21 when the WTC attacks occurred. It's funny how people told me that I'd remember what I was doing that 11th of September, almost a decade and a half ago now, when I'd heard about the attacks. There was a sense of Gravitas I somewhat remember people trying to impart about what happened, the view of it being a historically defining moment that every good American would remember with clarity for the remainder of their lives. It was, even then, a fairly obvious attempt to compare it to Pearl Harbor, as Mirage mentioned above. And, to be fair, it was a historically defining moment. But at that time, I lived almost untethered from time. The days I lived blurred into one another making little impression--honestly, it's still a problem for me now, albeit to a far less severe degree. So I don't recall what I was doing when I heard it, or who mentioned it, or any of those specifics. I know that I must have been at the community college which I had been attending at the time, only a short walk away, because I recall that I was returning from there to the lovely apartment we were living in to watch what was happening in New York. I was compelled by a feeling of vague horror to see through to the end what was happening almost on the other side of the country from me, but that horror never really seemed to take root. I suppose that it may have been that I never really identified with "America;" that, unlike with so many people, it didn't feel like something personal. Maybe it was simply that my life did not seem real--my 20's progressed with a distinctly dream-like quality despite being mostly bad years for me; without purpose, indolent, shameful years spent forcing my own conformity. I remember feeling at the time that, while I didn't seek out danger in any way, it didn't particularly matter if I lived or died; in retrospect I wonder if I may have been somewhat depressed. Still, even though those days, months and years slid into an amorphous mass, indistinct, unmemorable, I still recall my disgust with the Iraq War, not only with it's handling but with the fact that it was even being conducted. I can't recall my feelings on the invasion of Afghanistan, beyond increasing disillusionment as H.W. Bush made his case for the war on Iraq using what seemed blatantly flimsy pretences. Everyone I knew was opposed to the war in Iraq, and the threat of Saddam having nuclear arms seemed... remote, to put it mildly. Shifting the rhetoric so that WMD's meant chemical weapons did not really make the point more convincing. More than that, I had an increasing feeling at the time that the actions we had pursued under the guise of searching for Bin Laden were proving ineffectual, and in many instances dangerous to the personal freedoms that I believed, in my dislocation from history, that we possessed without limitation. Many of you seem to have clear memories of what you were doing and feeling during the tumult created by Bush and his handlers, and I kind of envy that. My past feels like something that only started a few years ago, except for isolated spots that my brain likes to bring up in order to remind me that I'm horrible. MShadowy fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Aug 9, 2016 |
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Aug 9, 2016 20:08
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I post something relevant to a page one troll and the thread has already deteriorated into personal 9/11 stories. For gently caress's sake. So my boss comes in and asks if we know about the plane hitting the tower. That's about when the second one hits. I liked counterstrike at the time so I'm like "terrorists win lol". Partly because I've always been an edgelord dweeb, and partly because I paid attention to stuff and wasn't surprised at all. It wasn't like it was their first attempt. He thought it was funny.
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Aug 9, 2016 22:33
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Thank you for sharing this, it was interesting to read a non American perspective on the events that went down, especially relating to flag sucking and "homeland security". I was in 4th grade when the towers fell, I stayed home while my family watched the CNN coverage. I distinctly remember the 2nd plane hitting and the shitshow that followed as the towers fell. I also remember the green and white of the night vision while Baghdad was shelled and bombed. The "Mission Accomplished" speech, the burned corpses of pmc's being strung up on live TV, etc. I've had family members go for multiple tours and come back home broken men. Thank you all for sharing.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:09
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Extensive Vamping posted:I post something relevant to a page one troll and the thread has already deteriorated into personal 9/11 stories. For gently caress's sake. that's the whole point of this thread, hoss
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Aug 10, 2016 04:37
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Dazzling Addar posted:that's the whole point of this thread, hoss I posted at work so I didn't really have time to read it homes.  In any case, this story is so worth reading I'll post it again. It should really be added to the OP: http://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/11022104/iraq-war-neoconservatives And I made this at the time, when I had a different username. I'm pretty proud of it to this day:
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Aug 10, 2016 05:29
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Extensive Vamping posted:I posted at work so I didn't really have time to read it homes. I added this post to the OP, friend. Thank you for your contribution. And yes, the point is asking for stories, though it amuses how rapidly and immediately it turned into "where were you on 9/11" like all threads related to this subject do.
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Aug 10, 2016 05:56
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You guys totally loving blew it hey
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Aug 10, 2016 07:51
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Lightning Knight posted:I added this post to the OP, friend. Thank you for your contribution. <3 redweird posted:You guys totally loving blew it hey ?
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Aug 10, 2016 08:06
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Lightning Knight posted:And yes, the point is asking for stories, though it amuses how rapidly and immediately it turned into "where were you on 9/11" like all threads related to this subject do. Something I forgot to comment on was the sea change at The Daily Show resulting from the Iraqi Adventure. Watching the Month of Zen, you see how Stewart and pretty much the national consciousness was pro-intervention. It's not till 2003 or 2004 that the veil lifts and TDS begins to really have this hatred over the absurdity of the administration and the war effort. Then we get more analysts on and more politically based questioning. it really highlights how much good will the administration squandered, as well as how in the pocket most of us were at the time.
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Aug 10, 2016 14:42
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Those fuckin weapons of mass destruction to this day haunt me. I knew it was made up bullshit from moment one and it sickened me that so many people suddenly bought into the idea that loving Iraq of all places was the problem. The regime change part seemed ludicrous too, an expansion of us Latin American policy taken to some insane end but where I was in D.C. At least that didn't seem to catch on, especially among the immigrant population I lived in who in several cases were fleeing previous us regime changes. My cousin was adamant as hell they were gonna find those weapons of mass destruction so in the possibly only bet of my life I bet him eating a hat over it if they didn't find them in the first year. He never ate that hat, the prick.
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Aug 10, 2016 14:49
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Lightning Knight posted:And yes, the point is asking for stories, though it amuses how rapidly and immediately it turned into "where were you on 9/11" like all threads related to this subject do. You can't really explain the Iraq War without talking about 9/11. The war was the biggest symptom of the disease the attacks gave our country's psyche. I was 13 when the 9/11 attacks happened. My school had told all the teachers to keep things calm. A plane crash in New York, that's all. Why were people's parents picking them up from school early then? Rumors had started spreading among the students. One of the history teachers was showing his students CNN. Bits and pieces of information got through to the rest of us, nothing coherent. My mother was one of the parents who pulled her kids from class. She was a school bus driver, and they were all put on alert in case people needed to be evacuated from Philadelphia. I don't remember exactly when I found out what happened. Maybe nobody ever sat me down and told me what happened. Maybe I just picked up pieces here and there from people talking, and from the news. CNN was on everywhere for weeks, my house included. I remember standing in the back yard, looking at the sky free of contrails after they grounded all the planes. My father told me it would be my generation's version of the Kennedy Assassination. The loss of our innocence, the moment we would ask each other "where were you?" afterwards. He was right about that much. I got swept up in the mad patriotism that took hold after that. The general media impression of Bush as a goofy imbecile vanished immediately. I don't remember joining in the bloodlust, but that might just be my memory painting a better picture of myself. I know I argued with one of my classmates who thought we should nuke the entire middle east, and level the mountains where Al-Qaeda was hiding. The rumors and theories that would eventually coalesce into the Truthers were floating around (the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan had done the attacks and framed the Taliban, United 93 had been shot down to stop it from hitting Camp David), but I didn't buy into them. When the buildup to Iraq started, I was a bit older, with the cynicism that always comes with being 15. The USA PATRIOT Act had, ironically, damaged my patriotism, and books like Lies My Teacher Told Me and A People's History of the United States were making the rounds in my group of friends. And now we were being sold another war, and the case for it didn't make sense. The accusations they were throwing at Iraq were true of a lot of our allies, like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. There was a flash cartoon about that, but I don't even know how to start looking for it. My friends were split on the war, and we argued about it a lot. I opposed the Iraqi regime, but thought the war was a bad idea on a strategic level. If Saddam has WMDs, won't he use them against us when we invade? Why were our allies like France and Germany staying out of it? Couldn't the Iraqis start a guerilla war and turn the conflict into another Vietnam? The Vietnam comparison was big. My father was convinced they would restart the draft and send me off to Iraq. When the invasion was starting up, I remember hoping that we would be able to broker a last-minute deal and avoid going to war. Watching them crush any hope of a deal pretty much destroyed whatever was left of my faith in the administration. Once we actually invaded, I was relieved. There were no WMD attacks, and the war seemed like it wrapped up quickly. The president got on TV to tell us major combat operations were over. All that was left was rebuilding work, like we did in Germany after the war. The warhawks I knew felt incredibly proud of what we'd accomplished. That feeling slowly faded, but it took years. From then on, it was a kind of background noise, a quiet note that slowly turned sour over time. The 2004 election brought it back for a while, but the fact that so much of the Democratic Party had supported the war gave it a feeling of a lesser-of-two-evils situation. The rest of the time it was just a constant looming presence in the news. The failure to find the WMDs, the pallets of cash we'd lost, the lack of armor on our troops and vehicles, the reports of yet another suicide attack. The slow realization of what "private military contractors" were and what they were up to, of exactly what we were up to in all those military "detention centers." Kieth Olbermann was a popular liberal voice in an era where we didn't have that many to choose from, and he would end every show with a count of the number of days we'd been in Iraq. Thinking about it now, it's been nearly half my life since we went in.
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Aug 10, 2016 21:25
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Edit: nvm. I guess this is about Iran and Trump.
Bruce Boxlicker fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Aug 12, 2016 |
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Aug 10, 2016 22:00
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quote:You can't really explain the Iraq War without talking about 9/11. The other way around too, really. It is very important for people to remember that the Iraq War was exactly the sort of thing Osama bin Laden was trying to provoke. Apparently Al Qaeda and ISIS don't get along now if I understand the current politics correctly. But hey, OBL, this is what happens with accelerationism. You may not get exactly the caliphate you wanted. Scariest thing about terrorism? It can work. Terrified people can do predictably idiotic things because they are terrified.
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Aug 10, 2016 23:56
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(Incoming long post on the why invading Iran is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea)Lightning Knight posted:I remember I was completely out of politics for 2014 and most of 2015 and then what brought me back was hearing about these ISIS people who inexplicably took over half the Middle East (the last time I had cared, the Iraqi president was arresting their Vice President the day after we left or some such), and Republicans were saber rattling for war with Iran and it didn't seem like Hillary really opposed them. That was what made me super Iran warmongering freaks me out more than just about any other Republican stupidity. Even tons of liberals think it'd be "another Iraq". Invading and occupying Iran would not be anything like Iraq. It'd be waaaaaaaaay worse. For a quite a few reasons: Lets look at who we'd be fighting. First of all Iraq had less than half the population of current day Iran. A ~third of which are Kurds who were pretty much defacto independent and hostile to Saddam and Sunni militant groups alike. The vast majority of those left were Shiites who don't join Sunni Islamist orgs and weren't exactly keen on Saddam either. So the pool of people that were potentially recruitable by post-Saddam militant groups probably consisted of 5 million people tops. Iran, on the other hand, pretty much have the Balochs, a few million Kurds, and nobody else in the "would never join up with militants in a statistically significant way" camp. So you're looking at a recruiting pool of, oh, lets say 60 million people. Who on average have a much, much stronger sense of national identity than Iraqis do. This isn't some arbitrary chunk of land thats been haggled over and passed around like an army camp hooker between half a dozen empires for the past 800 years. Even the most "pro-western" Iranians are not going to be chill with being invaded. Also likely to be way better armed. Now lets look at the environments we'd be fighting in. Iraq at one point had a significant amount of forest and swamps that might have been useful to hide out in. Less so at the time we invaded. Outside of Kurdistan, who were cheering us on, Iraq is as flat as a pancake. Pretty much all Sunni Arab civilization in the country is clustered around a handful of rivers. Between these rivers are exposed flatlands. There's no hiding out in the wilderness here. The core cities are Shiite. It's honestly about as ideal a situation you could ask for to fight against a Sunni insurgency. Iran, well, lets see how the population is distributed first.  Whereas Iraq had one giant population cluster that pretty much everything radiated out from, Irans population is spread out over quite a few regions. Keep in mind Tehran alone is significantly more populous than Baghdad, and quite a few of Iran's other cities are pretty big in their own right. With rural supporting populations to match, which don't conveniently follow a small number of rivers like they do in Iraq. Oh and lets talk about topography now, starting with the Tehran (circled in red) area:  Boy howdy what a fun place to fight a massive loving insurrection in. And whats that on the other side of the Alborz? Why its the jungles of Hyrcania! Some of the most dense forests in the world. This lovely combination of landscapes is an insurgents wetdream and has made for some fun history.  Medieval accounts of struggles to bring the region to heel typically describe what we would today call guerrilla warfare, in a time period where that wasn't much of a thing. Arab commanders marched armies in and their mace-crushed skulls were thrown back out. Fun. Ok so Tehran is a nightmare, what about that Esfahan place, surely it's not as bad? Conceded, its landscape isn't as hostile as the Alborz:  The Zagros range is only as bad as most of Afghanistan. How about Tabriz?  How about some mountains? How bout Kermanshah?  How bout some more loving mountains? Uh....Shiraz?  Pretty sure you knew the answer at this point. And the answer is loving mountains. Ok so you're looking at this topographic map of Iran and you notice that this Ahvaz place isn't in the Zagros range and is in some nice flat-STOP! You remember all those marshes Iraq used to have? Well they're pretty hosed up here too, but they still exist.  The poor fuckers who get sent here can get their very own Vietnam experience marching through the oil polluted mudflats of Khuzestan! Which for the past while have also gone through a massive drought thats raised a poo poo ton of dust storms, while not actually making the ground any less mudflatty. Alright. What about that Mashhad place way up in the Northeast? It's Irans second biggest city and the mountains seem less dense and and and-  No. There's no relevant area where the terrain isn't hostile as gently caress or would even grudgingly tolerate our presence the way the Shiite areas of Iraq did. We'd probably lose more people in the initial government toppling than in the entire War on Terror to this point. It'd be impossible to hold without massive Vietnam level death-tolls, and even then I'm not actually sure we could. Due to having a million different fronts it'd be mind mindbogglingly expensive, to the point that it might actually cause the US to go the way of the French Fourth Republic. Don't loving invade Iran. Schizotek fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Aug 11, 2016 |
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Aug 11, 2016 03:54
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Invading Iran would be so incredibly stupid, which is why (without getting too Tom Clancy) it would take probably take very many nations using more or less all of their air power to totally shatter any and all infrastructure. It would be the most colossal humanitarian crisis in memory.
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Aug 11, 2016 04:04
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