A poll in the Independent newspaper today suggested that 65% of Brits don't want Britain to get involved in military action against ISIS in Iraq and this rises to 80% against when the possibility of sending ground troops is mentioned.
Meanwhile on US news sites, the overwhelming majority of comments are saying that the U.S. has no business in Iraq and Obama should stay away from any military activity.
Generally i would agree with these views but it is complicated by the fact that it was the actions of the UK and US a decade ago that allowed the conditions for ISIS to emerge so i feel we have a moral obligation to go back and fix it.
We removed Saddam on the flimsiest of reasons and Al Queada poured into the country but despite the car bombs and ethnic cleansing going on, we wiped our hands, called it 'Mission Accomplished' and removed our troops and in come an even worse bunch than Al Queada, a bunch we were previously keen to support when they did their killing in Syria.
The British and Americans Governments are trying to put a full stop after they withdrew their troops, to state that what is happening now is a new chapter and not linked to what the two countries, and others, did in 2003, but it is directly because of what they did in 2003.
The case could even be made that the current day events have a thread running back to the 1970's Afghanistan and the Western backed Mujaheddin who mutated into Al Queada and who are the forerunner of the newcomer to the the terrorist gang, ISIS.
It IS our business because the UK and US with people like GWB, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are directly responsible for what is happening in Iraq today due to a lack of foresight and some awful and deceitful past decisions.
Whether that means we should get into another war is open to debate but to say that we have no business there is wrong, we had no business in 2003 but because of what we did then, the same nations are morally obliged to go back in 2014 and protect the Iraqi's that they so shamefully exposed to such danger.
2 comments:
This is a tough call. On one hand, it's Iraq, which is really three countries mashed into one, and I doubt if any amount of invasion and occupation and done strikes will ever lead to a lasting elected government in the one or the three. I just don't sense even a desire for democracy in the region. When it is imposed by force, the leaders and citizens seem to treat it as temporary and posture for the inevitable coup and dictatorship our insurgency.
I opposed the invasion of Iraq because Saddam, while evil, was clearly no threat to America and even benefited us indirectly by largely keeping radical Islamists under control (people forget Saddam was secular) and counterbalancing Iran. Getting rid of Saddam created the power vaccum that spawned ISIS. So, in my mind it's quite clear that the invasion of Iraq ultimately caused ISIS. But now what? These savages are clearly worthy of annihilation, but there is so much war fatigue in the free world that no one wants to deal with them. (It's hard not to just go on a rant here about what a catastrophic strategic blunder the Iraq war was--just gross gross incompetence).
I admit to being undecided on this issue. I think I would support eliminating the savages, but only if we can ensure they are totally wiped out. But to do that we have to replace them in the void with someone, which means we basically have to destroy the savages, then nation-build Iraq (again) and Syria. But what to do with Assad? He's also evil, but also secular. Do we tell Syria's Saddam to take his country back or do we have to wipe him out too?
All I can say with certainty is that the Iraq war caused all of this.
I'm with you 100% E-Wadda, it is a tough call and my keen sense of 'it's our mess, we should clear it up' is dulled by we could make it an ever bigger mess but we are responsible and around and around it goes. Maybe dropping GWB and Tony Blair into Baghdad and saying you broke it, you fix it is the best option. Strange how both have been very quiet lately.
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