> this war began and ended
technically it did. realistically it hasn't for those who live there? (see also Afghanistan where the women and children now get to enjoy the mess and radicalization the US left behind). Maybe Iraq ended because we decided not to look at it any more?
> Should somebody have rightfully stepped in and stopped us from engaging in these conquests?
not sure if it would have made a difference, the real question IMO is Should they have intervened in the first place?. My own opinion has shifted in the past 20 years or so from supporting the West to step in and "do something! please anything to make it stop", to "how dare they suggest anything without cleaning up their own filthy disgusting hypocrite acts first". I believe the only way to make the West better is to implement change in our own society first (that is if we really want to have the audacity to lecture others). We can still use economic pressure to fight things but the moment our dear leaders suggest "pre-emptive strikes" there will be hypocrisy and injustice.
Also these events don't happen (didn't happen) in a vacuum. In this specific case the US can be blamed for repeating the same mistake[1] which the UK colonial powers decades before made when they invented "modern Iraq" by supporting niche groups and placing them into a position of power. In a way this is like somebody invading and toppling the US-regime in 2021, not understanding anything about the country, and giving the nuclear codes to the Amish (not that there is anything wrong with Amish culture or tradition but they do not represent the majority of the people). The US then propped up an illegitimate regime due to ignorance of the actual power dynamics in the local society at the time.
[1] https://archive.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/histor...
The fact is that the US has bankrolled or committed itself atrocities just as gruesome as any of the “evil dictators” against which our media drums up popular fervor. Look into what we did in the Marshall Islands, for instance, (documented in the film The Coming War on China) or what we bankrolled in Chile under Pinochet.
But let’s not pretend our opinions have any significance in these matters. An end to endless war is not on the ballot. All we can do is face the reality that our state and media are run by this sort of cynical cretin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
I disagree strongly with this. That's what the powerful want you to think and feel—that your opinion has no significance. Fortunately, it's not true.
You talk of "we" and "us"—"facing the reality" you describe being "all we can do". Maybe just speak for yourself? I don't feel included in your "we", and don't want to be. It sounds like you have such definite opinions that talking with you won't help anything. ...Maybe that is the real unchangeable reality here, your certainty that you're right?
I think one has to have hope.
But the US has been at war my entire adult life, and it has a very long history of brutality abroad. I’m pragmatic about what changing that will require.
Once again, you demonstrate how warmongers cannot ever justify these abhorrent actions in the MENA region without invoking the highly dubious altruism of "we gotta punish the bad guys." The obvious need for the Gulf War from the 1990s warmonger point of view was the unprecedented post-Cold-War military buildup that was not only terribly unnecessary but has led to the loss of innumerable lives all over the globe thanks to our orgy of violence, ongoing to this day, called the War on Terrorism. But it did line the pockets of the shareholders of Raytheon and Boeing.
In a certain sense, this also helped line the pockets of Noam Chomsky, with whom I agree on very little beyond war. And even there, he's a complex thinker and I have many disagreements. Why would you try to pigeonhole and dismember my argument by placing me in the same category as Chomsky? You may think it's fine second-handing this issue and passing the buck to bigger names than yours, but instead of that, why don't you try arguing the merits of your ideas directly? Explain why millions of dead women & children were worth the "white lie" of the Gulf War being all about punishing the actions of Saddam in Kuwait?
The novel insights he presents in these essays deal with the West's ability to structure the narrative - via mass-media - of the Gulf War, resulting in the very real and senseless violence that occurred. All the while for the citizens of those Western nations though, none of the "Vietnam effect" was witnessed.
In a sense, your post proves his point quite adeptly, because you immediately made reference to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, insinuating that the West had some sort of obligation to act with further terror & violence. The Gulf War was not Saddam's act of turning Kuwait into literally hell [0], but rather the West's shameful leveraging of mass media to conduct abhorrent uses of overwhelming technological force to destroy an entire region of the world.
Since this war began and ended, the US has "conquered" five or so states in the Middle East-North Africa region. Should somebody have rightfully stepped in and stopped us from engaging in these conquests?
[0] http://www.filmsufi.com/2010/05/lessons-of-darkness-werner-h...