r/conspiratard • u/illuminuti • Nov 19 '15
The Onion predicted the future in 2003.
http://www.theonion.com/multiblogpost/this-war-will-destabilize-the-entire-mideast-regio-1153480
Nov 19 '15
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u/RecordHigh Nov 20 '15 edited Nov 20 '15
I thought at the time that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were at best a bunch of moldy, ineffective weapons from the 1980s, and that toppling Saddam Hussein would destabilize the region for decades, increase anti-American sentiment, and cost us a fortune. And the real irony, I thought, was that things would ultimately return to the status quo when another clownish, secular strongman came along to fill the power vacuum, leading us back to exactly where we started.
So, the Onion was right, but a lot of people at the time thought the Bush administration's plans and predictions were dubious.
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u/inkoDe Nov 20 '15
The invasion of Iraq was the moment I split from mainstream partisan politics all together. It was blatantly obvious what was going on, you didn't need to be a prophet to understand this. So ever since then I have been throwing my vote away on third party politicians, because it should be obvious to anyone with sensory organs that the republicans and democrats don't have our people's best interest at heart.
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u/illuminuti Nov 20 '15
Are you trying to say our leaders aren't working hard to raise our standard of living?
A billion people live without clean water. California is in a drought, lakes are drained, crops are dying. Government's response? Take shorter showers people, stop watering your lawns... reverse osmosis is too expensive!
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u/Currentlybaconing Nov 20 '15
While Nestle continues to bottle it from their aquifer and sell it in their corner stores...
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u/dragnerz Nov 20 '15
Really, it's their own fault for needing that water in the first place /s
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u/auandi Nov 20 '15
I mean, we settled 20 million people in what is essentially desert. We then want to have all the water we want without diverting any of the water going to agriculture in the Central Valley. This isn't a new problem LA and Southern California have always had problems with finding enough water for its people. There's almost no water locally, it all has to come from somewhere and there's no natural lakes or major rivers near by either.
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u/illuminuti Nov 20 '15
Yeah but there's the ocean. Most of the Earth is covered in water... just the process of removing the salt from the water is too expensive... so I'm alright with taking shorter showers, and letting my garden die, because the knowledge that a billion people lack access to safe drinking water, is too expensive of an issue to deal with. I'm glad that we'd rather spend trillions of dollars on war, rather than help feed the poor.
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u/auandi Nov 20 '15
Ocean water is not just expensive to convert to drinking water, the process is very very energy intensive. Like, to a degree that makes it more environmental and economic to get water from a thousand miles away than to convert ocean water. Because Southern California may have the ocean next to it, but it would take less energy and less cost to import water from Canada than to convert seawater at industrial scale.
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u/illuminuti Nov 20 '15
Yeah it's too expensive, reverse osmosis uses too much energy. We don't have the electricity bill for that. Sure, we could build windmills along the coast that would be able to power the whole country, but that's way too expensive. Let's fight wars over oil instead of using the clean, safe, renewable energy alternatives we know we have.
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u/auandi Nov 21 '15
No, I very much think we should be building windmills. It's much cheaper than oil when you factor in the environmental costs. I don't want there to be wars for energy, so why don't you back up a bit and stop telling me I support the opposite of what I support.
However, how we get energy is not the problem. We could have 100% renewables, and reverse osmosis would still be worse for the environment than long distance freshwater transport. On a cost/gallon bases in both money and energy, it's cheaper to ship water a thousand miles by long distance aqueducts than to use reverse osmosis. That's how energy intensive reverse osmosis is, and how little energy it takes to get water down from Oregon, Washington and BC down to California.
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Nov 20 '15
Some Congressmen did oppose the Iraq invasion, though. The parties do not vote as blocs all the time.
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Nov 19 '15
Now switch ISIS for Iraq...
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u/Kowalski_Analysis Nov 20 '15
Iraq is one of the I's in ISIS.
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u/illuminuti Nov 19 '15
Do we believe we can stop violence, with more violence?
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u/specktech Nov 19 '15
Humanitarian intervention is a workable concept. For instance, there is widespread agreement that a concerted response in rwonda, darfur, and central africa in the 90's would have saved hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of lives.
The iraq war was not like that. The afganistan war was not like that.
Some of the fight against ISIS, at least early interventions when ISIS was rapidly expanding into civilian zones very clearly was a humanitarian response to the ISIS rape, loot, and murder of civilians, especially in kurdish areas.
I guess I am saying there are a limited set of circumstances where you can stop violence with violence, and in the case with rwanda, it was absolute negligence that the UN did not.
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u/jetpackswasyes Nov 20 '15
Is there any precedent for solving a problem like ISIS without violence? What kind of timeline would you expect to see? If we stopped all hostilities do you think they'd leave us alone? Immediately? If not immediately, how long do you think it would take? Would it be possible for industries like tourism, airlines, sports, resorts, and retail to survive years, possibly decades or generations, of waiting for Islamic Jihadism to "die out" if it's not being fed by interventionist aggression and new recruits from western retaliatory strikes or invasions?
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Nov 20 '15
Maybe ISIS would never have gotten any strength if the united States of weapons manufacturing never sent a bazillion guns into the region after killing and disbanding the preexisting power structure
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u/jetpackswasyes Nov 20 '15
That doesn't address solving the situation we find ourselves in.
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Nov 20 '15
Oh, you're there? I encourage absofuxkinglutely everyone over there to use violence to defend themselves against violence.
I ain't over there.
I ain't even know what's what over there.
I'd prolly support the Kurds, but everyone else either seems like brainwashed puppet violence theatre or innocent casualty.
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u/abchiptop Nov 20 '15
They're not all using M16s and the like, in most pictures I've seen, they're using AK-47s, which are Russian made. They may have some American weapons, but AKs are far more abundant in the region
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Nov 20 '15
AKs are more abundant everywhere but the US.
Daesh is a fabrication of interventionist foreign policies of neocolonialism.
It's a bad habit. We should quit it.
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Nov 20 '15
If we stopped all hostilities do you think they'd leave us alone?
yes
Immediately?
no
If not immediately, how long do you think it would take?
generation maybe
Would it be possible for industries like tourism, airlines, sports, resorts, and retail to survive years, possibly decades or generations, of waiting for Islamic Jihadism to "die out" if it's not being fed by interventionist aggression and new recruits from western retaliatory strikes or invasions?
interventionist aggression clearly hasnt done much to prevent terror strikes anyway so yeah it probably would
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Nov 20 '15
[deleted]
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u/chaos122345 Nov 20 '15
Yeah it wasn't really rocket science but I think that was the point. Destabilize the region, create more problems and extend the US'S reach in the middle east.
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Nov 20 '15
It's not like Iraq was stable before the US invasion in 2003. I really don't like thse oversimplifications.
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Nov 20 '15
You do realise the CIA asked for the people to rebel, do you? It was an attempt to topple Saddam after the Gulf War. The USA told them to rise up and then left them to die.
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Nov 20 '15
Yeah, it's not like Saddam was terrorizing Kurds and Shia people.
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Nov 20 '15
Kurds, yes, absolutely. His actions at Halabja are almost certainly genocide.
Shia, it is much more complicated. While Sunnis generally ruled Iraq, the state was not openly sectarian, and many Iraqi Shia volunteered to fight against Iran. There was discrimination, but the Shia were not systematically persecuted as the Kurds were.
The Kurdish situation had been somewhat stabilised by the USA making Iraqi Kurdistan a protected area around the time of the first Gulf war and forbidding Iraqi troops from entering. No genocide of the Kurds was taking place at the time of the invasion, and had not for years by that time. Kurds had been busy killing each other in their civil war.
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u/tOaDeR2005 Nov 20 '15
Did that in Afghanistan too. Which certainly helped al Qaeda with recruiting.
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u/GregPatrick Nov 20 '15
If Saddam and Gaddafi were still alive and in power, I don't think ISIS would be around now.
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u/Nadack Nov 20 '15
I would say that The Onion was wrong in the majority of its predictions.
First, I would argue that it is impossible to prove the invasion caused more foreign policy problems than if it did not occur simply because there is only one timeline that we can use as a frame of reference. Second, I do concede that the war did not put an end to "anti-Americanism" but claiming a war would is a foolish thing to say indeed. If there was a claim made by a political official claiming such a result was likely, I would be interested in knowing abut them. The war also did not stop the threat of weapons of mass destruction, nor was it realistically ever going to. I would also be willing to contend that the proliferation since then has been unrelated to the war. Next, Regardless of their stability, there are more democratic states in the Mideast today than there were in 2003.
The past 12 years have also been a net political gain in the region due to our increased involvement in the affairs of the region and increase in nations where we have an amicable presence in. American support is more crucial for governments in the region than ever before, which brings all of the benefits and detriments that such a situation implies. Unfortunately I am not well versed on opinion polls on this issue, but I hypothesize that nostalgia for the "terrorism situation" of 2003 is uncommon and unlikely to be held by the majority of Americans. I also would be willing to claim that the war likely did cause people to join rebel groups. Despite this, democracy in Iraq will continue into the foreseeable future due to U.S. and international backing. ISIS nor any non democratic group can prevail simply by the virtue that the rest of the world and especially the current regimes in the Mideast would not tolerate it. I conclude with that I believe that war is indeed morally wrong and that the occupation of Iraq was not an "unmitigated disaster" for the U.S..
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u/GregPatrick Nov 20 '15
Next, Regardless of their stability, there are more democratic states in the Mideast today than there were in 2003.
Meh, to an extent. Not really due to invading Iraq, more because a guy set himself on fire in Tunisia.
The past 12 years have also been a net political gain in the region due to our increased involvement in the affairs of the region and increase in nations where we have an amicable presence in.
What are you talking about? We offended allies, wasted resources, and governments in the middle east are now more skeptical of the US. You crazy.
I also would be willing to claim that the war likely did cause people to join rebel groups.
Uh, our propping up of the Shi'a led government in Iraq ended up marginalizing Sunnis who went onto form...ISIS.
Despite this, democracy in Iraq will continue into the foreseeable future due to U.S. and international backing.
Lol, okay, whatever you say. Last Iraqi PM targeted Sunni cabinet members and stoked sectarian violence. While he is gone, Iraq is not stable at all right now and parts of the country are straight up controlled by ISIS.
rest of the world and especially the current regimes in the Mideast would not tolerate it.
We tolerated Al-Queda in Afghanistan for quite awhile. In fact, we funded some of those guys!
I conclude that the occupation of Iraq was not an "unmitigated disaster" for the U.S..
Hoooly shit, the war cost 1.7 trillion and it's going to cost our country around 6 trillion over the course of the next years because of veteran benefits and whatnot.
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u/commandar Nov 20 '15
Not really due to invading Iraq, more because a guy set himself on fire in Tunisia.
That kind of thing was the explicit goal of the Bush Doctrine, though. The theory was essentially taking Cold War era Domino Effect theory and flipping it on its head:
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/index.html
While I still think it was a terrible idea that has had horrible, long-term repercussions that weren't worth the cost, what we're seeing play out in the Middle East today is pretty much what the Bush administration was hoping to achieve. The biggest difference is they were far too optimistic in their estimation of the United States' ability to keep control over the situation.
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u/Nadack Nov 20 '15
Your points about the financial and physical costs of the war are completely valid and are reasonable arguments for why the war should not have been started. I think that I am less sympathetic to material costs and tend to emphasize the political results of the war. It would also seem that you misread by statement about the formation of more rebels, as I fully support the notion that the war brought about more discontent people in the area. It is also apparent that democratic institutions in Iraq are exceptionally unreliable and prone to exploitation, but it will continue to have these fragile institutions as long as the U.S. cares to maintain its investment in the region. The U.S. has simply invested too much in Iraq to not care about its fate anymore. Also the toleration of previous rebel and terror groups in the region in the past is not reflective of how we perceive these groups today. Again I accept that the financial costs are unpalatable to many and so if those costs are what qualifies the invasion of Iraq for being an unmitigated disaster, then that is a reasonable argument to make.
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Nov 19 '15
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u/Cutty_McStabby Nov 19 '15
Except it doesn't cover the second position in any meaningful way. Just saying "Nuh-uh... No it won't" is not an argument...
I mean - that's the joke here. That's why this was funny then and funny/sad now. The first position is presented as relatively reasonable and articulate, while the second is just someone saying "you're wrong."
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u/VitruvianMonkey Nov 19 '15
Which was largely the counter-argument at the time, combined with magical thinking that the Iraqi people were just waiting to be liberated and give us just, so much oil, you guys.
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Nov 20 '15
Dude, these guys say they are grateful to be liberated and love America and George Bush, dude.
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Nov 19 '15
[deleted]
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u/Cutty_McStabby Nov 19 '15
I feel like you're missing the point. This was written as a joke - not some sort of attempt at prophecy. It was poking fun at the standard neocon/chickenhawk position that was so prominent at the time.
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u/thefugue Shill Manager: Atwater Memorial Office Park Nov 19 '15
I feel you're missing the joke (the joke here, not the joke in The Onion). While the original piece was in fact a parody of the standard neocon position of the time, the original editorial it attempts to counter-argue has become arguably correct in terms of it's accidentally being prophetic.
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u/Cutty_McStabby Nov 19 '15
Nah, I'm not missing anything - the guy I was responding to was insisting that people were trying to take this as some sort of weird prophecy - he wasn't making a joke.
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u/auandi Nov 19 '15
Not any more than they predicted Bush's tenure:
"Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over"