I am aware that a few years before the invasion, Iraq started selling oil in Euros instead of dollars, and I understand that the preservation of the petrodollar was a reason for the destruction of Libya. Also, there must have been a reason to go to war with Iraq the first time in 1990 and to then wage economic warfare against Iraq.

I’ve heard some stuff about the war being really against Iran, but that doesn’t really make much sense because Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a counterweight against Iran in the region (and in fact the imperialists sponsored an Iraqi invasion of Iran during the 1980s).

Of course, the WMD lie and attempts to link the Iraqi government of the time to al-Qaeda (which seems to just be an imperialist asset anyway) and 9/11 was just a way to find an excuse for the invasion.

The weapons manufacturers, private military corporations, and many other corporations profited greatly from the war, but there must have been a reason that Iraq specifically was targeted.

  • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
    22·
    2 years ago

    Iraq was supposed to be only the first in a series of regime change wars and hybrid operations all across the middle east to remove any remaining former allies of the Soviet Union, erasing all traces of anything that the USSR had something to do with. Libya and Syria were part of phase two. Then Iran would be next. It was ultimately supposed to culminate with the balkanization of Russia and complete liberalization of China. That was the long game. In the short term, apart from the material benefits from controlling oil supplies in the middle east, one of the immediate motivations was to simply pick a country to make an example of to show what would happen to anyone who did not integrate itself into the US led neoliberal world order. It was a show of strength to demonstrate that with the USSR gone the US was now the undisputed global hegemon and could do whatever it wanted, including destroying entire countries, without anyone able to stop it.

    Suffice to say that they failed… not just because they vastly overestimated their own capabilities and underestimated the degree of resistance that they would encounter, but also because of Russia foiling their plans first by defeating the US’s Chechnya plot, and then by its interference in Syria putting an abrupt end to the US’s grand designs for the region. This is a big part of why they now have such a burning hatred for Russia - and Putin specifically - to the point of making mistake after mistake because they are just seeing their empire slip away and have become desperate and irrational. This was not how things were supposed to go. The 21st century was supposed to be “the end of history”, “the American century”, with “liberal democracy” and free market capitalism eventually taking over every country. They thought they had achieved their “final victory” in 1991, and now they are furious and want revenge on those who they perceive as having stolen their victory from them.

    • animated ring@lemmygrad.mlOP
      10·
      2 years ago

      Iraq was supposed to be only the first in a series of regime change wars and hybrid operations all across the middle east to remove any remaining former allies of the Soviet Union, erasing all traces of anything that the USSR had something to do with.

      Seven countries in five years

      It was ultimately supposed to culminate with the balkanization of Russia

      Didn’t the US still like Putin in 2003? I thought the big points of falling out were his opposition to the invasion of Iraq and his speech in the 2007 Munich security conference.

      Suffice to say that they failed…

      Despite failing to achieve regime change in China, Iran, and Russia, they certainly succeeded in destroying entire countries. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria – completely devastated by imperialist warfare.

      Thanks for helping me put all of these fragmented thoughts together.

      • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
        8·
        2 years ago

        I may be taking nonsense here, but they seemed to learn propaganda lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan, too. They had believed that ‘everyone’ accepted the end of history thesis. They thought that all westerners would jump on the cause. They didn’t seem to expect millions of people marching. The protesters failed, of course. But since then, the US pretends it’s wars aren’t really wars.

        It’s nuanced, but Libya and Syria got so much less press attention and public debate. They were framed in the same way as movies: “we have to go in, but we’re only going to do this one quick thing and then we’ll be gone and everything will be fixed”. Maybe Iraq was similar (removing WMDs), but there was a feeling at the time that it would be a full scale war. The bombing was even shown on the news and celebrated. Idk, it feels like later wars were framed as ‘conflicts’ and the media tried not to mention them too much, so as not to motivate any strong anti-war opposition.