United States 2022 Midterms General Thread

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
Re: Iraq: First of all, what's your source for the million Iraqi casualties figure? Is it actually reliable? Secondly, at least Iraqis actually have a democracy right now, albeit a corrupt and dysfunctional one. It's better than extremely high risk of getting tortured, jailed, and/or murdered for speaking your mind under Saddam Hussein. In my own honest opinion, the US should have helped the Iraqis overthrow Saddam Hussein back in 1991 after it encouraged them to do this, but still, it's better to do this late than to never do this. And I fear that Iraq could have become an even more severe bloodbath during the Arab Spring than it actually was in real life. ISIS never actually conquered most of Iraq's Shi'a-majority and Kurdish-majority territories, after all. So, their ability to inflict damage on Iraq was thankfully relatively limited, believe it or not.
The million Iraqi dead figure comes from a survey cited by The Guardian and Alan Greenspan in 2007. While certainly The Guardian is a far-left rag, it tracks with The Lancet's 2004-06 estimates of ~650,000 dead with an upper-end estimate of ~940,000. And you will understand if I do not consider the Bush administration's attempts at damage control, impugning the credibility of these surveys & downplaying this human toll to be particularly reliable; at best I would put the word of these famously deceitful neocons and war profiteers like Cheney on the same level as The Guardian itself.

Post-Saddam Iraq has been well on the way to becoming a Shiite tyranny-of-the-majority and an Iranian satellite, which is fantastic if you're an Iranian but obviously worse than a pointless outcome if you're American. The Coalition's first choice for post-Saddam leader of Iraq and source of the intelligence on WMDs which justified the invasion in the first place, Ahmed Chalabi, has since turned out to be a probable Iranian spy. Nouri al-Maliki's insistence on alienating Sunnis and suppressing the Sons of Iraq, the pro-government Sunni forces the US & Coalition had spent no small amount of time & money building up in the Aughts, directly fueled to the rise of ISIS in the early 2010s.

Frankly Papa Bush not toppling Saddam in 1991 is proof positive that he's smarter than his eldest son & heir. In hindsight I don't believe it's possible to dispute that Saddam was both an important regional counterweight to Iran and an Assad (who, ironically, he disliked) or Gaddafi-like figure who was capable of enforcing stability in his country with an iron fist. Allowing him to survive as a defanged tiger would have almost certainly worked out better for the entire Levant than the US than the situation they have now, with the Iranians forming a Shiite crescent through Iraq & Syria that touches the Mediterranean via Lebanon's Hezbollah. Democracy, human rights, etc. should be of no import in this calculation, considering that the US has worked and continues to work with equally or even more vile regimes (Pol Pot, the Saudis...) than that of Saddam whenever realpolitik demanded it.

Liz Cheney's crushing defeat here is a most welcome signal that the US, in particular the American right, has resolved to repudiate the hollow, hypocritical and bloodsoaked 'liberal idealism' (which is really just a thin veneer for more Machiavellian geopolitical and financial considerations for all but the useful idiots) which has characterized neoconservative and neoliberal foreign policy, in favor of more realistic foreign policy goals and direction. And thank God for that, there is no need for yet more Americans to die or be maimed in pointless wars abroad which ultimately benefit no-one but stockholding politicians, arms manufacturers and NGOs, no matter how much the media and the interventionist lobbies cry about it.

I just hope the sort of failed policies the Cheneys stood for get decisively shoved deep into the dustbin of history before Biden or another liberal administration (who are obviously far closer to where the Cheney clan stands than to the America Firsters presently ascendant on the American right) decides to invade Uganda for gay rights or some such shit (while of course completely ignoring Saudi Arabia's treatment of homosexuals). If the American track record in Iraq and Afghanistan is anything to go by, such an expedition would probably end with the US and its proxies being routed from Africa after 20+ years of pointless fighting while Martin Ssempa inaugurates his (enthusiastically Chinese-backed) reign as Supreme Holy Judge of Uganda and the Great Lakes by building a pyramid out of LGBT+ skulls in downtown Kampala.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
The million Iraqi dead figure comes from a survey cited by The Guardian and Alan Greenspan in 2007. While certainly The Guardian is a far-left rag, it tracks with The Lancet's 2004-06 estimates of ~650,000 dead with an upper-end estimate of ~940,000. And you will understand if I do not consider the Bush administration's attempts at damage control, impugning the credibility of these surveys & downplaying this human toll to be particularly reliable; at best I would put the word of these famously deceitful neocons and war profiteers like Cheney on the same level as The Guardian itself.

Post-Saddam Iraq has been well on the way to becoming a Shiite tyranny-of-the-majority and an Iranian satellite, which is fantastic if you're an Iranian but obviously worse than a pointless outcome if you're American. The Coalition's first choice for post-Saddam leader of Iraq and source of the intelligence on WMDs which justified the invasion in the first place, Ahmed Chalabi, has since turned out to be a probable Iranian spy. Nouri al-Maliki's insistence on alienating Sunnis and suppressing the Sons of Iraq, the pro-government Sunni forces the US & Coalition had spent no small amount of time & money building up in the Aughts, directly fueled to the rise of ISIS in the early 2010s.

Frankly Papa Bush not toppling Saddam in 1991 is proof positive that he's smarter than his eldest son & heir. In hindsight I don't believe it's possible to dispute that Saddam was both an important regional counterweight to Iran and an Assad (who, ironically, he disliked) or Gaddafi-like figure who was capable of enforcing stability in his country with an iron fist. Allowing him to survive as a defanged tiger would have almost certainly worked out better for the entire Levant than the US than the situation they have now, with the Iranians forming a Shiite crescent through Iraq & Syria that touches the Mediterranean via Lebanon's Hezbollah. Democracy, human rights, etc. should be of no import in this calculation, considering that the US has worked and continues to work with equally or even more vile regimes (Pol Pot, the Saudis...) than that of Saddam whenever realpolitik demanded it.

Liz Cheney's crushing defeat here is a most welcome signal that the US, in particular the American right, has resolved to repudiate the hollow, hypocritical and bloodsoaked 'liberal idealism' (which is really just a thin veneer for more Machiavellian geopolitical and financial considerations for all but the useful idiots) which has characterized neoconservative and neoliberal foreign policy, in favor of more realistic foreign policy goals and direction. And thank God for that, there is no need for yet more Americans to die or be maimed in pointless wars abroad which ultimately benefit no-one but stockholding politicians, arms manufacturers and NGOs, no matter how much the media and the interventionist lobbies cry about it.

I just hope the sort of failed policies the Cheneys stood for get decisively shoved deep into the dustbin of history before Biden or another liberal administration (who are obviously far closer to where the Cheney clan stands than to the America Firsters presently ascendant on the American right) decides to invade Uganda for gay rights or some such shit (while of course completely ignoring Saudi Arabia's treatment of homosexuals). If the American track record in Iraq and Afghanistan is anything to go by, such an expedition would probably end with the US and its proxies being routed from Africa after 20+ years of pointless fighting while Martin Ssempa inaugurates his (enthusiastically Chinese-backed) reign as Supreme Holy Judge of Uganda and the Great Lakes by building a pyramid out of LGBT+ skulls in downtown Kampala.

What do you think about the Iraq Body Count?


Apparently it only includes civilian deaths, and some of even those might not be reported, so it's an undercount, but it's still much lower than your figure here.

Re: Iraq: I don't dispute that Maliki made a mistake in suppressing the Sons of Iraq. It would have been better for someone other than him to secure the Iraqi Premiership in 2010, and in this regard, the US made a mistake in supporting Maliki back then. In Maliki's defense, though, the Iraqi Constitution does not specify whether the largest bloc needs to be formed before an election or after an election:


The President of the Republic shall charge the nominee of the largest Council of Representatives bloc with the formation of the Council of Ministers within fifteen days from the date of the election of the President of the Republic.

But Yeah, in terms of political views and governing abilities, someone other than Maliki would have been better for Iraq in 2010, no doubt. Either Allawi or someone else. Though I do think that to some extent Iraq's problems are deeper than Maliki since he's ben out of power for eight years now and yet Iraq is still chronically corrupt and dysfunctional even nowadays, albeit democratic.

There's always a risk of tyranny of the majority when it comes to democracy, unfortunately, though AFAIK freedom of speech in Iraq nowadays is considerably better than it was under Saddam. Not perfect, of course, since Shi'ite militias could abduct and/or kill you if you criticize them, but still probably much better than it was under Saddam, at least in regards to criticizing the Iraqi government. As for Bush Sr., I think that his biggest mistake was encouraging the Iraqi people to rebel against Saddam and then refusing to help in any way whatsoever. I think that there should have at least been some kind of safe zone for Iraqi Shi'ites in the south similar to what there was for Iraqi Kurds in the north. The US did value Saddam as a counterweight to Iran but soured on him after he invaded Kuwait back in 1990. Bush Sr. hoped for a military coup against Saddam in 1991, but this doesn't justify encouraging the Iraqi people themselves to rebel against Saddam, like Bush Sr. did.

FWIW, I consider the past US support of Pol Pot to be a very serious mistake. The Vietnamese were the good guys in the Cambodian War, no doubt about that. Or at least the relative good guys. As for Saudi Arabia, in my own honest opinion, I think that we should be less cozy with them as well. We should stop supporting their war in Yemen and pressure them much more on human rights, IMHO. And on stopping the funding of Wahhabism abroad.

You want no more foreign interventions? Fine, just so long as we get to continue supporting Ukraine against Russia and perhaps Taiwan against China.
 

Floridaman

Well-known member
What do you think about the Iraq Body Count?


Apparently it only includes civilian deaths, and some of even those might not be reported, so it's an undercount, but it's still much lower than your figure here.

Re: Iraq: I don't dispute that Maliki made a mistake in suppressing the Sons of Iraq. It would have been better for someone other than him to secure the Iraqi Premiership in 2010, and in this regard, the US made a mistake in supporting Maliki back then. In Maliki's defense, though, the Iraqi Constitution does not specify whether the largest bloc needs to be formed before an election or after an election:




But Yeah, in terms of political views and governing abilities, someone other than Maliki would have been better for Iraq in 2010, no doubt. Either Allawi or someone else. Though I do think that to some extent Iraq's problems are deeper than Maliki since he's ben out of power for eight years now and yet Iraq is still chronically corrupt and dysfunctional even nowadays, albeit democratic.

There's always a risk of tyranny of the majority when it comes to democracy, unfortunately, though AFAIK freedom of speech in Iraq nowadays is considerably better than it was under Saddam. Not perfect, of course, since Shi'ite militias could abduct and/or kill you if you criticize them, but still probably much better than it was under Saddam, at least in regards to criticizing the Iraqi government. As for Bush Sr., I think that his biggest mistake was encouraging the Iraqi people to rebel against Saddam and then refusing to help in any way whatsoever. I think that there should have at least been some kind of safe zone for Iraqi Shi'ites in the south similar to what there was for Iraqi Kurds in the north. The US did value Saddam as a counterweight to Iran but soured on him after he invaded Kuwait back in 1990. Bush Sr. hoped for a military coup against Saddam in 1991, but this doesn't justify encouraging the Iraqi people themselves to rebel against Saddam, like Bush Sr. did.

FWIW, I consider the past US support of Pol Pot to be a very serious mistake. The Vietnamese were the good guys in the Cambodian War, no doubt about that. Or at least the relative good guys. As for Saudi Arabia, in my own honest opinion, I think that we should be less cozy with them as well. We should stop supporting their war in Yemen and pressure them much more on human rights, IMHO. And on stopping the funding of Wahhabism abroad.

You want no more foreign interventions? Fine, just so long as we get to continue supporting Ukraine against Russia and perhaps Taiwan against China.
Ehh the US actually Benefited from helping Pol Pot. It helped solidly the collapse in the communist bloc
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
I mean in solidifying the enmity between the soviets and the Chinese. Vietnam was Soviet backed whereas Cambodia was Chinese backed.

And yet the Soviets and Chinese have still largely made up by the end of the 1980s or at least by 1991, no?
 

Floridaman

Well-known member
And yet the Soviets and Chinese have still largely made up by the end of the 1980s or at least by 1991, no?
yeah By the fall of the Soviet Union, but the actions of China in Vietnam to protect pol pot kept things hostile throughout the soviet Afghan war.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
yeah By the fall of the Soviet Union, but the actions of China in Vietnam to protect pol pot kept things hostile throughout the soviet Afghan war.

I suppose that it made sense for the US to aim to bleed Vietnam dry after the drubbing that the Vietnamese gave the US in Vietnam. That said, though, the US was still playing with fire since there was a risk (albeit an ultimately unrealized one, thankfully) that Pol Pot and his clique could subsequently seize power in Cambodia again after a Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia.
 

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
What do you think about the Iraq Body Count?


Apparently it only includes civilian deaths, and some of even those might not be reported, so it's an undercount, but it's still much lower than your figure here.

Re: Iraq: I don't dispute that Maliki made a mistake in suppressing the Sons of Iraq. It would have been better for someone other than him to secure the Iraqi Premiership in 2010, and in this regard, the US made a mistake in supporting Maliki back then. In Maliki's defense, though, the Iraqi Constitution does not specify whether the largest bloc needs to be formed before an election or after an election:




But Yeah, in terms of political views and governing abilities, someone other than Maliki would have been better for Iraq in 2010, no doubt. Either Allawi or someone else. Though I do think that to some extent Iraq's problems are deeper than Maliki since he's ben out of power for eight years now and yet Iraq is still chronically corrupt and dysfunctional even nowadays, albeit democratic.

There's always a risk of tyranny of the majority when it comes to democracy, unfortunately, though AFAIK freedom of speech in Iraq nowadays is considerably better than it was under Saddam. Not perfect, of course, since Shi'ite militias could abduct and/or kill you if you criticize them, but still probably much better than it was under Saddam, at least in regards to criticizing the Iraqi government. As for Bush Sr., I think that his biggest mistake was encouraging the Iraqi people to rebel against Saddam and then refusing to help in any way whatsoever. I think that there should have at least been some kind of safe zone for Iraqi Shi'ites in the south similar to what there was for Iraqi Kurds in the north. The US did value Saddam as a counterweight to Iran but soured on him after he invaded Kuwait back in 1990. Bush Sr. hoped for a military coup against Saddam in 1991, but this doesn't justify encouraging the Iraqi people themselves to rebel against Saddam, like Bush Sr. did.

FWIW, I consider the past US support of Pol Pot to be a very serious mistake. The Vietnamese were the good guys in the Cambodian War, no doubt about that. Or at least the relative good guys. As for Saudi Arabia, in my own honest opinion, I think that we should be less cozy with them as well. We should stop supporting their war in Yemen and pressure them much more on human rights, IMHO. And on stopping the funding of Wahhabism abroad.

You want no more foreign interventions? Fine, just so long as we get to continue supporting Ukraine against Russia and perhaps Taiwan against China.
By its own admission, the IBC was bound to undercount due to an overreliance on English-language media sources. That should tell you enough about its flawed methodology, and why I'm inclined to agree with those who consider its count a floor rather than a ceiling for Iraqi casualties.

Almost everything else you're talking about here is strictly academic. What's happened has happened and we can hardly go back in time to change all that. What can still be done is grappling with the comprehensive legacy of failure which the neocons/neolibs have left to everyone else, in which the good people of Wyoming have just done their part. I'm frankly not even THAT mad about the US backing Pol Pot, while that was certainly a horrible decision and the Khmer Rouge a horrible lot, what the US did made some twisted sense from a geopolitical perspective. It served its interests just as working with Stalin's USSR served its interests in the 1940s, even though that was a regime so horrific that it needed Literally Hitler (with whom Stalin had previously worked...) and the utterly crazed Imperial Japanese to make it look somewhat good by comparison.

If the next American administration opts to leave Ukraine to its own devices, pull computer manufacturing back out of Taiwan & into the States, and leave Taiwan out to dry - who am I to judge? America should do what is best for America first and foremost, just as it is the primary duty of every sovereign government to look out for their people's interests above every other consideration. Sometimes intervening abroad may fall in the bounds of those interests, but otherwise it shouldn't bother, and I trust a non-neocon/lib dominated admin will make far more prudent decisions in this regard than the opposite. Americans should not think themselves obligated to get themselves killed, or else piss away resources that could be put to better use at home, trying to fix every problem in the world.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
By its own admission, the IBC was bound to undercount due to an overreliance on English-language media sources. That should tell you enough about its flawed methodology, and why I'm inclined to agree with those who consider its count a floor rather than a ceiling for Iraqi casualties.

Almost everything else you're talking about here is strictly academic. What's happened has happened and we can hardly go back in time to change all that. What can still be done is grappling with the comprehensive legacy of failure which the neocons/neolibs have left to everyone else, in which the good people of Wyoming have just done their part. I'm frankly not even THAT mad about the US backing Pol Pot, while that was certainly a horrible decision and the Khmer Rouge a horrible lot, what the US did made some twisted sense from a geopolitical perspective. It served its interests just as working with Stalin's USSR served its interests in the 1940s, even though that was a regime so horrific that it needed Literally Hitler (with whom Stalin had previously worked...) and the utterly crazed Imperial Japanese to make it look somewhat good by comparison.

If the next American administration opts to leave Ukraine to its own devices, pull computer manufacturing back out of Taiwan & into the States, and leave Taiwan out to dry - who am I to judge? America should do what is best for America first and foremost, just as it is the primary duty of every sovereign government to look out for their people's interests above every other consideration. Sometimes intervening abroad may fall in the bounds of those interests, but otherwise it shouldn't bother, and I trust a non-neocon/lib dominated admin will make far more prudent decisions in this regard than the opposite. Americans should not think themselves obligated to get themselves killed, or else piss away resources that could be put to better use at home, trying to fix every problem in the world.

FWIW, there is logic in supporting both Ukraine and Taiwan: Specifically, it creates a larger pro-Western bloc in the world:


But of course you could aim to achieve the same effect by relocating as many Ukrainians and/or Taiwanese to other parts of the West if one or both of them will end up getting their countries conquered.
 

Floridaman

Well-known member
FWIW, there is logic in supporting both Ukraine and Taiwan: Specifically, it creates a larger pro-Western bloc in the world:


But of course you could aim to achieve the same effect by relocating as many Ukrainians and/or Taiwanese to other parts of the West if one or both of them will end up getting their countries conquered.
The problem is, the west as it currently stands is not to the benefit of the western people. And a victory would make necessary reform much harder.
 

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