How can you actually dis-agree with an Inevitable War? (Bombs over Baghdad)

Member Name: johnnycarrotheid

Product:	Bombs over Baghdad
Date:	07/06/06 (123 review reads)
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Gulf War 2 caused a lot of outrage when it kicked off, but why was there such opposition to it?

No matter how you look at it, Gulf War 2 was going to occur sometime. It could have been sooner or later, but it was going to happen.

Britain and the USA bombed Iraq freely for a decade leading up to Gulf War 2.
After the first Gulf War, we imposed the "no-fly" zones, which our planes patrolled and pretty much used to bomb anything they seen as a threat.
Of course there was no outcry over this.

Now, our forces and our planes were there, so why did everyone automatically assume Britain was a puppet or George Bush Jnr??

This i believe is one of the most idiotic comments spouted by anti-war protestors during the whole event.

Britain, and most of the other coalition countries from GW1, wanted to continue and actually invade Iraq then, which would have left us to concentrate on Afghanistan solely, in the present. (without the terrorists and with a middle east co-alition as we had back then, Iraq would have been up and running in no time)
Britain wanted to invade, but was held back by the US, which wanted to get everything back to normal straight away and get supplies running again.
We were the "Warmongers" trying to get the USA to invade Iraq, yet a decade later, and with the same attitude held by our politicians and Generals as before, we were depicted as "lapdogs".

This just points out the glaring misunderstanding of the anti-war camp. They basically thought up their own reasons and harped on so much people thought it was real.
We were ready for the war long before the Americans, and the more the anti-war protestors paint the US as the ones "dragging" us to war just makes them look more stupid in my opinion.

Now the handling of the war, was indeed a total shambles by the American president. But thats what happens when they vote in an idiot.

This however meant that Tony Blair had to do a lot of the work, painting him even more as the "lapdog".
The US president just was not able to convince the international community, as every time he tried to do so he said something totally idiotic, polarising the world against him ie. "With us or against us".
His total lack of political thinking, poor speech ability and general not giving a rats ass about the rest of the world meant that it was up to the UK to foster support when it wasnt even us that would be leading it.

If the UK had lead it, then guaranteed, the war would have been universally approved, at home and abroad.
Of course we dont have close to the military capability of this.
Hell if Bush had just shut up, and Tony Blair did all the talking, then similarly we would have had infinitely more support.

The Iraq war protests essentially werent anti-war protests.
They were anti-Bush protests.

Yes Bush is an idiot but you dont have to go disagreeing with everything he says.
Especially when its something WE wanted to do a decade ago.


This then moves on to the actual war.

There were essentially 2 battle plans for the war.

The British, and the American.

The British one, involved taking Basra and the surrounding area.
This was quite successfully done with minimal casualties on both sides. We surrounded the city and the Iraqi army essentially just gave up. We used our previous experience in conflicts over the world to control the area, switching easily into our peacekeeping role, which we have perfected, and which i'm sure most of the UK soldiers deployed had actually used in the field. After all with the size of our army, you wont get to join without going on active duty for very long.

The American one was very different, involving racing to take Baghdad, with little stops on the way.
This had the effect of further pushing away the International community. The plan relied on constant movement towards their goal, Baghdad. This meant that they didnt have time to stop, so if they ran into any problems like careless civilians being in the way, they were ordered to just go through them. Now they were briefed that the Iraqi army could be disguised as civilians, so any civilians headed towards the convoys direction had a habit of getting blown up or shot.
This was not a good idea, especially with embedded reporters, broadcasting the world over.
US soldiers were simply not trained enough, and were mostly young men, who never thought they would actually have to fight. When they had to they were jittery and shot at anything. When interviewed they often gave the impression they were there to "blow shit up", which followed by pictures of the civilians they killed, created a hell of a backlash by the world.
Of course they got to Baghdad quickly, but they had no plans for when they got there.
Americans have little to no peacekeeping abilities such as the British so changing over into this role was extremely difficult for them.
Also all those civilians they killed on the way, had families, who were pretty annoyed to say the least, which in turn caused such a large insurgency up in Baghdad, while the south never had as large a problem.

The main difference in these plans seem to be that while the UK is preparing to leave withing a year or so, the US have little to no chance of a withdrawal in the immediate future.


As for the WMD's.
We all know he had WMD's...........we sold him them.
So there, we know he had some.
This was mainly another cock-up for Bush, and especially his changing over to the Human Rights Abuses argument was a major mistake.
This should have been the argument in the first place, with the WMD's as additional support for the war.

BUT this would not wash at home in the USA.
Americans simply didnt care if Saddam was killing millions of his own people.
If Saddam had a way of getting to them, however vague, and improbable then he knew that would go down a lot better and get him backing at home, which he seen as the main arguing ground. Blair would be doing all the international diplomacy after all.

Look at Darfur.
Americans dont care if theres a genocide.
If we found out Darfur had half a soup tin of anthrax and a blimp to fly it over in, they would be invading in a second.

It follows on a lot from the Americans sense of a need for security, like how they need to right to bear arms. They need to feel secure themselves.
They dont care about the rest of the world unless they can hurt them.
Just as they arent a champion of Freedom, if they were they would have supported the UK decion to invade in Gulf War 1.

Have no doubt however, Iraq was inevitable.
Saddams son Uday was prepared to take over from his dad should anything ever happen. Uday was even more Psycho that Saddam, actually enjoying killing people himself first hand.
We should feel lucky we got round to it now.
If we had left it till Saddam died, then we could have had an even worse, more dangerous ruler, with Oil Reserves to do with as he pleased, which would becomes more valuable as the rest of the middle east dries up.
If countries needed the oil, the UN would be forgotten about and Iraq would have gotten money to build up under Uday and threaten the rest of the region all over again.

Notice i never mentioned terrorists during this review, Iraq wasnt a terrorist haven till after the war. With Saddams grip on the country they never had a chance to establish as he was worried they could grow to threaten him. The terrorists just followed the USA, the US mentioned Iraq as having them, and they had a few, but nowhere near enough for a threat to the US, they were more interested in Israel. They never shouted about terrorists, as they themselves knew shouting Iraq had lots of terrorists would just cause interest and they would be proved wrong.

Summary: The war was necessary, possibly to prevent greater trouble in future