[HoosierDaddy]

Raymond Luxury Yacht;341959 said:

No, I actually don't. You should tell them, for the entertainment of all.

Alas, what would I care of those stories. I run backwards through cornfields or haven't you heard!

[Cold Iron]

HoosierDaddy;341944 said:

Ah, now I see what you are saying. While securing the oil fields should have at some point been a priority, having them as priority #1 at the outset of invasion, instead of say, securing Baghdad as #1 priority, that oil was the reason for the war. I don't necessarily agree that it was the primary reason, but I do believe that it was in fact a major reason.

Well it's a decent indicator. Mission objectives usually match mission priorities.

If the purpose was:

a) install democracy - target: political centre (Baghdad)
oust Hussein - target: Hussein (where ever he was)
c) stabilise region - target: areas of unrest/borders
d) destroy WMD - target: in the desert where "intelligence" said they were
e) oil - target: oilfields.

[HoosierDaddy]

Cold Iron;341964 said:

Well it's a decent indicator. Mission objectives usually match mission priorities.

If the purpose was:

a) install democracy - target: political centre (Baghdad)
oust Hussein - target: Hussein (where ever he was)
c) stabilise region - target: areas of unrest/borders
d) destroy WMD - target: in the desert where "intelligence" said they were
e) oil - target: oilfields.

Concur. I sometimes don't know where to separate Big Oil from the Bush Administration sometimes. Even as I get this funny feeling that W. turned into a sort of Laseen, at the end of Bonehunters, in his own administration.

[paladin]

again, the problem is in order to install a proper government you need to have a viable economy. oil backs the economy in most of iraq(kurdish areas have other resources like farmland if i recall) and it adds a drastic amount of money to the government coffers to afford infrastructure and staff. if you undermine the economy so severely you are undermining your success because you're hurting the average joe, not just the armed forces. shit, its basic economics.

the invasion was perfect. the post-invasion management was not. they marched across the country in a matter of days. they secured major objectives. they secured the nation. the one thing they failed in was post invasion; they fired the military and sent a bunch of unemployed, military trained veterans to find work elsewhere, which formed the backbone of the insurgency.

you forget that hussein was taken out of the picture early on.. actually i think the night before we officially began. he was in a building that was obliterated, but survived and went immediately into hiding. his sons were hunted and killed in combat. they had the deck of cards indicating top personnel to be captured and over the course of the first few months of war you heard all the time of people on the list being captured or kia.

in the mean time you have groups of people hunting wmd's. you have marines fighting insurgency in towns like basra. etc etc.

whats wrong with multiple objectives? we have the people trained to do different things and we utilized some to secure high value objectives, some to secure towns, some to rebuild infrastructure, etc. you cannot tell me that we invaded, secured oil fields and facilities, and then sat on our butts because that is not how it happened.

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This is not a medieval invasion. The US were not going to drill and use the oil as they went as a medieval army would use farms and wells.

They set fire to them because they knew it was why they were there. No oil, no invasion. Get rid of the oil.

spite and frustration. frustrating and slowing down the army is something you want to do if you intend to have time to regroup after a retreat. you cant "get rid of the oil", so that has no bearing here. destroying the facility to pump it or process it does nothing but increase frustration. they did it in kuwait and they even did it during the current iraq war. wiki states that 44 oil well facilities were destroyed in the invasion and 400 were rigged for destruction.

[Cold Iron]

paladin;341994 said:

the invasion was perfect. the post-invasion management was not.

which is exactly what undermines the theory that they invaded in order to set up a democratic government.

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you cannot tell me that we invaded, secured oil fields and facilities, and then sat on our butts because that is not how it happened.

granted, but that wouldn't really be properly utilising the resource would it?

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spite and frustration. frustrating and slowing down the army is something you want to do if you intend to have time to regroup after a retreat. you cant "get rid of the oil", so that has no bearing here. destroying the facility to pump it or process it does nothing but increase frustration. they did it in kuwait and they even did it during the current iraq war. wiki states that 44 oil well facilities were destroyed in the invasion and 400 were rigged for destruction.

I'm not going to speculate any further about their motivation. You may well be right.

I think I will agree to a compromise on semantics. I'm happy to retract the statement that oil was the cause of the war in favour of the statement that oil is the only positive thing gained from the war. Is that more fair?

[amphibian]

Paladin, you forgot the De-Baathification, which smeared almost everyone in the former government, competent or evil, with the same "unfit to serve" brush. That brought a lot of ill will and almost completely disrupted governmental services to the people.

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you forget that hussein was taken out of the picture early on.. actually i think the night before we officially began. he was in a building that was obliterated, but survived and went immediately into hiding. his sons were hunted and killed in combat. they had the deck of cards indicating top personnel to be captured and over the course of the first few months of war you heard all the time of people on the list being captured or kia.

The insurgency pretty quickly devolved from Uday and Qusay, who Saddam had chosen to run the fight against the invading forces. It didn't really matter if the deck of cards people were gone because the arms depots all over the place and the staggering number of people interested in hurting the invaders ensured active resistance almost everywhere.

Some small oil contracts have recently been guided towards mostly U.S. and British companies. A lot of people are angry about that, but I'm angry about the process. There was no open bidding and the whole thing was done without any agreement to revenue sharing (hard to get, but great to have). Either of the two would would have gone a long way towards showing things were somewhat fair, competitive and in the best interests of the Iraqis.

I can see the disadvantages of the Russians or Chinese winning the bulk of the contracts, but if the Indians got a bunch, we'd be in pretty good with them.

Of course, in 80 years, oil won't be the focal point of the world's attention. Fresh water will be.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Iraq is opening bidding on many of their oil fields, there's concerns that if a western company gets the contract it will lend credence to the idea that the invasion was for oil. Pretty interesting article.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25453428/

[Morgoth]

I seem to remember Bush disbanding all contracts made prior to the invasion, which basically meant that the russian and french companies that had invested billions in develping the oil fields gained very little back.

Mind you, this might just be my memory

[paladin]

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which is exactly what undermines the theory that they invaded in order to set up a democratic government.

along with what i said about the armed forces, see what amp said. it was a simple tactical error that caused the whole process of installing a functioning and effective government(and all the public services that go with it) to spiral into utter shit.

hindsight is 20/20, but that doesn't mean they didn't have a plan to begin with. it was just fatally flawed hinging on that one point.

[Cold Iron]

fair enough, you didn't answer my question tho

[paladin]

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I'm happy to retract the statement that oil was the cause of the war in favour of the statement that oil is the only positive thing gained from the war. Is that more fair?

i guess on an economic level yes, but that is expected i think when you consider their contributions.

but what about freedom for the kurds? they endured at least 2 decades of hell under saddam and now enjoy safety, autonomy, and a semblence of peace. they take care of their region of iraq pretty much by themselves now.

or the ability for them to build a government for the people, by the people? true, it hasnt worked as many has hoped, but keep in mind the us didnt have the current govenment structure in place until 1787 when the us constitution was adopted(11 years after the declaration of independence). trial and error will happen

[HoosierDaddy]

paladin;342308 said:

i guess on an economic level yes, but that is expected i think when you consider their contributions.

but what about freedom for the kurds? they endured at least 2 decades of hell under saddam and now enjoy safety, autonomy, and a semblence of peace. they take care of their region of iraq pretty much by themselves now.

or the ability for them to build a government for the people, by the people? true, it hasnt worked as many has hoped, but keep in mind the us didnt have the current govenment structure in place until 1787 when the us constitution was adopted(11 years after the declaration of independence). trial and error will happen

Freedom for the Kurds is a positive thing for the Kurds. Maybe not positive for regional safety.

Comparing the U.S. during the Articles of Confederation and the post-Saddam Iraq is ridiculous. While there were regional tensions between Americans during and after the Revolution there was nothing like the wide-spread civil unpleasantness between the Shiites and Sunni's. Plus, um, we wanted independence. Iraq didn't have much choice in the matter.

[amphibian]

HoosierDaddy;342351 said:

Freedom for the Kurds is a positive thing for the Kurds. Maybe not positive for regional safety.

Yeah. Turkey and Iran will never let the Kurds in Iraq declare independence.

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Comparing the U.S. during the Articles of Confederation and the post-Saddam Iraq is ridiculous. While there were regional tensions between Americans during and after the Revolution there was nothing like the wide-spread civil unpleasantness between the Shiites and Sunni's. Plus, um, we wanted independence. Iraq didn't have much choice in the matter.

Uh, American Civil War: 600,000 soldiers dead and maybe another 400,000 casualties. The civilian toll was considerably less, but nobody really kept track of those numbers.

[HoosierDaddy]

amphibian;342390 said:

Yeah. Turkey and Iran will never let the Kurds in Iraq declare independence.


Uh, American Civil War: 600,000 soldiers dead and maybe another 400,000 casualties. The civilian toll was considerably less, but nobody really kept track of those numbers.

He was talking about the shift from the Articles of Confederation: approx 1784-1787 to the U.S. Constitution ratified and in effect in 1788.

Yes, the American Civil War is much more similar in death toll and all around devastation, specifically southern infrastructure and demographics.

[amphibian]

HoosierDaddy;342435 said:

He was talking about the shift from the Articles of Confederation: approx 1784-1787 to the U.S. Constitution ratified and in effect in 1788.

The original Constitution and its many half-assed compromises left a lot of people dissatisfied and it only took 60 years of increasingly partisan politics and wealth disparities to get a large group of mostly Christian whites to fight another large group of mostly Christian whites.

I remember my government teacher in high school explaining that the books were wrong and that the only reason the United States got through those 11 years was that there were no pressing matters that required a unified front (military threat from the Indians or the British) and trade was still strong. Iraq has so many pressing issues that everything got sped up and intensified.

I still think there's some value in comparing the Articles of Confederation, but realize that it's not the best analogy to make.

Also think that having a President and a Prime Minister is stupid.

[Cold Iron]

paladin;342308 said:

i guess on an economic level yes, but that is expected i think when you consider their contributions.

but what about freedom for the kurds? they endured at least 2 decades of hell under saddam and now enjoy safety, autonomy, and a semblence of peace. they take care of their region of iraq pretty much by themselves now.

or the ability for them to build a government for the people, by the people? true, it hasnt worked as many has hoped, but keep in mind the us didnt have the current govenment structure in place until 1787 when the us constitution was adopted(11 years after the declaration of independence). trial and error will happen

I said good for the US.

Basically my point is this, no matter how else you justify or qualify something as being multi-faceted or complex, when there is only one thing gained, in the long term, people will assume (correctly) that it was the reason. Look at history.

[HoosierDaddy]

amphibian;342446 said:

The original Constitution and its many half-assed compromises left a lot of people dissatisfied and it only took 60 years of increasingly partisan politics and wealth disparities to get a large group of mostly Christian whites to fight another large group of mostly Christian whites.

I remember my government teacher in high school explaining that the books were wrong and that the only reason the United States got through those 11 years was that there were no pressing matters that required a unified front (military threat from the Indians or the British) and trade was still strong. Iraq has so many pressing issues that everything got sped up and intensified.

I still think there's some value in comparing the Articles of Confederation, but realize that it's not the best analogy to make.

Also think that having a President and a Prime Minister is stupid.

I was both a history and political science major in undergrad and I've graduated law school. I have a fair grasp of the political, historical, and legal perspectives here.

By 11 years I assume you mean from July 1776 to 1787, yes? I wouldn't say creating a nation, finding alliances, and fighting a war against the largest empire in the world for 5+ years is not a pressing issue. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was on all of their minds quit a bit

Secondly, the problems that the Articles of Confederation created were forceful enough to require a continental convention. No power to tax? How in the world is any government going to work with no power to tax? Thus... convention time.

Thirdly, the debate as to what form the government should take: federalistic or more commonwealthian was heavily debated. The Federalist Papers were published for a reason.

The United States remained a vulnerable nation until after the War of 1812, when a more solid peace with European powers could be brokered.

This is basically a long winded way of saying your high school government teacher made gross-overgeneralizations, probably because he needed more brevity than historical accuracy.

[paladin]

all of it shows that it takes time, and noone has patience anymore. russia and the balkan countries have experienced their own growing pains with democracy as well, as it is a system of government that needs to be molded for the specific political, social, and geological layout of each country. one thing is for sure, everyone is giving iraq a raw deal when it comes to working out their problems. it takes years, decades even, not months, to establish a functional democratic government. people need to stop calling it a failed experiment and call it a work in progress instead. you arent going to foster longterm peace with a negative attitude

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

It doesn't help them that it was not a gradual, organic, self-induced process. We invaded and told them they are a democracy now. You can't expect that to work overnight.