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West's intervention in the middle east - net positive or negative?

West's intervention in the middle east - net positive or negative?

I'm going to go with net negative. Even going forward i think a lot of these countries will have more violence, poverty etc.

What do you guys think?

Bill

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Why is this even a question, anyone with access to a computer or a newspaper with a brain cell will know it's a net negative.

Tbh the better question would be, was their intention when they invaded/bomb countries in the middle east a positive(actually believing it would soove the situation) or a negative ( intentionally destabilizing the area)
Original post by Mentally
Why is this even a question, anyone with access to a computer or a newspaper with a brain cell will know it's a net negative.

Tbh the better question would be, was their intention when they invaded/bomb countries in the middle east a positive(actually believing it would soove the situation) or a negative ( intentionally destabilizing the area)


Agreed
Depends on what specific intervention we're talking about. Western bombing of ISIS has been a lot more positive than, for example, the original Iraq invasion in 2003, or western countries supplying Syrian rebels with weapons.
Reply 4
Original post by Mentally
Why is this even a question, anyone with access to a computer or a newspaper with a brain cell will know it's a net negative.

Tbh the better question would be, was their intention when they invaded/bomb countries in the middle east a positive(actually believing it would soove the situation) or a negative ( intentionally destabilizing the area)


just wanted to hear some opinions, you find some nut cases totally behind the UK/USA sometimes. Regardless of what they do.
Iraq 1991 - Operation Desert Shield/Storm: Totally justifiable as Iraq marched into Kuwait purely to gain control of its oil.

Afghanistan 2001 - Totally justified after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. ISAF forces with the Northern Alliance routed the Taliban & actually had the country under control in the early years (it certainly seems this way from material I've read/seen).

Iraq 2003 - The whole WMD issue was a massive intelligence cock up at best, downright lies at worst. The invasion itself went swimmingly & the idea behind removing Saddam is one I can actually agree with. The aftermath was a cluster though. I can still remember George W Bush standing on an aircraft carrier proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" & pretty much inviting jihadists to attack Coalition forces there. The country has been tethering on the edge of Shia vs Sunni civil war since.
Terrorist groups quickly started using IEDs & other asymmetrical tactics against Coalition forces which caused far heavier causalities than the invasion did. To make matters worse, the Taliban started copying these tactics & far too many resources were pumped into Iraq which could have been used to secure Afghanistan.

Libya 2011 - Once again the idea to remove Gaddafi I can support. Once again the military side of Operation Ellamy was a success despite cuts to the UK armed forces. Once again far too little effort was put into the plan for afterwards.
So we'll probably have to clean up the mess in the next couple of years.

Iraq/Syria 2014 onwards - Both Assad & ISIS are evil. ISIS however pose a far greater threat to the West & should be destroyed. Would they have risen in Iraq if the Coalition didn't invade in 2003? Probably not. The fact is the war against ISIS is being won & the ceasefire in Syria is holding. The jury is still out though.
It depends entirely on what we class as 'intervention'. If it's military, then it is indeed justifiable but only in a small number of cases. Recently, I do not think it was justified. By the same measure, I also feel Obama's passive reaction was equally inadequate. A dominant power is needed to limit the sectarian differences in the region. If it's not the U.S., Iran or Saudi Arabia will take over.
Original post by Mentally
Why is this even a question, anyone with access to a computer or a newspaper with a brain cell will know it's a net negative.


Because discussing issues is important.
Net negative or positive for whom? The West or the people who were invaded?
Reply 9
Original post by Tempest II
Iraq 2003 - The whole WMD issue was a massive intelligence cock up at best, downright lies at worst. The invasion itself went swimmingly & the idea behind removing Saddam is one I can actually agree with. The aftermath was a cluster though. I can still remember George W Bush standing on an aircraft carrier proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" & pretty much inviting jihadists to attack Coalition forces there. The country has been tethering on the edge of Shia vs Sunni civil war since.


That's only half the story.

By 2007, AQI had been mostly defeated and marginalised in the Sunni community. It was Maliki's sectarianism abetted, albeit with some qualms by Iran, that mired Iraq into to a sanguinary civil war.

Not entirely clear there was much that the US could have done about that. Obama's critics argue that he should have endured and stood up to Iran and Maliki and then the Sunni's would not have rebelled. The reality is that the US had been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Iran:

On December 22, 2010, James Jeffrey, the American Ambassador to Iraq, and General Lloyd Austin, the top American commander there, issued a note of congratulations to the Iraqi people on the formation of a new government, led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The country had been without a government for nine months, after parliamentary elections ended in an impasse. The composition of the government was critical; at the time of the election, there were still nearly a hundred thousand American troops in the country, and U.S. commanders were still hoping to leave a residual force behind. “We look forward to working with the new coalition government in furthering our common vision of a democratic Iraq,” the two men said.

What Jeffrey and Austin didn’t say was that the crucial deal that brought the Iraqi government together was made not by them but by Suleimani. In the months before, according to several Iraqi and Western officials, Suleimani invited senior Shiite and Kurdish leaders to meet with him in Tehran and Qom, and extracted from them a promise to support Maliki, his preferred candidate. The deal had a complex array of enticements. Maliki and Assad disliked each other; Suleimani brought them together by forging an agreement to build a lucrative oil pipeline from Iraq to the Syrian border. In order to bring the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in line, Suleimani agreed to place his men in the Iraqi service ministries.

Most remarkable, according to the Iraqi and Western officials, were the two conditions that Suleimani imposed on the Iraqis. The first was that Jalal Talabani, a longtime friend of the Iranian regime, become President. The second was that Maliki and his coalition partners insist that all American troops leave the country. “Suleimani said: no Americans,” the former Iraqi leader told me. “A ten-year relationship, down the drain.”

Iraqi officials told me that, at the time of Jeffrey’s announcement, the Americans knew that Suleimani had pushed them out of the country but were too embarrassed to admit it in public. “We were laughing at the Americans,” the former Iraqi leader told me, growing angry as he recalled the situation. “**** it! **** it!” he said. “Suleimani completely outmaneuvered them, and in public they were congratulating themselves for putting the government together.”
Original post by Pythian
That's only half the story.

By 2007, AQI had been mostly defeated and marginalised in the Sunni community. It was Maliki's sectarianism abetted, albeit with some qualms by Iran, that mired Iraq into to a sanguinary civil war.

Not entirely clear there was much that the US could have done about that. Obama's critics argue that he should have endured and stood up to Iran and Maliki and then the Sunni's would not have rebelled. The reality is that the US had been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Iran:


I agree, I'd just finished my night shift so I didn't have the time or effort to go into as much detail as I'd otherwise have done so.
Iran definitely interfered with Iraq suppling support, weapons & possibly training & personnel to Shia organisations. With both Iran & Iraq being a majority Shia nations then it was perhaps naive of the West not to think Iran would interfere? But as relations between the USA & Iran have only very recently improved then there was very little diplomatic opportunity to create a deal which all sides would have agreed with. Other than striking Iranian bases then I'm not sure how much could have been done to stop this interference (& I imagine that probably would have made things worse).

The situation did improve after 2007 uptil the rise of ISIS/ISIL/Da'esh because of a few reasons -
The 2007 troop surge
Segregation of Sunni and Shia communities
Iranian pressure to settle the situation (they knew that the quicker the fighting stopped the sooner Western forces would leave)

Most sources I've found on the Internet suggest that both military and civilian casualties dropped sharply after 2007 but then started to rise again in 2013.

http://icasualties.org/

It's very difficult to get a count of the civilian dead but Iraq Body Count says the total since 2003 is over 200,000.
This one done in 2013 is even higher -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24547256

The issue is with Iraq is that the whole situation has become so political that it's actually pretty difficult to get an impartial view of the war.

I unfortunately think it's fair to say the reputation of the British Army (or at least its commanders) look a battering over Basra during the conflict. The US were unhappy how we dealt with the insurgents such as the Mehdi Army there and in the end didn't even tell the UK they were launching a joint US-Iraqi operation into the city (Charge of the Knights). The Americans have a lot of respect for the average British soldier but they don't seem to like our senior commanders due to Basra and similar situations.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1560713/British-forces-useless-in-Basra-say-officials.html
http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2011/08/afghanistan-iraq-british
http://www.stephengrey.com/2009/09/retreat-from-basra-learning-the-lessons/
(edited 7 years ago)
Reply 11
Negative.
Reply 12
Well Iraq would control the majority of the world's oil supply, so I am going to say positive .
It's hard to tell how bad the region would have been without Western intervention, so I'm not sure it's really possible to answer this question. In some respects it has been positive, in others less so. For example, it has driven the Taliban out of Afghanistan and is effectively fighting against the IS in Syria/Iraq, but it has also fostered instability and extremism.

Original post by Aj12
Well Iraq would control the majority of the world's oil supply, so I am going to say positive .

How have you come to that conclusion?

Saddam's invasion of Iran (which has more oil reserves than Iraq) failed in 1988. Saddam then managed to annex Kuwait, but to 'control the majority of the world's oil supply' he'd have needed to then annex Saudi and the UAE and even then they would have had a third at best.
100% negative; theoretically, iraq would have been better off under saddam, and libya probably would have been better with gaddafi
Negative. We should stay out of the East entirely. Let them fend for themselves, as most Western countries did.

Sending soldiers off to die in some malodorous backwater is immoral and easily avoided.
Original post by BubbleBoobies
100% negative

This is clearly not true; targeted airstrikes against the IS have helped rescue Yazidis etc from massacres and caused very few if any civilian casualties (saving many more lives in the process).


theoretically, iraq would have been better off under saddam

Saddam was a brutal dictator that massacred his own people for sport (e.g. Kurds).

Obviously removing him left a power vacuum, which allowed the IS (and other Islamist groups) to take advantage of a fractured country and get to where they are today. However, I think the problem was that the the UK/USA should have stayed for longer after removing him from power to help maintain stability whilst (re)building Iraq's ability to take care of its own security.


and libya probably would have been better with gaddafi

Also a disgusting man, but probably true.
Original post by slipper flipper
This is clearly not true; targeted airstrikes against the IS have helped rescue Yazidis etc from massacres and caused very few if any civilian casualties (saving many more lives in the process).

ISIS/ISIL only exist principally because the US armed them though

Saddam was a brutal dictator that massacred his own people for sport (e.g. Kurds).


and that was bad - the DPRK does essentially the same thing to *everybody* in their own country (well, they don't massacre them but they violate their human rights on many levels)

Obviously removing him left a power vacuum, which allowed the IS (and other Islamist groups) to take advantage of a fractured country and get to where they are today. However, I think the problem was that the the UK/USA should have stayed for longer after removing him from power to help maintain stability whilst (re)building Iraq's ability to take care of its own security.


I don't think they should have been there at all - it's not that I don't sympathise for those that saddam abused, I just don't think that the principle that we should sacrifice our men (soldiers) for theirs is a good one.
Original post by BubbleBoobies
ISIS/ISIL only exist principally because the US armed them though

and it was all going so well :colonhash:

source? :sigh:


and that was bad - the DPRK does essentially the same thing to *everybody* in their own country (well, they don't massacre them but they violate their human rights on many levels)

Yes. But they have nuclear weapons.

Your argument is akin to saying we shouldn't punish rapists because there are murderers in the world. The latter is irrelevant to the former.


I don't think they should have been there at all - it's not that I don't sympathise for those that saddam abused, I just don't think that the principle that we should sacrifice our men (soldiers) for theirs is a good one.

With drones and cruise missiles the number of 'our men' put at risk in such a conflict is lower than ever.
Original post by slipper flipper
and it was all going so well :colonhash:

source? :sigh:



(ignore the title of the video, or at least ignore the word "finally")

Yes. But they have nuclear weapons.

Your argument is akin to saying we shouldn't punish rapists because there are murderers in the world. The latter is irrelevant to the former.


...do you want me to refer you to countries like chad, eritrea, turkmenistan, uzbekistan, syria, etc? there are similar non-nuclear dictatorships out there.

and how is my argument even remotely comparable to that?! I am telling you that you can't say that a country harming its citizens necessitates military interventions, because a) why should we sacrifice our soldiers in return for non-citizens? and b) why should we spend money fighting for another country's population?

With drones and cruise missiles the number of 'our men' put at risk in such a conflict is lower than ever.


as if this isn't basically stirring up a hornet's nest or inviting "blow back".

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