436
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] agent_flounder@lemmy.one 85 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

We barely got to the point of impeaching Nixon for his bullshit and Reagan got off scott free for Iran-Contra. So it shouldn't be too surprising that Bush didn't get keelhauled for his bullshit invasions especially since most of the morons in Washington were totally on board with it.

Some of us could see it coming from a mile away with Afghanistan. (Just had to look back to how it went for the USSR and like every other country that tried before us (see "Graveyard of Empires").

Iraq* looked an awful lot like bullshit driven by greed, oil, and "finishing what daddy started" at the time. Idk about the last one now but the first two? Definitely. But fucking Congress went along with all of it. Probably lobbied by billionaires.

So no way was he going to pay for his crimes.

People at the top in this country rarely do.

[-] ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip 15 points 9 months ago

Iraq, not Iran, but yes definitely to "finishing what daddy started." In 2002-2003 the W's cabinet was chock full of people who got their leashes yanked on the Kuwait/Iraq border because Daddy Bush respected international laws and norms. They were steam rolling toward Baghdad basically unimpeded. They could taste that sweet sweet oil and a major military victory over an aggressor state that would send a strong message about the sovereignty of international borders.

It sure as shit scared the hell out of Saddam, too. Probably that's why he got all paranoid.

With hindsight and if we assume that the US was going to invade Iraq either way (in 1991 or 2003), it would've been better probably to just do it the early 90s, before the was a robust international terror network to step into the void.

Overall, I think it was justified to invade Afghanistan immediately after 9/11 and depose their government, but stop there. I don't know what the best "after" would've been. Definitely not putting all our focus into Iraq. Perhaps with all our resources and world focus on actually rebuilding Afghanistan instead of pivoting to Iraq, we could've helped them succeed instead of running from place to place putting out fires while it smoldered.

[-] agent_flounder@lemmy.one -1 points 9 months ago

🤦🏻 yeah Iraq. Autocorrect probably. Daddy Bush probably also wanted to avoid a quagmire. Idk.

I agree we were justified invading Afghanistan and felt so at the time but it's just not a great place to try and "conquer". You might be right about the distraction of Iraq. However, Afghanistan strikes me as a country with the kind of deeply entrenched culture and politics so different from anything we are familiar with that I don't know if we could ever actively transform it in meaningful ways.

[-] bemenaker@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

The US had no support to set foot in Iraq. The UN mandate was to remove Iraq from Kuwait, no more, no less. If the auS set foot on Iraqi soil, it would be going alone, and in violation of the UN.

[-] Dkarma@lemmy.world -1 points 9 months ago

Two words:

Dick Cheney

You really think dubya cared about attacking Iraq. He was told.

[-] Azal@pawb.social 1 points 9 months ago

Pre9-11 my dad liked messing with his coworkers saying W was making a hell of a democrat when they complained about what he was doing.

After he suddenly got in line like his daddy. Always figured it's when he started listening to Cheney

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago

So no way was he going to pay for his crimes.

What specific crimes?

I think his and his administration did a lot of awful shit, but they did it using politics, not by breaking the law. They painted their opponents as un-American. They whipped up fervor saying that "you're with us or you're with the terrists" and changed the "French Fries" in the congressional cafeteria to "Freedom Fries" after the French refused to jump on board with their war plans. They made sure the public was scared, because scared people are easier to manipulate. But, fundamentally his administration did it so that they could win votes in and for the house and senate. Fundamentally he still followed American law.

There are various things where the administration or the military might have violated international laws against war crimes or aggression. For example, the treatment of the prisoners at Abu Graib, the whole existence of and infinite detention at Guantanamo Bay, and possibly even the invasion of Iraq itself. But, international courts require a much higher burden of proof, especially to pin the crimes on the head of state. And, Bush had pet lawyers like John Yoo producing memos to declare it all legal.

Evil shit, especially evil done by the military in other countries is almost never going to result in criminal charges, let alone convictions. Trump is unusual in that the crimes were so incredibly blatant. The normal method for most shady heads of state is to at least go for plausibly legal. They have access to tons of lawyers willing to bend over backwards to declare what their bosses want to do as being legal.

People need to stop equating "evil shit" with "crimes". Yes, Bush and his administration was responsible for a lot of evil shit. He was responsible for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, thousands of deaths of soldiers in the bullshit "Coalition of the Willing". He was responsible for indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo Bay and torture at Abu Graib. But, with all that blood on his hands, he may have done it all without breaking any laws. There's a reason why the prisoners are being held in Guantanamo Bay and not on US soil. There's a reason that the torture happened in an Iraqi prison. A big part of that is that many US laws don't apply to those places, so while it's awful, it may not be illegal.

[-] renownedballoonthief@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Sometimes I wonder if the DRA would've succeeded if the CIA and MI6 hadn't been backing the Mujahideen.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
436 points (90.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

34270 readers
912 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS