Iraq war editorial

[Leif]

Here's an editorial I wrote on the Iraq war, If anyone has any ideas about how I can include more (I have some space left to fill) in my arguements, please, please help me out. I also need a title.

Also, if you see any errors in my arguements please point them out.

Wow, Wonderful, great news from Iraq, Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti has been sentenced to death for the execution of some 148 people as a collective punishment for a failed assignation attempt. It’s great, we’ve finally discovered he was a dictator; we can bring justice to Iraq.

The problem is that we’ve known he was a dictator all along, even when we helped him into power, sold him biological weapons (of moderate destruction) and shook hands with him.

During the Cold War, the CIA helped Saddam’s party get into office to fight off the Russian sympathizers in Iraq. We helped and backed him all throughout the cold war until Iraq threatened one of America’s favorite oil dealing countries satellite state, and ta-daa, we have operation Desert Storm.

Time went by, wounds healed, and it came time for another misadventure in Babylon, led by lies, weapons of mass deception, formerly imaginary ties to Al-Qaeda and a gigantic surge of nationalism.

Three years and 392,979 dead Iraqis later we sentence Saddam to hanging, and for what? The people killed by Saddam? WMDs? Terrorism? Cheap gas?

Truly, the motivation behind the war in Iraq was simple self-interest, corporate backed imperialism and a Middle-Eastern cash cow ripe for the milking.

So next time some president declares that we’re going to be liberating some foreign sovereign nation, wither it be Iran, North Korea or France, try to do your best to see past the lip service to democracy, past the party line, past the big media smokescreen and analyze why we’re really sending our young men and women off to kill and die.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Leif+November 17, 2006 02:31 pm--> (Leif @ November 17, 2006 02:31 pm) It’s great, we’ve finally discovered he was a dictator; we can bring justice to Iraq.

The problem is that we’ve known he was a dictator all along, even when we helped him into power, [/b]
Who's "we"? The U.S. government?

At least, you should say so once before switching to the pronoun. And frankly, I think that's the wrong pronoun. It's not our government - it's the government of the rich.


sold him biological weapons (of moderate destruction)

Not literally true. I mean, nobody in Washington sold him a finished anthrax bomb. Helped him build and use chemical weapons might be more accurate.


the CIA helped Saddam’s party get into office to fight off the Russian sympathizers in Iraq.

Everything during the Cold War was justified in the name of fighting Russian influence - even opposing the civil rights movement. That didn't always make it so; the major issue in places like Iraq was always maintaining imperial control against uppity natives - and underlying that, keeping working people from organizing.

The Ba'athist coup marked a defeat for working people in Iraq; it crushed the Communist Party and independent unions. But the Ba'thist regime actually remained close to the USSR, so if the goal was to "fight off Russian sympathizers" it made no sense.


Cheap gas?

Truly, the motivation behind the war in Iraq was simple self-interest, corporate backed imperialism and a Middle-Eastern cash cow ripe for the milking.

So next time some president declares that we’re going to be liberating some foreign sovereign nation, wither it be Iran, North Korea or France, try to do your best to see past the lip service to democracy, past the party line, past the big media smokescreen and analyze why we’re really sending our young men and women off to kill and die.

As you say. You could get a little more into the economic and strategic interests behind the war - which certainly don't include cheap gas. U.S. oil companies could bought Kuwaiti oil from Saddam as easily as from anyone else! And besides, cheap oil is the last thing they want - how unprofitable.

One motive is simply to increase U.S. "credibility" - as any gangster knows, you gotta maintain your reputation. They wanted other regimes in conflict with Washington to be intimidated, and begin to toe the line. The Bush administration likes to point out that Khadafy in Libya actually did so - its Democratic tactical critics point out that Iran and north Korea haven't.

Some of the other economic and strategic interests involved were explained in this editorial from around the time the war was launched:

The Militant
Far from liberation, what the U.S. government and the billionaire families it represents are seeking in Iraq is to impose a U.S.-dominated protectorate that will run Iraq under military rule for years. American corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel are to get all or most of the multibillion-dollar "reconstruction" contracts in war-devastated Iraq, icing out bosses from all other imperialist countries, even from Britain. "It’s impossible--impossible--to reconstruct without Europe," screamed one spokesperson for French imperialist interests in a revealing outburst. "You have to offer them a piece of cake."

The "cake" he was referring to is the Mideast--particularly control over its oil wealth. Bush’s words were dripping with hypocrisy when he exhorted Iraqis, "Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people." Quite a statement from a Texas oilman in a country where private property reigns over petroleum and all other major resources and means of production!

The aim of the U.S.-led takeover of Iraq is not to protect the oil for the Iraqi people but to take it away from them and put it in the hands of the U.S. billionaires while pushing French and other competing capitalists away.

Not freedom, democracy, or the welfare of working people. Rather, redividing the Mideast and its resources at the expense of imperialist competitors. That is what is driving Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and all the other imperialist powers in this conflict.

Paris has already been dealt a blow by the U.S. government’s unceremonious dumping of its effort to seek explicit United Nations approval for launching the war and its dismissal of the French proposal to extend UN "arms inspections" in order to "disarm" Iraq--a proposal aimed at salvaging French imperialist interests in the region.

The imperialist powers’ objectives go much beyond Iraq. Washington seeks to change the relationship of forces in the world in its favor. One of its main goals is to overthrow the government of Iran and recover strategic ground it lost when the Iranian people, in a popular revolution in 1979, toppled the U.S.-backed Shah, who had been a pillar of Washington’s domination in the Mideast.
link (http://www.themilitant.com/2003/6710/index.shtml)

[Sean]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2006 08:31 pm
Here's an editorial I wrote on the Iraq war, If anyone has any ideas about how I can include more (I have some space left to fill) in my arguements, please, please help me out. I also need a title.

Also, if you see any errors in my arguements please point them out.

Wow, Wonderful, great news from Iraq, Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti has been sentenced to death for the execution of some 148 people as a collective punishment for a failed assignation attempt. It’s great, we’ve finally discovered he was a dictator; we can bring justice to Iraq.

The problem is that we’ve known he was a dictator all along, even when we helped him into power, sold him biological weapons (of moderate destruction) and shook hands with him.

During the Cold War, the CIA helped Saddam’s party get into office to fight off the Russian sympathizers in Iraq. We helped and backed him all throughout the cold war until Iraq threatened one of America’s favorite oil dealing countries satellite state, and ta-daa, we have operation Desert Storm.

Time went by, wounds healed, and it came time for another misadventure in Babylon, led by lies, weapons of mass deception, formerly imaginary ties to Al-Qaeda and a gigantic surge of nationalism.

Three years and 392,979 dead Iraqis later we sentence Saddam to hanging, and for what? The people killed by Saddam? WMDs? Terrorism? Cheap gas?

Truly, the motivation behind the war in Iraq was simple self-interest, corporate backed imperialism and a Middle-Eastern cash cow ripe for the milking.

So next time some president declares that we’re going to be liberating some foreign sovereign nation, wither it be Iran, North Korea or France, try to do your best to see past the lip service to democracy, past the party line, past the big media smokescreen and analyze why we’re really sending our young men and women off to kill and die.
Saddams rise and fall in general: good points. Back it up with sources to have on hand, and I'd personally focus on what was GAINED through the invasion and the real reasons. Otherwise it sounds like an apologetic rant for being in there rather than a dissection of its true purpose (oil, military bases in middle east other than clients). Currently it sounds like "hes an ass but we put him there." We all know thats only a little of the story.
Also, the UN sanctions strictly overseen by US and UK effectively made everyone in the country dependant on saddams administration for handouts and aborted any kind of revolution except through external involvement should be noted.
The installation of a "friendly" (to businesses) government is overlooked. History is choking on direct comparisons. The point you should make is that YES hes an asshole, but he was put in purposely because he WAS an asshole to serve us in the west. He stepped out of line. He did his own evil shit instead of what was on script. So now what he did is thrown at the public as proof of how HE should be chastised and attacked and not those who created, reenforced then finally put the mad dog down.