How bad does it have to get?

[Watchman]

...
...just a guess, but I take it you're not a big history buff ?

[LeftEyeNine]

I get it. Big bad America comes in and screws everything up. Which I might listen to if it made any bit of sense but these wernt troops or cops or goverment leaders they were men performing a puppet show America has nothing to do with this. Its sick men with a sick idelogy hiding behnid the guise of the infidel.

No, you don't, SFTS.

Its partly the wests fault for giving these things (men isn't really a good description) a nice little playground and letting them run riot .

And..

More like creating the conditions where they can run amuck. It's kind of sad the place actually was safer under Saddam and his bully-boys... Besides, in this particular case not really even the West's. The blame sits pretty squarely on the US, which after all did insist on pulling off a half-cocked invasion against just about everyone's frantic pleas and warnings...

Now you do

Thanks to all participated.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

This debate is a little silly.

Of course, the even was a tragic horror, and the perpatrators should have very bad things done to them.

However, similarly evil things were perpetrated under Saddam's rule. Iraqi soccer players, anyone?

If anything, we've changed who is doing the killing.

There's plenty of Saddam-related sad stories to match insurgent-related sad stories, and it makes little sense to tout one or the other as an argument for or against the war.

Case closed.

[Fragony]

Very exotic. Great culture This calls for dialogue, how is the weather in Baghdad?

[rory_20_uk]

Pax Britania ended many years ago. Our shift is over.

IMO there are two states a country can be in: a self governed soverign state or a colony / dominion of some description tied to another state. Both have their plusses and minuses. The third is an area of land in chaos of course.

Iraq and afghansitan are pretty much in limbo land at the moment. Just this side of completely falling to pieces, still requiring masses of foreign help and yet continuing to pretend they are sovereign states.

This IMO is not a sustainable situation.

Who made Iraq? The West. OK our mistake. Let's correct it and make something the people on the ground want, which is likely to be three states.

Why is does this have to be our problem? I don't see saudi Arabia yearning to help its fellow Muslims. Iran is positively making things worse.

Whilst we are there the West can be blamed for everything. If we start to get out now then it can again become a middle eastern problem. All those rich countries can work it out.

[yesdachi]

There is a point where you have to take responsibility for yourself. The problems in Iraq were there long before the US butted in but with the US’s involvement the Iraq people have at least gotten the opportunity to do things the way they want thru a democratic process and some people still just don’t get it. They don’t get that they are a part of something bigger, they don’t get that their actions may not be acceptable to others and until they get it, the country is going to be a stinking mess.

The problems existed prior to US involvement and after the US’s involvement the people of Iraq have an opportunity to make a change for the better, that’s the part they need to get and they haven’t yet. The “west” does hold some responsibility for the current situation but it is lunacy to suggest that the “west” is responsible for creating the conditions or playground or whatever, that is there, when the conditions have always been there. Actually the difference is that now when something like this happens people actually get to know about it and express disgust and encourage a change, that’s something that wouldn’t have happened 5, 10, 20 or 100 years ago. The price has been ridiculously high but we are doing good there.

[Watchman]

Actually, the West quite directly created the basis of the current conditions in the partitions after WW1. A few of the explorers with extensive hands-on experience on the region who'd been consulted in the process said as much in disgust. Until then the problems in the region had, indeed, been largely "middle eastern problems". After that the region was quite firmly in the colonial orbit for decades, and deeply entwined in shady and opportunistic geopolitics once the colonial empires evaporated. Which in practice makes the problems there somehting quite different from "middle eastern problems".

Putting down rebellions against the puppet regime in Iraq (occasionally with mustard gas) kept the British military more occupied than any other issue in the interwar period, for example.

So that "always been there" apparently takes "always" to be under a century...

Yes, I do dislike the simplistic "well they've always been fighting each other right?" explanation model. How'd you tell ?

Why is does this have to be our problem? I don't see saudi Arabia yearning to help its fellow Muslims. Iran is positively making things worse.

Given that the Saudis are Wahhabis and the majority of Iraqis Shi'ites, I'm guessing the former would rather chew off their right arms than help the latter. Shi'ite Iran is doing its damnedest to make its Iraqi sect-brethren the dominant faction of the country. Syria and the rest are dirt poor (and the wealth in Saudi Arabia isn't exactly easy to mobilize for official purposes anyway) and probably not one bit interested. They have their own worries.

It has to be our problem because directly and indirectly we're responsible for the general degree of ****ed-upness in the region from quite a while back already, and quite explicitly and directly for the current bloody anarchy in Iraq.

Such irresponsibility.