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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSoldiers did NOT die in vain in Iraq.
We keep hearing from the right wing propaganda machine is that Obama is letting ISIS is taking over Iraq and that has insulted our soldiers and the reason our soldiers fought. These lies have negatively impacted the families of these soldiers and the GOP should be ashamed.
The reason the Bush crime family gave, to go to Iraq, was to keep Saddam Hussein from making, or producing, weapons of mass destruction. We all know the 'real' reason we went to war there and that has been debated and stated on DU numerous times.
The fact is Saddam Hussein is dead. We killed him. This was "not" World War II with a Marshall Plan attached. Spreading democracy was "not" the reason we attacked Iraq. We have no obligation to rebuild Iraq. We got rid of Saddam and handed the reins over to them.
The propaganda that's being spread by despicable politicians and their corporate overlords is to keep the oil and profits flowing. George Bush got his damn revenge for Saddam trying to assassinate his daddy by using our soldiers to die for him. Now monied interests want to keep the dialog going by changing the subject. Our precious sons and daughters gave their health and lives to get Saddam. They did their job.
I see now where ISIS issues 400 page annual reports regarding their carnage and just like all corporations they want to improve their bloody profits. The mission now is to contain these killers. It's a new mission and also not something that wasn't already predicted to happen if we invaded Iraq.
The corporately owned media are not doing their jobs. Again. History is repeating itself and will cause more death. No one has been held accountable for these lies. The soldiers did their jobs. Now it's time to do ours. We need to show up at political rallies and add our voices and protests. Speak and vote. Those are the weapons we have and it's time to bring out the big guns of democracy.
JEB
(4,748 posts)Orsino
(37,428 posts)I think that's sure as hell what happened in Iraq.
JaneQPublic
(7,113 posts)The minute they sign up, they put themselves up for any military action, with no say as to where, who, or how. It's the generals and politicians who get to decide that.
Even if a servicemember joins up specifically to fight for the most noble and just causes, there is no guarantee he/she will be sent there. That was the case with many who joined up to fight Bin Laden only to be sent to Iraq instead.
So regardless of whether a war is judged by history to be an unnecessary, misbegotten campaign, the people who fought and died in it were still doing the job they signed up to do: To protect and defend their home and country.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Primarily the freedom of oligarchs and corporate interests to get the US military to create a profitable environment for war racketeers.
As Smedley Butler told us, war is a profitable racket, and nothing has changed since he said it.
Eisenhower warned us of the same, but called them "The Military Industrial Complex".
American men and women who died in Iraq didn't die in vain, they died in service to the profits of icons of the American Way, such as Halliburton, KBR, and dozens of other war profiteers.
Hurrah for Capitalism and American Greatness! It just makes you want to go out and sing America the Beautiful to the roar of a Raptor flyover.
JaneQPublic
(7,113 posts)...by that logic every US citizen is living in the service of corporate interests, as consumers, as employees, as voters.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)It's possible to look from the halcyon days of America playing with establishing colonies through to the recent US application of force in Irag and Afghanistan and see that decisions to go to war depend rather less on protecting against existential threats than upon serving big money interests...whether they are named Standard Oil, Halliburton or United Fruit Company.
On it's face it is as hollow to use lives of the military to buy access to profits in barrels of oil as it is in tonnes of bananas. So as a nation we don't.
The language of justifications speaks of other things, ranging from our joys such as 'freedom', 'democracy', andor safety of those same things to our fears: domino effects (i.e. the shrinking of economic influence), Sharia Law, or outright lies such as dead babies in incubators and mobile biological weapons labs.
When the scales finally fall from our eyes--and they usually do--the justifications are usually seen as manipulations at best and lies at worst.
Those who can see are crestfallen the loss of life didn't secure something more permanent...say maybe...victory in a war to end all war.
Submariner
(12,513 posts)When soldiers are sent to die in a war that was started based on a lie, in this case WMDs, they are dying for a cause that does not exist. Within days/weeks of the Iraq invasion when it was apparent there were no WMDs, the U.S. had lost it's moral authority to justify the bogus war. The next 7 years were just marked by a quagmire as the Bush/Cheney junta just kicked the lost war can down the road for the next president to worry about.
Same thing happened in Vietnam. I enlisted believing LBJs crock of shit that North Vietnam had attacked the Maddox and Turner Joy in the Gulf of Tonkin. That was as much of a lie as Bush's WMD lie.
When it becomes apparent that your dying while occupying a country based on lies of the political leaders, at that point the life lost is in vain because the soldier is now in-country illegally due to incompetent political leadership.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)These soldiers were essentially murdered by the Bush Administration.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)wealthy. Yes, the did die in vain. I'm sorry, but those are the cold, hard facts.
cali
(114,904 posts)and of course we can't know how those people felt.