Culture destroyed in Iraq
I think it's been very interesting that the US government keeps claiming the Iraq conflict wasn't about oil, yet warned the Iraqis many times during the duration of the war about the consequences of setting oil wells on fire and even set up a program for exchanging food for oil.
Burning oil bad, but it's okay for looters to burn priceless books, art and artifacts and for the American troops to sit around and do nothing. If it was oil, I can't help but wonder if the troops would gone and helped. They, the US officials, are condemning it now, days after the fact, and they can apologize all they want, but it doesn't change what happened.
You might think I'm being hard on the US, but they made the decision to attack Iraq. Whenever a government falls, anarchy ensures if the proper steps are not taken. If the United States wants to this to be remembered as being "justified," they should have helped.
In a thousand years, what's going to be remembered is a culture lost, not the United States "liberating" a people.
The US didn't care in the 80s when Saddam was gassing the Kurds, because Iraq was our "friend," since they were the enemy of our enemy, Iran. Hell, one of the biggest supporters of the war on Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, gave his support to Saddam by continuing to met with him, even with the growing proof of gas attacks. As many have also said, revolutions where someone else does the fighting for you and murders most of your population in the process don't work. If Spain came in and kicked the British out of America instead of the United States having the Revolutionary War, would we value our own independence as highly? Probably not. You never appreciate things as highly as when you do it on your own.
Burning oil bad, but it's okay for looters to burn priceless books, art and artifacts and for the American troops to sit around and do nothing. If it was oil, I can't help but wonder if the troops would gone and helped. They, the US officials, are condemning it now, days after the fact, and they can apologize all they want, but it doesn't change what happened.
You might think I'm being hard on the US, but they made the decision to attack Iraq. Whenever a government falls, anarchy ensures if the proper steps are not taken. If the United States wants to this to be remembered as being "justified," they should have helped.
In a thousand years, what's going to be remembered is a culture lost, not the United States "liberating" a people.
The US didn't care in the 80s when Saddam was gassing the Kurds, because Iraq was our "friend," since they were the enemy of our enemy, Iran. Hell, one of the biggest supporters of the war on Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, gave his support to Saddam by continuing to met with him, even with the growing proof of gas attacks. As many have also said, revolutions where someone else does the fighting for you and murders most of your population in the process don't work. If Spain came in and kicked the British out of America instead of the United States having the Revolutionary War, would we value our own independence as highly? Probably not. You never appreciate things as highly as when you do it on your own.