Yeah, just a few decades years, to secure oil deals and/or keep control of the region. No biggie.
That this can be said with a straight face about invasions to two countries that created civil war, suffering, hundreds of thousands of deaths, displacement, etc, is telling of the ever-present colonialist mindset.
For anyone else interested, negotiations that could lead to the US leaving Iraq and fully returning control to the Iraqi people are also going swimmingly, according to reports.
For all their failures, the allies never bombed cities with nerve agents.
> Saddam committed crimes of aggression during the Iran–Iraq War
Which links to a page about the war:
> Iraq was aided by [...] the United States, the United Kingdom,
> After years of military and economic losses, decreasing morale, intensifying Iran–U.S. relations, and little international action against Iraqi attacks on Iranian civilians, Iran agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq under United Nations Security Council Resolution 598.
So they basically did.
What do you think an llm would say if you asked it:
> Did the US and UK support Saddam Hussein when he was using weapons of mass destruction on Iranian civilians?
It's a motte-and-bailey fallacy that starts with countries and leaders having relationships in a global, interwoven world and ends with excusing a blood-thirsty dictator as if they had no agency.
We do, as you rightly note have quite the history of a policy of imperialist land grabs, now we just play a support function to somebody else's empire.
In Germany, historically the strategic issue was anti-communism, but now it serves as a military logistics hub; in Iraq, it's about trade in oil in dollars and access to Iraqi oil fields for US companies.
The UK is more complex and more total, ranging from support in the security council, to access to markets for US goods and services, to stationing of US troops and hardware. Most of our economy is geared up for the benefit of US investment funds.
Any government, whether it be Germany, Iraq or the UK, which tries to alter any of these fundamentals will quickly find out the extent to which their land has been grabbed.
Whether troop presence is viewed as occupation or not in each of the >50 [1] countries currently "hosting" troops is very much a matter of personal perspective, the fringeness of which will vary from country to country.
I don't believe that it really changes the fact that yes, US troops occupy the UK, Germany and Iraq, and many more. The most substantial deployments, e.g., Germany, Japan, South Korea, and until recently Iraq and Afghanistan, were very much the product of invasions. At the time of those invasions, many of those on the receiving end would have very much felt on the receiving end of a land grab. It's just their grandchildren have been conditioned to view this state of affairs as natural.
The general pattern is "bomb the bejesus" [2] out of a country. Plant base. Install a friendly government and ensure a favourable operating environment for US interests. The UK is an exception in that it wasn't bombed by the US, but the upshot is the same. We're a wholely-owned subsidiary of corporate America, and a giant aircraft carrier on the other side of the Atlantic -- as the US's latest adventure in Iran has clearly demonstrated.
You may quibble over the "land" in land-grab, but the strategic bits (e.g., oil fields, bases) are very much owned, and the territory as a whole controlled by pliant governments.
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea...
[^2]: Kissenger, 1972
Nations (and people) exist in an ecosystem, and so will always behave accordingly, and always in their own interests. There are some emergent properties of ecosystems, one of which is that optimal behaviour is to acquire the maximum you are physically capable of defending, not the minimum that you need to survive.
It's perfectly reasonable for the US, the big fish in the pond, to leverage its advantages accordingly, and to the maximum. It would be a disservice to the US people if it did not. Smaller fish should indeed be glad that the big fish is as placid and strategically (rather than ideologically) motivated as it is, given the historically experienced alternatives.
The British empire has been completely wound down, other than a handful of small overseas territories.
How long do you plan on holding the currency set of British people responsible for things they didn’t do?
Just because Britain couldn't afford it anymore. And after bloodshed, in India, Kenya, Cyprus, Malaysia, and elsewhere. Not out of the bigness of their heart.
And the post-colonialism never ended. The same grabby hands get everywhere they can get.
And why exactly are those "small overseas territories" unquestionably retained? "No biggie, just an island here, an island there, and island there, some land in here"
Historically I’ve found your comments informative, well thought out, and entertaining.
Here’s the Wikipedia article on the BOTs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories
I’m willing to acknowledge those locales probably remain British territories, at least some of them, as an spect of projecting force, in addition the to historical quirks.
I probably don’t know enough.
And, ultimately, it would be nice if everyone got along and was generally content to stay in their lane.
Would the former British colonies be doing better or worse had they never been colonised? Quite possibly better. We’ll never know. At least some of the former colonies have failed spectacularly. That’s probably a good enough reason to never try any of that again.
I’m trying to steelman your arguments here Mr coldtea. Not only that, I have also raged against what happened in a similar manner from time to time.
It's not necessarily correct to assume that they failed because they were previously colonised by the British. Should we have instead allowed other powers to colonise them? That is the only realisitic counterfactual here. Can we truly say the world would have been better off if the British had not colonised various countries, for example when it came to waging the Second World War?
It’s obvious no body cares about the British people.