Iraq

>>31647193
Watch Generation Kill and multiple by 10 years

>>31647201
This, and Bush being dumb.

As long as Iraq divides itself as Sunni and Shiite.

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Germany and Japan had a unified demos and legitimate governments that could be replaced. Iraq is a quiltwork of different ethnic and religious groups, half of which don't view the government as legitimate in the first place.

Tribalists gonna be tribalists. Only reason the Saudis kind of made it work is because they've been flush with cash since day one, and one continuous family dynasty has been in charge the entire history of the nation. They'll stumble and collapse as soon as they can't just plug the gaps with wads of dollar bills.

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>>31647220
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUIn-vkjhMk

Because liberals and the faggots running NATO wont let us kill the enemy. We are not allowed to engage with, close with, and destroy the enemy.

The Soviets had the opposite problem in Afghanistan when they tried to go full on "scorched earth" and inspired every Afghani to pick up a rifle.

Theres a middle ground we need to find.

>>31647193
Those were stable nations who got their ass kicked and just accepted it and went on as a nation.

The thing about Iraq is they aren't Nationalist, they only care about their own personal mud hut and tribe.

Same thing with Afghanistan. I don't know when but it was people who made a map drew some lines down, and called it the border. Pakistani and Afghans don't recognize that, and many are in the same tribe. Dude I've been to both, those places are fucked. It's like that scene in Godfather, they are animals let them tear each other apart.

>>31647253
This, just fence it off and leave them to their own devices, or just glass it already. Arabs are fucked.

>>31647243
The problem with that is economics. There's no point in pacifying a country if it's going to be a blasted wasteland for 20 years. The power vacuum left when the Soviets abandoned Afghanistan ended in a decade of regional warlords followed by a decade of Taliban fundamentalist rule.

Iraq is a vital resource hub, but Arabs still don't really know how to build a modern society from the ground up. Germany and Japan had already built themselves once, so they knew how to do it again. Reduce Iraq to rubble, and it would just stay a ruin for another century. And we (mostly the Saudis) need Iraqi oil wells up and pumping.

the secret is that it has always been a shithole

Should have just fucking left it alone, Iraq was never a threat to us at all.

Sure Saddam was a horrible bastard but can you honestly say Iraq was worse off with a competent, functioning government than the mishmash suicide bombed every week group of officials?

>>31647193
Because it's not a controlled environment

>>31647275
Saddam was a horrible bastard that kept the even more horrible bastards the fuck in line. A la ISIS. Same with Ghadaffi, Assad, ect... Horrible torturing monstrous dictators are needed in that area to keep the savage subhuman population from going completely bananas

>>31647193
there is a lot of truth to>>31647253
but that is really only part of what went wrong, the US plan for victory was far less fully planned than it should have been because we did not expect to kick their ass that fast. That problem led to the problem of dealing with an insurgency which is really the only type of fight an arab is good at because they don't wear a uniform and get to fight from their own village for their own mudhut. That type of fighting the US learned how to deal with and damn near completely eliminated by the end of the surge, and that is where the final nail in the coffin came from, politicians. Obama came into office on promises of ending the war which was easy the actual fighting was pretty much over by 2009, and all he had to do in order to withdraw our troops was take no action and make no attempt to renegotiate the status of forces agreement and leave, if it was a country with a national identity and not one made of 3 different countries; sunni, shiite, and kurd which all hate eachother it might have worked but when the US left the exact same thing that happened in vietnam happened, we left a major power vacuum and the next warlord came and filled it.

>>31647193
Turns out firing every member of Saddam's party was a really bad idea, as you needed membership to be anything in Iraqi society.

>>31647193
Man this picture took me back. Look down, brown. Look up, brown. That baby powder like sand that turned to pudding when it rained. The smell. Damn.

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>>31647193
Because current American political ideology does not allow the US to support a dictator.

Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan etc. in their current states are not amenable to pluralism or democracy due to ethnic/linguistic/sectarian/tribal divisions. As such, only the explicit threat of violence is capable of holding the countries together e.g. Saddam Hussein held Iraq together, as the US occupation did as well, Assad held Syria together, the Taliban held Afghanistan together.

As soon as the various groups are allowed too much political freedom they start squabbling, dialogue breaks down, and civil strife ensues.

Forcing Western democracy on to the Middle East makes as much sense as forcing Middle Eastern dictatorships on the West i.e. unless it is violently enforced, the people will resist it. Western democracy didn't just pop into existence in Europe, it developed organically over centuries, so to expect to just work in the Middle East is simply naive.

It may seem glib to suggest installing a dictator, but it would save a lot of bloodshed and misery for vast swathes of people over there.

>>31647357
Tell me about the smell, anon.

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>>31647193
not enough civilian casualties
WWII
>70 million killed in 6
Iraq
>134100 killed in 13

how can we find terrorists if the civies are more afraid of them then they are of us?

>>31647357
I remember we would play "I spy" in Iraq as a joke.

That's the game where you say "I spy with my little eye" and a person guesses. "Is it a rock?"... "yep".

It's not a real war. It was a retarded political game

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>>31647450

Tell me the difference.

America
>Does Saddam have WMDs?
>"No"
>lmao lets invade anyway
Thinking like that is why it's fucked.

>>31647480
Iraq and Afghanistan didn't/don't pose any actual threat to the United States

>>31647495
How much of a threat did Poland pose to Germany and the USSR?

Compare troop density in Germany to Iraq. We had an actual plan for occupying Germany and the men to back it up. Stalin did even better and had a full government holed up in Moscow waiting for the first day of peace. Japan was a tad different but we pulled it off nicely, the Emperor helped a lot.

Everything else in this thread is true too, it was like a perfect storm of stupid pouring over Baghdad.

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>>31647268
>Reduce Iraq to rubble, and it would just stay a ruin for another century.

one can hope

I reckon we could have done it if we went full MBT on every street corner, no guns, basically police state mode.

But what's the point

>>31647505
None and they did it because those psychos wanted to take over the world. Tell me why we are in the middle east. Just one actual good reason.

>>31647193
Low IQ muslims inhabiting the place

>>31647193
Because the germans and japs honored their own surrenders.

Because we didn't just annex it
It would have been better for the people there if we annexed it and turned it into a build project for long term economic expansion
Make a deal with Russia where we split the middle east up but leave the Kurds alone so they can finally be completely independent of the shitshow known as the Iraq government

>>31647193
Are you fucking retarded? The answer is obvious, because we can't DO what the fuck we have to... We used shit like mass bombings, willy pete, napalm, and flamethrowers in the past... but now we can't do that shit because "civilized" society would kill themselves and for some reason we gave a shit what the world thinks. If we truly gave no fucks we could have easily won by glassing the entire hajji haven, but again, we care too much about what the world thinks so we lose our shit if some kid gets killed even though the little shit was gonna grow up to bomb shit just like his daddy.

>>31647602
Underage fuck off, we specifically chose the option that would cause less jap casualties in WW2 and it worked.

Shooting wily nilly accomplishes nothing

>>31647243
>afghani

Afghan. Afghani is the currency the Afghan people use in Afghanistan.

Hate them all you want, at least get their fucking name right.

>>31647579
Neoconservativism.

>>31647575
>what's the point

All of those trillions of dollars would have been spent on a cause that didn't involve hundreds of thousands of innocent casualties. Assuming an ideal scenario where Iraq could even have been done correctly in the first place.

>>31647646
Okay smartass. When I was there for a collective 18 months we all called them Afghanis

>>31647631
There's a cute little anecdote about that. The Purple Hearts that are issued to this very day are the exact same ones pressed and stockpiled in preparation for the invasion of mainland Japan in '46.

It's fucking staggering. It's 2016 and we're still issuing medals that were destined for Japan. Anyone that says the nukes were a war crime is utterly clueless about the sheer scale of carnage continued blockading, firebombing, and full scale invasion would result in.

>>31647193
giving back to the people who couldn't control it in the first place

/thread

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OP is a sandnigger

>pacify
No one cares about pacifying you. Just containing the nonstop shitfest that is your society.

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>>31647193
>Aimlessly dicks around killing anyone that looks at you funny for over a decade for the sake of your "ally" Israel (that has done far more to harm your country than either Iraq OR Afghanistan)
>wonders why their nonexistent goals were never met, and why nothing but trouble followed in their wake

>>31647683
There's still a good 100,000 waiting to be issued out of the I believe half a million pressed in '45.

>>31647678
You spent eighteen months calling them by the wrong name because you were too stupid or lazy to learn the correct one.

>>31647713
"Afghani" is still accurate, if not the term he was actually supposed to use. It just means "of Afghanistan" rather than referring to an actual national group.

Oriental is still an accurate term, even if its just used to describe objects rather than people.

>>31647713
I didnt call them shit. I was infantry not intelligence. I threw candy bars and dollar bills at the children for 18 months, smiled and gave them a thumbs up.

>>31647193
Because pacifying a bunch of savages is a lot harder than formally defeating two nations more modernized than the ones the savages inhabit.

>>31647193
>What went wrong?
You can't win if you don't know what winning is.

What was the win condition? If the goal was merely to remove Saddam there was no point staying. If the goal was to make Iraq stable removing Saddam wasn't smart. If the goal was to introduce western-style democracy to the Middle East you've got to commit to centuries of political and social groundwork. If the goal was simply to remove Iraq/the ME as a threat to the USA then either annex it or use diplomacy to convince them you are better as a friend than an enemy.

Sadly the USA has never known how to deal with the Middle East. This has been clear as far back as the Suez Crisis, a great example of ideology defeating practicality.

>>31648024
Also it's worth noting that the USA more or less occupied Germany for 50 years and is still half-occupying Japan. It was not 6 years and out.

>>31648024
The winning condition should be removing all threats to civilians from developing but the people deciding our future say the economy is more important which leads into this civil unrest we have today. We should have annexed them and called it done but the corruption of government is being furthered by ignorant idiots.

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>>31647212
Mainly this.

The borders of Iraq were drawn by other countries without regard for tribal and religious differences, which led to different peoples being lumped in under the same government, with none of them able to agree on how shit should be run and which group should be in charge.

That, and Bush decided to completely disband the military, so you had all these trained (and now experienced) soldiers who are suddenly out of a job. What's poor, broke, 19 year old Habib to do but join a militia or terror organization? He gets paid, and gets to take revenge on the people that laid him off.

>>31648186
I could swear rather than disbanding their military we actually fixed it then in their infinite stupidity they immediately broke it again by doing stupid shit like assigning people who had no business doing anything besides window licking to command positions as political favors replacing the actual good commanders we put in place.

>>31647703
This

Iraq and Afghanistan needed US led and funded rebuilding (or in Afghanistan's case building) to the level not seen since the Marshall plan.
The US did some rebuilding, but not to the tune of trillions in 5 years which was needed.

>>31647683
>>31647705
Another fun fact is that the vast majority of bombs dropped from bombers in Vietnam were leftovers from world War II.

We didn't manage to use them all and converted some to GPS guided bombs for the first Gulf War

>>31647579
...because we want to take over the world...

>>31647243
>The Soviets had the opposite problem in Afghanistan
Soviets actually had exactly same problem. Poor people are natural allies of communism according to Marxism. But soviets run into huge red pill there.

>>31648851
>We didn't manage to use them all and converted some to GPS guided bombs for the first Gulf War
GPS bombs are made from Mark 80 series they were developed in 1950s.

because europeans are civilized and can be governed. in the middle east the only way to rule is with an iron fist or else they revert back to their thousand year old tribal conflicts.

>>31648851
I heard that with the bombing campaign in Syria, we recently ran out of bombs originally made for ww2 that were converted.

I
S
L
A
M

No country that succumbs to Islam will ever be peaceful, successful or stable.

>>31647275
No, he was a monster to the Kurds that didn't deserve it

>>31647243
Genghis Khan had the right idea.

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>>31648186
True. This explains a lot of Africa's shenanigans.

>>31647395
yep
how much has changed when americans gave their cousins in europe total war. now they worry about killing extra savages in iraq

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You tell me. We could probably "pacify" them if we joined with Putin in exterminating them, like how we did to the Nazis.

>>31650716
truth is traditional warfare is over because of mobility not because of firearms.
in the old armies or bands had to take weeks to cross a country. once spotted they were easily engaged. now it's a matter of hours to move around.

>>31647450
>War is not politics

Oh, to be this naive.

>>31647579
Geopoltics

>>31647589
Because colonialism worked out so well the last time we tried and did not turn into a long term drain after 50 years.

>>31647193
These people don't know how to live without fear. Its why dictators worked there and their religion works for them. They need the almight hand of god or a dictator to smack them in being peaceful.

>>31647193
We were stuck in a jungle fighting asian ghost for 17 years. Face it. Some parts of the world can't be conquered

>>31650997
Not without the willingness to commit genocide, no.

>>31651012
Which is a crime against humanity

>>31650975
Colonialism should never have ended. Maybe Africa and the Middle East would be better off if it were still under European control.

>>31651025
Who fucking cares? So long as we and the Russians aren't opposing each other in that theater, MAD isn't a thing anymore. Just nuke the bastards and shoot the survivors.

>>31650997
The principle problem with Vietnam was not that we failed out objectives, is that we simply stopped giving a shit to make sure our accomplishments were lasting. That's big problem with democracies: by having politicians closely beholden to the whims of the people/having politicians who need to be reelected every few years you create the issue to where the government is extremely short-sighted. Who cars what happens 10-20 years from now, it's an election year baby so we need to see results ASAP no matter if it's effective or not.

By the end of combat operations in Vietnam in 1973, we had accomplished our goals. The VC were all but eradicated, having basically gutted themselves during Tet, leaving the NVA the only real opposition. We had mitigated (though not eradicated as that proved tactically and strategically infeasible) the impact of the Ho Chi Minh trail via massive bombing campaigns and raids. We brought North Vietnam to the bargaining table, having them sign the Paris Peace Accords, which stated the US would withdraw if NVA agreed to a ceasefire, and stipulated that the US would replace any equipment the ARVN lost.

So what went wrong? We stopped giving a shit. By 1975 Vietnam was old news. Very unpopular old news. The US had become wrapped up in the new flavor of the month: Watergate. Nixon was finished, and by association to his name no politicians would dare try to carry on his policies, if they wanted to having long-lived career. So, in 1975 when the NVA invaded the South again, we didn't help. The ARVN caved, and we let it happen. It wasn't our problem anymore.

We see it again in Iraq and Afghanistan. We didn't fail militarily. We just simply didn't have the political will to accomplish our goals, with the added problem in Iraq of having no real clue as to what our goals were. We could have fixed Iraq and Afghanistan if we wanted to, just as we could have saved South Vietnam. We had the means, we just didn't give a shit.

>>31647193
We haven't tried to pacify it? Fuck we've spent the last like 5 years rebuilding it. We went in, killed Hussein, and started cleaning up.

>>31647209
>This, and the dem controlled Congress being dumb.

FTFY

t. Someone who was actually there

>>31647193
Alexander the motherfucking great couldn't do it either.

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>>31647383
Underrated post

>>31647193
There were three things that made WWII complete in 6 years.

>A wall of meat and metal to the east of Germany
>A global superpower throwing everything possible at its allies while screaming "BUILD EVERYTHING"
>Two nukes

Currently we have:
>a global superpower that is restricted from building everything and throwing the end product at its allies.
>a coalition of nations that endlessly bickers amongst itself and the ideology that we must be above the enemy by fairly treating the enemy

>>31647193
>we

abother dumb fucking amerifat hick thinks they won the war all by themselves

>>31647193
Germany and Japan have good cultures.

The middle east doesn't.

>>31650781
That's the thing, we didn't eradicate the nazis. We punished their leaders and the rest didn't have any loyalty after the combined effect of losing a war that was obviously stupid in retrospect and seeing exactly where the Jews were going on those trains. It wasn't hard to shake people's faith in Hitler, it's very hard to shake a Muslim's faith in the only thing he's known from his birth. You can't tell the Islamic works that their God committed suicide and that his army's SIKK KAYDEE didn't win the war.

>>31647193
We pretty much outsource our job to third parties.These videos pretty much explain why the US is failing and the enemy is running circles around us in the information battlespace. They're pretty long but worth it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhZe7eZK4dw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsArto3UVT0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t98WRrOPj2s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMQ0B2ivjPs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkAZUvQAzkc

>>31650504

Heaps of Islamic nations are peaceful, the problem with the middle east is unresolved tribal conflicts and the creation of new nation states based on European colonial territories and not based on the realities of the people living there

>>31647201
Love that fucking show

>>31647579
Idk oil or something...

>>31647243
Yeah, and the "middle ground" was what we did in Vietnam.

As long as there is fractured tribalism in an area with shit education and people simply not caring about the values and concepts you're trying to establish, it's going to be an utter mess.

The mistake was going in in the first place. Unless we're willing to spend a ton of money and stay there for a generation or longer, it is not a winnable war.

We did pacify it.
We obliterated AQ in Iraq with the Surge and Awakening.
Ask the Iraqis how they managed to disenfranchise their Sunnis so badly they welcomed ISIS with open arms. It may have had something to do with Shiite militias we never seriously cracked down on murdering and kidnapping at will.

>>31651620
Man, the VC was a fucking weed, and I give it props for that. It was going to grow back after Tet no matter how gutted they were. Saigon simply was unable to control the countryside.

The North agreed to a cease-fire just like they had done countless times before. They had been fighting and reviving themselves constantly for the forty years before against similar overwhelming firepower and had a tradition of doing it against the Chinese for thousands of years before.

A South Vietnam was never going to happen. It was never a viable option, and our leaders let their fanatical fear of the commies blind them to that. Even Dulles said there was barely a chance it would work out.

Hindsight is 20/20 but I bet Vietnam would have been a Communist ally if the US supported reunification after the Japanese were kicked out. Ho Chi Minh had always been more nationalistic than Communist.

>>31653166
>>31653328

The "problem with Vietnam was that the U.S. was supporting a government that was so monumentally corrupt that it fed the nationalistic fervor of the communists who were still fresh from their victory against the French. Also China was never going to allow a U.S. ally on its border that could be used as a staging ground for a future invasion (see North Korea and Eastern Ukraine) so they would fund the North Vietnamese indefinitely

>>31653207

AQ in Iraq was a result of the war and did not exist there before it

A government that cannot exist independently without financial and military support from the U.S. was never going to be seen as truly legitimate

>>31653387
Yeah, and Kennedy's Administration tried many times to find a better option than Diem. Every single time the consensus was the same: this monumentally corrupt government was the best option there was for a South Vietnamese state.

What does that tell you if the best option is a horrifically unpopular and corrupt little bitchboy? None of it was ever viable.

China had always hated the Vietnamese, and vice versa. I'm sure Ho would have been cool with fighting them if he finally got his own country outside of colonial rule. It's not like they weren't used to it by then.

>>31653454

China's hate of the Vietnam doesn't surpass military reality

If you look at both U.S. invasions of Iraq, you will see that they were only successful due to the U.S being able to stage troops and equipment in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Trying to invade a nation from half the world away is suicidal. China isn't blind to military reality and has always kept the U.S. at least one buffer state away

>>31650504
Despite how much I dislike them due to my own prejudice, the southeast Asia/Pacific nations with Islam are as peaceful as can be expected for their poverty level, like Indonesia and Malaysia.

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>>31647193

>We smashed Japan and Germany in 6 years yet Iraq is still a hellhole 13 years on.

Japs and Germans are civilized. When the war is over they return to being peaceful and rational.

Sunni Muslims live in a constant state of conflict, with non muslims, with Shias or Kurds, with other tribes, and if that fails with each other.

Pic Absurdly Related.

>>31653410
>AQ in Iraq was a result of the war and did not exist there before it
Yes. And we destroyed it.
Pacification complete. Well, save militias like Badr. Which is kinda my point.
>A government that cannot exist independently without financial and military support from the U.S. was never going to be seen as truly legitimate
For the Sunnis, it was a question of ending persecution. Pride never entered into it.
In fact, they relied on us, and felt betrayed by the US when we left them to the devices of Shiite extremists.

>>31653549

Destroying AQ isn't the same as destroying anti U.S sentiment that allowed AQ to flourish there in the first place.

>>31653507
Military history also shows how Vietnam has been able to resist much more powerful countries militarily, and China in particular.

They'd probably have to resort to some form of genocide, and even then, welcome to the history of Vietnam lol. The fuckers don't quit. The fanatical fear of communism really blinded us to the asset Vietnam could have really been, imo

>>31653575
But we did remove anti-US sentiment. We co-opted the local tribes to drive them out.
AQ had to leave because nobody was welcoming them into their homes. That's what the Awakening was all about.
The situation only slid back once we left, and nobody (being Maliki) reigned in the Shiites. In addition to being a general windbag.

>>31647480
in a war you attempt to achieve victory.

>>31653650

The fact that the situation slid back shows that anti american sentiment was alive and well. The fact that Iraq was no longer going to allow soldiers and contractors legal immunity shows how much they wanted us to get out

>>31653693
>The fact that the situation slid back shows that anti american sentiment was alive and well.
Again
>>31653549
They didn't accept ISIS because they hated Americans. They accepted ISIS because they wanted protection from a government they saw as corrupt and, at best apathetic, if not an actual accomplice of Shiite militias who were persecuting them.
>The fact that Iraq was no longer going to allow soldiers and contractors legal immunity shows how much they wanted us to get out
That may have had to do with the IRGC demanding there be no extension to SOFA.
This isn't to say, if Iran hadn't cared, that it would have definitely been extended. But it's telling that the US was so confident they could clinch it.
>https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-we-stuck-with-maliki--and-lost-iraq/2014/07/03/0dd6a8a4-f7ec-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html?utm_term=.87b78e4d562b

>>31647193
Nation building doesn't happen in 10 years.
Remember we occupied Germany and Japan for decades.
see >>31647201 and >>31651714
Politicians. With the librul media broadcasting every casualty like it was 'Nam 2.0 (which i feel devalued the gravity of Vietnam greatly) people forgot it takes more than a decade to nation-build.

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>>31651639

>he thinks the dem controlled congress was the problem

Look up Paul Bremer.

We're not fighting a nation, we're fighting a peoples

same thing in vietnam

>>31647209
Obama pulling out and then going back in halfassed didn't help

>>31647193
Afghanistan is far worse and it's been longer than 15 years.

>>31651683
It's amazing just how far that little nigga managed to get, I used to love blowing people's minds by telling them Kandahar is just Alexander after two thousand years of mispronunciation.

>>31647579
Shitposting IRL

>>31648484
Marshall plan in inflation adjusted term was $120 billion 2016 dollars.

Afghanistan alone has recieved $130 billion 2016 dollars.

>>31647579
>he thinks anyone wants to rule the sandbox

>>31653590
China was poorer than Vietnam in 1990.

>>31653926

Its not the "liberal media" when the government literally cannot justify being there

Japan and Germany declared war on the United States. Iraq did not

Actually, we would have been done five years ago, had the iraqi gov just let us do our thing.

Funny, the one time we dont do the ol regime switcheroo, it backfires.

>>31654020
No, they just shot at us on an almost weekly basis.

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>>31654078

>invade another country with no legitimate reason and on completely falsified pretenses
>surprised when people shoot at you

>>31654128
There were chemical weapons in iraq, FTR.

>>31654128
You're really that fucking dumb and/or have zero institutional memory....?

>>31653962
You do realize the plan and agreement with Iraq to pull out was signed under the Bush administration, right?

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>>31654149
>>31654155

>still believing Bush era propaganda that has been disproven a billion times since

Rudimentary chemical weapons which can be anything from tear game to chlorine mixed with ammonia is not a threat to the united states

>>31654193
That's neither here, nor there. There were, by legal defintion, weapons of mass destruction in iraq.

>>31647193

In the past war was waged on entire countries. The populations of Germany and Japan did what they were told because they were bombed into the Neolithic era and this admittedly messy process got their minds right.

In Iraq we kicked their military's ass in around 21 days and when we finished slapping them around the civilian population, spared the horrors of war for the most part came out and said "When are you going to have the lights back on?"

Nobody's minds were made right in this process. The population of Iraq was not defeated and therefore was not ready to have some nation building dictated to their peace-loving muslim asses.

>>31647359
>Because current American political ideology does not allow the US to support a dictator.
I would like to introduce you to the Kingdom of Saud, Qatar, Yemen, and Egypt.

>>31654193
>rudimentary
rudimentary =/= degraded
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/03/world/middleeast/chemical-weapons-iraq-pentagon-secrets.html?_r=0
also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
>In 2015 it was learned that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had not been fully accounted for by UN inspections.[13] Ten years after its inception, Operation Avarice was declassified and it was learned that there were stockpiles of warheads and rockets containing degraded chemical agents similar to those used in the Iran-Iraq War. From 2005 through 2006 military intelligence discovered that the weapons—many in poor condition, some empty or containing nonlethal liquid, but others containing sarin with unexpectedly high purity—were in the possession of one Iraqi individual who remained anonymous. Operation Avarice, headed by army intelligence and the CIA, involved the discreet purchase of the weapons from the unidentified individual to keep them off the black market.[13]

>>31654232

A sawed off shotgun is legally considered a "weapon of mass destruction". You are literally trying to justify invading a country for having things that everyone including the united states, has in their arsenal

But don't go invading Russia or China, you know, countries that can actually do something about it

>>31649400
Underrated and checked

>>31647631

That one time we chose that option. That was it. The rest of the war was about how many pounds of bombs you could drop at one time on a city. We fought WWII the way it had to be fought and right at the end we chose to drop two atomic bombs instead of invade and that's how you're making your case?

Seriously?

>>31654193
>no Desert Storm
>no no-fly zone so Saddam can't massacre his own people all over again
>no getting aircraft shot and and/or shot up for more than a fucking decade because the dumb bastard won't comply with the ceasefire he signed

Also:

>no French banks getting uber wealthy off the Oil for Food program
>no 747 fuselage up near Kurdistan so people can practice storming civilian aircraft

Wow. You are that dumb. Okay. Carry on.

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>>31654255

You mean to say that Iraq had weapons left over from a war where it was literally supplied by the United States itself

SAY IT AIN'T SO

>>31651683
Alexander DID make the hill tribes of Afghanistan capitulate, mostly by killing everyone who didn't surrender to him and crucifying them on the road to the next town.

>>31654354

Afghanistan during the time of Alexander was a much different place, the rivers that were the trade routes from the east have long since dried up

Controlling a population means controlling the things that population needs to sustain itself (Airports, Power stations, hospitals, roads etc) Afghanistan literally has almost none of these things so there is nothing to control that would have any effect on most of the people

>>31654275
Look, the invasion of iraq was stupid. Regardless it accomllished its goal of finding hidden caches of WMDs. Your sawn off shotgun analogy is a false equivalency at best. We both know that a sawn off shotgun is no more dangerous than one with a more standard barrel length. I digress.
Russia and China aren't being invaded becuase they aren't threating to nuke their own civilians. Being considered a rougue state by much of the western world means you are open to invasion.
Regardless, Iraq's current state of affairs are not due to the invasion. These are two seperate problems.

>>31651041
the colonial countries have no power left and no political capital to keep their colonies after the 2nd world war,even france have to give independence to algeria which was long regarded to be an integral part of france itself

>>31654427

>Your sawn off shotgun analogy is a false equivalency at best

No it isn't. A bunch of degraded chemical weapons half way around the world is not a threat to the United States.

>Russia and China aren't being invaded because they aren't threatening to nuke their own civilians

But they do and have done so more openly ever since the U.S. squandered much of its clout on Iraq

> Being considered a rougue state by much of the western world means you are open to invasion.

Are you implying that the U.S. and U.K is the "western world"?

The Mongols destroyed it back in the day. It needs to stay that way.

One does not simply EXECUTE Ghengis' messengers and expect mercy, even after centuries of despair.

>>31654502
>No it isn't. A bunch of degraded chemical weapons half way around the world is not a threat to the United States.
In a more conventional sense, no.

>But they do and have done so more openly ever since the U.S. squandered much of its clout on Iraq.
?
Look, causus belli was WMD, there were WMDs. Even if i cede your sawn off shotgun analogy, kicking their door im for having weapons they arent supposed to have is a legitimate reason. Just like you would get your door kicked in for having a sawn off shotgun.

>>31654502
At this point, we are just arguing semantics though. How about we both drop it.

>>31650672
>Muh kurds

>>31647193
Errything went wrong senpai

>>31654671

Having WMD's that are only so due to legal mumbo jumbo is not a legitimate causus belli. There is a reason why Afghanistan is considered a NATO mission and Iraq was not

>>31654642
funny how the mongols ransacking the khwarzeminian there is one of the reasons that iraq became a wasteland nowadays

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>>31647193
We didn't kill all the Sand-niggers and muslims. You can't bring peace to a bunch of people that don't even understand it.

because, gloves were off, no cnn, no al jasandneegra

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>>31647193
Every war the US has fought was not designed to be won in the first place. War is a political tool used by our government to increase their popularity, give the population something to rally behind, and hide information/make the civil populace more accepting of the government's blatant disregard of privacy and rights. As long as it helps out uncle sam fight the mudhutters, right?

Wrong. We could've won, Iraq or literally any country the US wishes to could become a US puppet state. Most countries are. But the war wasn't meant to be won. It was meant to give the humvee-builders and everyone else in the military industrial complex a job.

Your problem here is that you think whenever war is declared the purpose of the war is to kill group x or nation y. It's not. That's always the declared purpose, but it's never the real one.

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>>31654908

>Fuck with regional politics for years
>wonder why no one gets along

>>31654969

literally nothing you said is true, if anything the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have showed that the U.S. military has alot of glaring weaknesses that Russian and China have not missed

>>31654969
>Its another weeb that thinks his opinion matters episode

>>31654969
Just to expand upon this a little further, as I don't believe I made my thoughts clear enough, the war wasn't about killing every terrorist in Iraq. It was about keeping the value of the petrodollar, which was (and still kind of is) why the US dollar isn't worth what the free market says it should be, which is a lot lower in value.

Wars are not fought to kill enemies, not anymore. But some of the same things the hunns fought for are things we still fight for today. Ownership of land, the valuables in those lands, the trading ports, oppurtunity to do business, taxes, all that stuff. But wars are not fought to crush enemies and nations anymore(with the exception of this war with russia the government keeps pushing, but even that's more because of oil than anything). It's not even accurate to say wars are fought anymore, because that implies an enemy that's extremely difficult to get rid of. Wars are declared and supported now, but not fought.

War's not a question, it's not an answer, it's not a verb, adjective, or noun. It's a trade and a business oppurtunity. On the public side, congressmen trade the future and prosperity of nations for two or three million dollars in ther bank accounts, and all they have to do is say "I approve of this war." They don't have to deal with the consequences, they don't have to fight in the sand, and they don't have to worry about how they made the world poorer so they could retire five years early. On the deep state side, the CIA is the biggest criminal empire that's ever existed. The heroin they protected in Afghanistan, used to fund themselves, is now an epidemic in our own country.

Does war make men mad? No, the people who start these wars, because it does start in a parliament building or a CIA office, not in a cave in afghanistan, are universely either rotten, willfully igorant, or completely uninformed. Like I said, war is a trade.

It's a shorting. War is a short against the future of mankind. And they may be right.

>>31647220
What you described is more Afghanistan than Iraq.

t. psyop school dropout

>>31654971
>he thinks there's been any point since the Ottoman Empire where the middle east was stable

We carpet bombed Germany to the literal ground, and nuked Japan.

Kids gloves have kept the ME a giant power vacuum fuckzone.

>>31655256
Worked for the Germans in Poland, amirite.

I think a part of it is that it was a great place for testing out gear in real world situations.

With the ability to prototype new weapons and defenses faster than ever, and get it to troops so quickly, Iraq and Afghanistan were great testing zones.

It was super easy to have troops in combat testing out new stuff, and then get almost instant feedback on what worked/didn't work.

Plus, if we had never fought any of these so called "pointless" wars, we wouldn't have any combat experienced troops. Even if it's just fighting against a bunch of retards pretending to be ghosts with the bedsheets, it's still experience that can then be used to train other troops.

>>31655285

You think wrong

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>>31647193

As cringey as it is, the Cawkadooties got this one right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFu5qXMuaJU

>"These countries don't have the most basic building blocks to support a democracy. Little things like, 'We ought to be tolerant of those who disagree with us. We ought to be tolerant of those who worship a different god than us. That a journalist ought to be able to disagree with the president. And you think you can just march into these countries based on some fundamentalist religious principles, drop a few bombs, topple a dictator and start a democracy? Gimme a break."

>>31655318
Wrong? How? Not that Anon, but I think what he/she said is an undeniable factor.

>>31655525

Because that anon is an idiot with no understanding of the politics behind wars other than "muh weapons test"

He seriously needs to drink nail polish until everything goes black

>>31647193
>We smashed Japan and Germany in 6 years

Germany
(Spring 1942 - May 1945) = about 3 years.

Japan
(Early 1942 - August 1945) = little over 3 years and 8 months.

>>31655550
>I think a part of it
>part of it
Of course it's not the real reason

>>31647253
This, the problems in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries are way deeper than we can hope to affect. No one can rebuild a nation like Iraq into something successful when the core is rotten.

>>31647193

Germany and Japan were desperate for manpower when the invasion happened since so many had already been killed in previous fighting.

There were plenty of able bodied men in Iraq and Afghanistan able to be recruited by the militias and insurgents as a result.

Also in Iraq, leaving Saddam in power since 1991 left 12 years to educate the children to hate the US and as time marched on these became men just like the Hitler youth.

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We should send in some giant robots with plasma cannons powered by nuclear reactors, that'll teach those sand niggers.

>>31653513
>french revolution.

That's the one that resulted in the famous 'reign of terror', huh. Maybe not the best example.

>>31647334

The Iraqi government still exists though. Its not like ISIL has won.

>>31654020
>Japan and Germany declared war on the United States. Iraq did not

Afghanistan declared war on us, and yet they treat that conflict just like Iraq.

>>31647193
>What is limited war for 400, Alex.

Iraq is a tribal region. They will never accept a puppet govornment of fiat currency.

The fucking gig is up. Over a million dead and only one in every seven killed was what the US considers enemy combatants.

>Over 700,000 innocent women and children were casualties.

All for the fucking Dinar.
>I blame the fucking fluoride in the USA's water supply. Nothing else would render a nation so idiotic.

>>31647193
Iraq is so backwards that smashing it did nothing.

>>31657400
>over a million dead
>entire middle east in chaos
>our enemies are now fighting our enemies

I think its now, finally, a fair trade for 9/11.

Our job there is done.

>>31657248

No it didn't, the Taliban refused to hand over Osama

also

>treating Afghanistan as a country

>>31654990
Such as?

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>>31657400
>I blame the fucking fluoride in the USA's water supply. Nothing else would render a nation so idiotic.

Anon, I suppose it never occurred to you that, while we're sitting here chatting so enjoyably...

>>31654990
He's right you know.

>>31647193
who cares, just keep killing them until they are all gone.

>>31647193
Geneva conventions, not going total war

>>31657709

I hate to admit it, but this is probably true. We haven't been willing to bomb a country into a state of total submission. But with the world the way it is, it's hard to say if any such total war effort would really win us the victory we want and not just inspire immense backlash at the perceived injustice.

>>31647212
>Sunny and shite

describes Iraq pretty well

>>31647193
Iraq during Saddam; country kept together, no sectarian/tribal violence

Iraq after US invasion; all hell breaks loose, Kurds go apeshit, AQ and ISIS start to fuck shit up, Goverment and police non-existant

It's not that the US CAN'T pacify iraq, it's that they Don't WANT to pacify it

If they pacify it, the iraqi goverment will start using oil more and more towards infrastructure, etc etc And that means less oil to US

and since US wants all the oil to itself, they're keeping it that way

That's why the US is funding the clusterfuck that is ISIS/AlQ

>>31657730

Holy shit you are retarded, fucking kill yourself

Seriously why is it that every retard who wants to spout the "war for oil" nonsense also happen to know nothing about oil exploration, global reserves or even the price of oil as it sits today

Really, just end your stupid life

>>31657746
if not for oil, why did the US even invade iraq?

Kurds? The chemo attacks were justified as the kurds had a long history of insurgency in Iraq, they were literal terrorists, because Iraqi goverment refused to give them special snowflake status.

Kuwait? last time i checked it was totally justified because kuwait didn't pay debts.

>>31657746
>Seriously why is it that every retard who wants to spout the "war for oil" nonsense also happen to know nothing about oil exploration, global reserves or even the price of oil as it sits today

It's a very old and easy to grasp explanation.

I'd say our issue with pacifying Iraq was "commitment." No draft, rationing or war bonds or anything like that. Most people in the United States simply said, "Yeah, I support the Troops!" and then went on with their lives totally unaffected.

>>31657773
>The chemo attacks were justified as the kurds had a long history of insurgency in Iraq, they were literal terrorists, because Iraqi goverment refused to give them special snowflake status.

Hello /pol/.

>>31657781
Hello, JIDF

>>31657730
Most of our foreign oil comes from Canada and Saudi Arabia

>>31657773

Look at where Iraq sits on the map

Now study the last 2 major U.S. invasions

Now see why it would be a strategic boon to have large bases there

>>31657773
>Kuwait? last time i checked it was totally justified because kuwait didn't pay debts.

Hey saddams ghost, nobody bought it then, nobody buys it now.

>>31647589
But the resulting Baghdad wall would be torn down in forty years anyway

>i-it wasn't oil
It was. It wasn't the only factor of course. Saddam was an unhinged guy. I'm more upset about shit like Libya or even Afghanistan than Iraq.
Or how USA is supporting Jihadists in Syria.
Fuck Americans but let's be realistic.

>>31647193
RoE's and Hearts and Minds bullshit

>>31647193

>What went wrong?

WW2 was a total war, with the aim of destroying the military capabilites of your enemies and subdue their populations and take out their will to fight, by all means necessary so they stop being a threat to your power.

Irak and Afghanistan, on the other hand, ended being "nation builiding" clusterfucks where you tried to push modern, western, democratic values into people's throats, values they despise and hate. And they are going to fight against that, thooth and nail, and they did.

The only way to pacify these places is putting another dictator or ethnic group to keep the rest in check by force, that's the leson we lernt from Lybia and that's why Anwar el Sadat is still alive and well.

>>31647193
We didn't just start off by glassing them