Seems to me that the national boarders were intentionally designed by the League of Nations to keep Iraq unstable. I don't see any way to reverse the disaster caused by the Mandate for Mesopotamia. Perhaps a redrawing of boarders would help - I'm interested in your view on that. It didn't go well for Pakistan and Bangladesh, at least to start with.

Quite an extraordinarily asinine post — Judaka

Agreed.

Because the history from 60 years ago is full of propaganda. So 600 years is gonna be even worse. — Asif

Not likely, if the history profession is done using the scientific method as usually now is done.

And political discourse uses only the few issues that have links to the present, but typically ignore absolutely everything else. So I don't buy your argument that history is all propaganda.

@ssu You dont have to buy anything. Fact is every country will have a different history geared towards its national propaganda.
Do you really think Iraqi history will paint the Americans as liberators and totally justified in invading iraq?
Yet american history will paint the gulf conflict as being about liberating hearts and minds from a regime that supposedly had WMDs.
You think german history of WW2 is the same as the Russian version?
There may be a few facts of history but most is interpretation selective events and downright lies.
You are aware of the gulf of tomkin and pearl harbour being false flags? What makes you think govts are truthful when it comes to war reporting?
Reporters are only told what govt press releases wants them to know. You think the media just waltz into war zones and report every event?
600 years ago who were the historians and journalists?
Govt backed scribes and propagandists.
You cannot have value free anything. And honesty is the last thing govts release to journalists. To say nothing of journalistic propaganda and lies.
Fake news has always been the norm.
Have you watched the news or seen the state of journalism? History is just academic journalism.
Look at the history of 9-11. Only a few decades back. All nonsense. Thus is your scientific history.

I think that when you investigate how power functions, the types of narratives that tim wood is peddling start to fall apart. I think it is due to a lack of appreciation for how oppressive power can be, how centralised it can be and well, pretty much always is. Perhaps within some childish view of democracy, an American can see themselves as part of the winning team but within the middle east, we're talking theocracies, dictatorships and monarchies, it is really astonishing to listen to people who give power and responsibility to groups that include all various components of society - like racial groups or as citizens of a nation, or just people who live in the region! — Judaka

Perhaps it's that people genuinely believe in destiny and karma. Hence if some area has a lots of conflicts, it's seen as it's the fault of the people. The racist explanation comes easily to mind that the problems perpetuate from the people themselves.

Yet this is totally fictitious. It's obvious that North Koreans and South Koreans are the same people with similar background and culture and were divided just like the Germans at the end of WW2 and now totally different outcomes. If North Korea would have unified the peninsula in 1950, people would say that Koreans simply are prone to authoritarian rule and dictatorship. They simply wouldn't believe that there could be a South Korea with K-pop and Samsung.

Do you really think Iraqi history will paint the Americans as liberators and totally justified in invading iraq? — Asif

Will any history paint the 2003 invasion on those lines?

@ssu Yes. Official American Republican academic history.

Will any history paint the 2003 invasion on those lines? — ssu

Ok, I'll give that one a go. :-)

Saddam invaded two neighboring countries resulting in the deaths of over a million people, not to mention decades of a ruthlessly murderous assault on the Iraqi people. If Saddam and/or his sons had remained in power it seems certain that, one way or another, such psychopathic behavior would have continued, perhaps for additional decades.

Cynical critics of the American invasion are almost always guilty of the sloppiest of reasoning. They correctly and accurately point to the incompetent American occupation and the resulting suffering of the Iraqi people. So far so good. But then they stop. They almost never compare that tragic outcome to the alternative of allowing Saddam to remain in power.

It's certainly true that Saddam didn't have WMD, and that such reports may have been blatant lies, or at least manipulative bendings of the known facts. This is a reasonable claim which the critics are justified in making.

But then the critics almost never go on to consider what the WMD situation would be today if Saddam had remained in power. It seems impossible that Saddam would not have earnestly sought to develop nuclear weapons, given that the Iranians are right on the edge of having them. And who can doubt that the Iranians would have correctly perceived the existential WMD threat from Saddam, and raced towards building their own arsenal. And so without the American invasion what we'd likely being seeing today is yet another nuclear arms race, this time between two ruthless psychopathic regimes.

And then of course multiple other countries in the region would have joined this arm race. Do the Saudis or Kuwaitis wish to face a nuclear armed Saddam with only conventional weapons? No way, for they've seen with their own eyes what Saddam was capable of.

Western critics of the 2003 invasion are also typically guilty of the most blatant forms of moral hypocrisy. They so often claim to care SO MUCH about the Iraqi people. But the actual fact is that they had pretty much NOTHING to say about the Iraqi people while Saddam was raping them, and once the American military involvement in Iraq wound down to it's current low level, and could no longer be used as a partisan political football, the critics again lost all interest in the Iraqi people. Point being, the critics of the American invasion NEVER cared about the Iraqi people, either before, during or after the invasion. They cared only about internal American politics, and their own fantasy moral superiority poses.

There you go. That should be enough to get me in to a ton of trouble. :-)

Official American Republican academic history. — Asif

Which is exactly not American history. It has to be said, Asif: whatever you may know of history, your presentation here is an inch wide and not very deep, and your views seem entirely self-serving.

@tim wood What part of the term republic American history you not understandin timmy?
Maybe you are under the illusion that history and american history is written purely by honest non partisan
academics who personally witnessed the entire 2003 conflict and were privy to and invited to critique Bush et al. I'm sure you would say the official history of Russia,north korea,china and Palestine was partisan propoganda and biased by said nations.
News for you brother,America is just the same and worse.
The purveyor of official history is govt. And the US Admin is as dishonest as they come. It's been involved in numerous invasions proxy conflicts economic cronyism since WW2. Show me the mainstream American academic history that reflects this?
History is a lie agreed upon.

Western critics of the 2003 invasion are also typically guilty of the most blatant forms of moral hypocrisy. — Hippyhead

We have our presidents, not that we are our presidents. Nor, in a world that has outpaced horses and wind-powered ships have we the people solved the problem of timely intervention in presidential misadventures. And that is a very serious problem. To date, however, on balance more a strength than a weakness - so far.

Bush 1 said of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, "This will not stand...". What was baked into that, what the ingredients, is less important than the fact. It was on its face a moral response. Self-interested as well, agreed. Nor (imo) was Bush 1 any moral paragon.

Bush 2, on the other hand, a different animal, a man (imo) who never grew up into any kind of real morality, but a ready possessor of the cereal-box kind. His war, then, all wrong. Except that Sadam was bad enough to justify even that. And America did attempt to establish a democracy of sorts in Iraq - wrong place, wrong time, wrong people.

Reading hypocrisy into it all is easy enough to do, but ought to done accurately. No masterpieces are painted with a brush too wide, but much obscured by such a paint job.

your presentation here is an inch wide and not very deep, — tim wood

Your ego agendas are becoming tiresome. Please stop trying to turn every thread in to a food fight. Thank you.

It's certainly true that Saddam didn't have WMD, and that such reports may have been blatant lies, or at least manipulative bendings of the known facts. This is a reasonable claim which the critics are justified in making. — Hippyhead

Which was the main argument for the invasion btw. And now thoroughly shown not to be true: the last remnants of Saddam Hussein's WMD project were destroyed during Clinton's strike Operation Desert Fox.

But then the critics almost never go on to consider what the WMD situation would be today if Saddam had remained in power. — Hippyhead

Perhaps Iraq would have had it's civil war like Syria during the Arab Spring. That's the likely outcome. Saddam's WMD program had all but collapsed. The only real threat would have been if Saddam hadn't invaded Kuwait. Then his armed forces would have been intact and hadn't faced basically the Western coalition that still had the Cold War armies intact to be deployed to Saudi Arabia.

Western critics of the 2003 invasion are also typically guilty of the most blatant forms of moral hypocrisy. — Hippyhead

Not actually, what they did was to anticipate the mess that following the invasion would cause. Yet at the time very many believed the "mushroom cloud" propaganda and still would believe that Bush just got bad intel, if it wasn't for Trump. Bush the elder that heeded the advice of his Arab coalition partners: they did not want to march on Baghdad when they had the chance in 1991.

Just please listen to Dick Cheney making the case in 1994 just why didn't the US march into Baghdad after the Iraqi army was defeated during the 100 hours of land war during Operation Desert Storm:



Nothing is more convincing just why invading Iraq was a bad idea and would lead to a quagmire. Did Saddam Hussein kill a huge amount of people? Yes.

Official American Republican academic history. — Asif

Lol.

That's funny.

History is a lie agreed upon. — Asif

You're a cynic. Cynicism - do you know its history? - in modern form is a pose. History itself is work and has its own standards and criteria arising to its own scientific method. Cynicism itself is something to use sparingly, a test, but not something to be unless you're selling something, in which case you're merely an entertainer, a difficult way to make a living.

And you appear to be more interested in rewarding yourself in an ability to bend facts to fit your ideas. That's called propaganda - or lying. And to the point at hand, you refer to Republican American history and republic American history, which means you don't know the meanings of the words, nor what you're talking about.

If I refer to 6000+ years of middle-eastern history, and someone else not you misreads that into less than 100 years, then he is manifestly shallow and narrow. And unless he is actually that ignorant and stupid - which I doubt - why would he do that?

Which was the main argument for the invasion btw. And now thoroughly shown not to be true: the last remnants of Saddam Hussein's WMD project were destroyed during Clinton's strike Operation Desert Fox — ssu

I already agreed with this. And, as usual, you completely ignored that if Saddam (or his sons) were still in power today they would most likely be engaged in a nuclear arms race with the Iranians, which would in turn then expand to include a number of other countries in the region.

I also agree the American occupation was incompetent and led to a great deal of suffering. But there are outcomes worse than that which were, so far at least, avoided by the invasion.

then he is manifestly shallow and narrow. And unless he is actually that ignorant and stupid — tim wood

Please stop clogging threads with this kind of junk. Thank you.

with this kind of junk. — Hippyhead

Make your case. And try reading for comprehension. Taking phrases out of context doesn't further anything

@tim wood A cynic! You mean A realist who has seen how govt operates and what it is.
As per usual I will ignore the ad hominem and your ploy of making cases which one knows you will never be satisfied with. And never sticking to the point at hand.
As for selling!!!? You are trying to sell the myth of history and ignore the govts number one agenda is to maintain its power base and wealth. That is a manifest fact. You ignore the american imperialism since WW2 to say nothing of the lies of pearl harbour,gulf of tomkin,9-11,WMD iraqi.reconstruction contracts etc etc etc.
Maybe your not aware science and history carries its own assumptions and political biases.
Hesiod,thucydides,machiavelli the scribes of the bible,modern.history and american history,all propoganda narratives.

Here's an open question.
What distinguishes the "scientific" modern history of the
US,Russia and North korea?
Is the implication US history is more "scientific" and honest than Russia and North korea?
A huge amount of assumptions go into this kind of thinking.
Let's see a case for this myth of objective history.

I don't believe it is a belief in destiny or karma, I believe it is an issue of how framing can create nonsensical causal arguments. "Americans are doing great while middle easterners aren't" this is why I keep saying that the "truth" doesn't justify framings, because yeah, that framing isn't completely untrue but it's also wildly simplistic and very misleading. Without filling in the details - or knowing them as I know is the case with forum clown @tim wood any narrative can be created. So America, superior culture, better people, with a great moral compass and ideas and whatever else. The narrative can only be created in hindsight and if we look at tim's successful "defeated people" doing well, again, the intricate details of the recovery of Japan and Germany are overlooked in favour of a narrative which will never be able to predict the success of future peoples because its nonsense but as an explanation for what happened within the simplistic framing it makes sense, it's business as usual.

It's hard to take the views too seriously, they're only possible from a position of absolute ignorance.

thats not history thats future wannabes,
but technically iraq was under an islamic caliphate, and the center of one,
and was neighboring to israel

@Augustusea So in other words the borders are different
now. What do you mean by future wannabes?

Seems to me that the national boarders were intentionally designed by the League of Nations to keep Iraq unstable. I don't see any way to reverse the disaster caused by the Mandate for Mesopotamia. Perhaps a redrawing of boarders would help - I'm interested in your view on that. It didn't go well for Pakistan and Bangladesh, at least to start with. — Banno

I would disagree, the problem with Iraq isn't the borders but the acceptance and education, multiculturalism can be quite successful, in iraq the conditions for such success weren't present, so we ended up here,
back in the abbasid times the borders were close to their current form, but there werent sectarianism or issues, its a recently developed thing

borders weren't very different
anywho, I mean ones who think Iraq should be in their potential future state, and such wouldn't be classified as history

Here's an open question.
What distinguishes the "scientific" modern history of the
US,Russia and North korea?
Is the implication US history is more "scientific" and honest than Russia and North korea?
A huge amount of assumptions go into this kind of thinking.
Let's see a case for this myth of objective history. — Asif

And a good, or at least a decent, question. Many years ago when quite a bit greener than I am now, I happened across in a university library a soviet-Russian encyclopedia - this before even digital watches and microwave ovens. I read it for a while and there, stunningly, I lost my "virginity" on matters of history. And so on the matter of this story or that story, yes indeed, stories all.

I also read a book by a then-famous lawyer who accounted for his success in part by his appeal to what he called the rule of probability. Simply that what made sense to an educated common sense, had claim to being the correct sense. One uses both, a reasoned skepticism, and a common sense as well-informed as it can be, used appropriately.

But you make a common mistake, confusing history-of with history-qua. History itself admits of its own practices a methodology as science. A popular notion is that Julius Caesar was killed on "the ides of March." But whether he was killed on March 15th is very problematic given differences in calendars and adjustments to them. But history is clear and established that there was such a person, and we know a bit about him. The methods by which we know that, that you or I might satisfy ourselves that we know that were we to take trouble and time, comprise the science of history, a science developed c. 1850.

Your complaint, then, is with certain stories. To be a cynic about history itself is to put yourself back into a world in which you might be lucky to know your grandfather's his-story, if you even knew your father!

@Augustusea Iraq included Jordan back then? Thats a different border. And Syria what were the borders back then?
So basically you want your history to be valid but Jewish and Islamic history not. Sounds legit.
Basically this boils down to what is the legitimacy and accuracy of history. Who's history do you follow?

Iraq never included jordan, iraq is mainly the land between the two rivers, thats it for its actual borders

and no, because there was never a greater israel who included iraq,
and there was a caliphate once, but its a different one and under it iraq had close to the current borders

anywho I see that the continuation of this specific line of debate as unproductive and so I will not continue on this specifically but anything else I will

@tim wood See you can do it. A relevant post. Albeit a little strawmannish and not delineating how history is a reliable general source.
So history proper starts 1850? How did they verify the history pre 1850? From what sources? You think ceasars history of the gauls was accurate?
And pray tell why is american history immune to the same propoganda of russia after 1850?
Is history an American science?

@Augustusea You said there wasnt sectarianism in the abbasid times but its a recently developed thing.
What time period did this start. And what do you say are the reasons?