Quote:
Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler
Say something useful. All I see is Obamaesque verbal diarrhea. 
The first Iraqi war was brilliantly executed. Virtually no casualties and it left Saddam in charge.
What are you arguing exactly? I challenged a ridiculous, factually incorrect post. Excuse me if I was brief. This an Internet debate, not a Masters thesis. There is certainly a lot of room for debate about the need for/execution of the American Afghanistan war. Ditto about causes of the first Iraq War. The 2nd Iraq war was certainly idiotic - I think we agree there. Are you actually challenging my point about lumping the Soviets in with the "West"? What exactly is your point of view? |
My point of view is that it is certainly easy to dismiss the role of 'The West' in the middle east like you did above.
While there may not be something that we can refer to as a hundred year war between the middle east and the west, there has most definitely been 80 years of stark intrusive militarization of that area from the West.
The Iran/Iraq war you mentioned as the bloodiest in the region in the last century is easily shown to be a proxy war from western nations, as was the rise of Khomeini in Iran, the original securing of Saddam in Iraq and the continued protection of the regions monarchical despots.
There was no necessity to invade Iraq due to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. We know now that the information presented for that war was just as dubious as the pretenses for the second invasion of Iraq.
I don't place all the blame at the feet of western nations for the ongoing schism of Islam, but it's utterly disingenuous to downplay it in anyway.
It's factually inaccurate, is terrible historiography and serves no purpose other than to absolve ourselves of any conscious or unconscious contributions we've made to the region as citizens of Western powers.
If people are offended that many are blaming the involvement of the West for these sorts of occurrences, well, they should be, because as citizens of western society, we are accomplices.
As a nation, we signed a military arms deal worth $15 billion dollars just a few months ago with the globes leading exporter of terrorism. That
should be embarassing and something we should all keep in mind during this discussion.
Pretending like that isn't the case isn't doing anyone any favours.