Tuesday, November 19th, 2019
Stephan: The Republicans under the second Bush -- 215 (96.4%) of 223 Republican Representatives voted for the resolution to authorize military force in Iraq -- began a cycle of endless war that haunts us to this day, 17 years later. If you go back to the first Bush attack in 1991 it's even longer. There are Americans who will vote in the 2020 election who have not lived a single day when America was not at war. Compare that to the Carter presidency in which America did not drop a bomb or fire a shot in war.
The result of this endless war? We have destabilized and destroyed the social fabric of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and that is just for starters. And although one of the stated purposes for getting into endless war was to protect Iraq from undue influence from Iran, the result has been just the opposite.
Read, and weep, for the millions whose lives have been turned upside down, if not ended outright, by these wars
A U.S. Marine in front of a burning poster of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad on April 10, 2003.
Credit: Alex Majoli/Magnum Photos
About a month before the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein’s most trusted comrades, sat in his office in Baghdad in an olive green uniform, cigar in hand, wearing house slippers. The man who for decades had served as the public face of high-stakes Iraqi diplomacy offered a political analysis that might well have gotten him executed in years past.
“The U.S. can overthrow Saddam Hussein,” said Aziz, an Iraqi Christian and one of the most senior figures in Saddam’s government. “You can destroy the Baath Party and secular Arab nationalism.” But, he warned, “America will open a Pandora’s box that it will never be able to close.” The iron-fisted rule of Saddam, draped in the veneer of Arab nationalism, he argued, was the only effective way to deal with forces like Al Qaeda or prevent an expansion of Iranian influence in […]
With Trump we are seeing the end of this arrogant empire that many Americans have been unconscious of and some of have grown very wealthy from. Post WW2 the US has had its way in most of the world with some positives and many negatives. That old line about power corrupting has certainly proven true for while some Americans believe we are exceptional I think history shows we are not.