US Wars in the Middle East Were Not Supposed to Bring Democracy, Condoleezza Rice says
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[QUOTE]Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that U.S.-led interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia were not about spreading democracy, but about addressing regional security issues.
Rice, who served in former President George W. Bush's administration as national security advisor from 2001 through 2005 and as secretary of state from 2005 to 2009, made the revelation during an interview at the Brooking Institute. Rice played a key role in the Bush cabinet during the post-9/11 years that saw the U.S. launch two large-scale invasions against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. In addition to the regional threat of the Al-Qaeda-allied Taliban government in Afghanistan and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, later disproved, the White House defended its military action by touting a U.S.-led campaign to spread democracy to the region. In remarks referencing her latest book, however, Rice said otherwise.
"We didn't go to Iraq to bring democracy to Iraq, we went to Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, who we thought was reconstituting his weapons of mass destruction and who we knew had been a threat in the region. It was a security problem," Rice said. "We didn't overthrow the Taliban to bring democracy to Afghanistan, we overthrew them because they were harboring Al-Qaeda in a safe haven after 9/11."[/QUOTE]
There are some more info in this source: [URL="http://www.newsweek.com/us-war-middle-east-bring-democracy-rice-608640"]http://www.newsweek.com/us-war-middle-east-bring-democracy-rice-608640[/URL]
OK but what happens next? ya bush fucked up the reconstruction of iraq and Afghanistan really badly
[QUOTE=Sableye;52225527]OK but what happens next? ya bush fucked up the reconstruction of iraq and Afghanistan really badly[/QUOTE]
intervene in another generation or two, probably by either supporting a coup or anti-regime rebels.
I thought it was pretty obvious, the whole "nation building" thing came to be after the invasions.
[quote]Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that U.S.-led interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia were not about spreading democracy, but about addressing regional security issues.[/quote]
And you did a wonderful job there too.
There was never the pretense of bringing democracy to them. This isn't news. Nobody thought that we were going to bring democracy. They were always security issues
The wars in the middle east in the mid-2000s were most certainly a direct ingredient to the current ISIS clusterfuck. Thanks Condoleeza.
[QUOTE=Lambeth;52225661]The wars in the middle east in the mid-2000s were most certainly a direct ingredient to the current ISIS clusterfuck. Thanks Condoleeza.[/QUOTE]
I'd argue that it was an inevitability. Assad and Saddam were cut from the same Socialist/Baathist cloth. Their repression led to sectarian differences to fester into violence. Had we not overthrown Saddam, I think the same thing that happened in Syria would be happening in Iraq.
[QUOTE=proboardslol;52225655]There was never the pretense of bringing democracy to them. This isn't news. Nobody thought that we were going to bring democracy. They were always security issues[/QUOTE]
Exactly. It was about addressing 9/11 with Afghanistan, and supposed WMDs in regards to Iraq.
I guess the aftermath of trying to nation-build and develop democracy had so much time, energy, money, and lives sank into it that people came to believe that it was the original intent of going into those places.
[QUOTE=Lambeth;52225661]The wars in the middle east in the mid-2000s were most certainly a direct ingredient to the current ISIS clusterfuck. Thanks Condoleeza.[/QUOTE]
eh, sadam would probably have died by now (the dude was not in good health to begin with) and we'd have seen one of his sons take over exactly like syria, so there's a very good chance that iraq and syria would both still be sectarian warzones right now, but the amount of blood and treasure spilled to "rebuild" iraq and afghanistan at the expense of our infastructure and institutions at home is just tragic and the almost perminent loss of funds to prop these two countries up may very well have a long term lasting effect on the US in ways we cannot predict
[QUOTE=Lambeth;52225661]The wars in the middle east in the mid-2000s were most certainly a direct ingredient to the current ISIS clusterfuck. Thanks Condoleeza.[/QUOTE]
Only partially. Syria is where ISIS grew & flourished, and the organization that became ISIS was developed in 1999, not after the US invasion. While the group did gain some traction after Saddam was overthrown, US's invasion of Iraq didn't let it expand as much as it did in Syria.
"Operation Iraqi freedom"
[QUOTE=chumchum;52226001]"Operation Iraqi freedom"[/QUOTE]
Names do not mean anything, especially with military operations.
No shit. The U.S. has been screaming from the rooftops about how great Democracy is for decades, but if you dared to vote in a socialist, we'd be on your doorstep an hour later with a pile of TNT. We'd rather ruin democracy to support a fascist that supports our interests than support democracy for anyone who would dare to oppose us.
The U.S. has [I]never in its history[/I] cared about foreign democracy, and the dozens of democratically-elected governments that we've couped and overthrown over the last few decades is really unbelievably blatant evidence of that.
The last president naive enough to believe we could spread democracy and people would eventually love us for it was Teddy Roosevelt.
-snip-
[QUOTE=27X;52228142]The last president naive enough to believe we could spread democracy and people would eventually love us for it was Teddy Roosevelt.[/QUOTE]
I don't know if you could honestly characterize Teddy Roosevelt as someone who wanted to actually "spread democracy." His main interest in Latin America was to build a canal, not to bring them democracy. It was [I]always[/I] economic. He [I]actively encouraged[/I] the separation of Panama and Colombia after the [I]democratically-elected[/I] Congress of Colombia rejected the Hay–Herrán Treaty and stonewalled his canal plans.
None of that was in the name of bringing democracy to Colombia, or Panama. It was about building a canal. It was motivated by economics, not democratic values. I don't think there's ever been a U.S. president that has used interventionism as a way to spread democratic values. We intervened in Korea and upheld Syngman Rhee, who banned political dissidents and arrested and assassinated leftists. We supported Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan over the Communists on the mainland for decades, even though he made an effective fascist one-party state that banned the existence of any opposition parties for decades. We supported the authoritarian theocratic Shah in Iran over the democratically-elected and wildly popular socialist candidate Mohammed Mosaddegh after he nationalized British/US oil holdings.
It has always, always, [I]always[/I] been economic. We only started actually [I]recognizing[/I] Communist China when we realized we could leverage the Sino-Soviet split to weaken the Soviet Union and bolster U.S. economic power. U.S. hegemony and the intervention that results from it has [I]never[/I] been about spreading democracy, even under Teddy Roosevelt. It's been the same old imperialism of the European powers. It's been about economic gain first and foremost for the entirety of our history, all the way from fighting excessive British taxation to the Panama canal to the Policy of Containment to the modern War on Terror.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;52225775]Only partially. Syria is where ISIS grew & flourished, and the organization that became ISIS was developed in 1999, not after the US invasion. While the group did gain some traction after Saddam was overthrown, US's invasion of Iraq didn't let it expand as much as it did in Syria.[/QUOTE]
And where did you get that information?I would like to know.I have never heard or seen about that anywhere.
It's cool you think I'm not aware of Roosevelt's Imperalistic policies, but I was the one telling you about them two years ago and that doesn't change anything about my post.
I'm not talking about his political maneuvering, I'm talking about his personal feelings and morality; he genuinely thought he could broadcast American philosophy and people would flock to it once they saw how great it was, and he wrote exactly so in his private papers, the ones not included in his sanitized and lionized memoirs.
[QUOTE=Sgt.Kickass;52228345]And where did you get that information?I would like to know.I have never heard or seen about that anywhere.[/QUOTE]
This book:
[url]https://www.amazon.com/ISIS-State-Terror-Jessica-Stern/dp/0062395556/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494802560&sr=1-1&keywords=isis+state+of+terror[/url]
It's written up to November 2015 (purchased it in January of 2016 last year). It is very well up to date on events to its publishing point, very detailed explanation of the history of the organization and its many, many variations (it's gone through a lot more names than just ISIS/IS/AQI).
I highly recommend this book to understand what ISIS is and why it was able to spread so easily, which is mostly attributed to its massively successful propaganda machine that was running at full steam before counterterrorism units were even aware of the issue.
