Does the USA have a responsibility to help the Iraqis?

My first inclination was to say that the US created this mess, so we have a moral obligation to fix it. But then I thought about the early history of Iraq. The country was artificially glued together from three incompatible ethnic regions, so maybe the current conflict was inevitable. Joe Biden said a few years ago that he thought Iraq should be three separate countries. I didn't follow his thinking at the time, but I'm starting to think he was right.

 

They reported on it years ago...you missed it.

Biden supports a "five-step plan" towards removing troops from Iraq. In November 2006, Biden and Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, released a comprehensive strategy to end sectarian violence in Iraq. Rather than continuing the present approach or withdrawing, the plan calls for federalizing Iraq with separate regions for Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. The key points include:

Giving Iraq's major groups a measure of autonomy in their own regions. A central government would be left in charge of interests such as defending the borders and distributing oil revenues.
Guaranteeing Sunnis – who have no oil rights – a proportionate share of oil revenue and reintegrating those who have not fought against Coalition forces.
Increase, not end, reconstruction assistance but insist that Arab States of the Persian Gulf fund it and tie it to the creation of a jobs program and to the protection of minority rights.
Initiate a diplomatic offensive to enlist the support of the major powers and neighboring countries for a political settlement in Iraq and create an Oversight Contact Group to enforce regional commitments.
Begin the phased redeployment of U.S. forces in 2007 and withdraw most of them by 2008, leaving a small follow-on force for security and policing actions.
The plan, named The Biden-Brownback Resolution, passed the Senate 75-23 in a nonbinding vote on September 25, 2007, including 26 Republican votes. Iraq’s political leadership united in denouncing the resolution, while the Embassy of the United States in Baghdad issued a statement distancing itself

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3656073

 

No, Karen, we did not 'create this mess.' As you stated, the 3 groups have been fighting each other forever. They are totally incompatible. Britain lumped the territories together and called it a country.

 

Sounds like a ponzi scheme. You mean outside the accounts receivable box.

 

It is a silly question because most of the responses are based on should the US have been there in the first place/they were the instigators 'everything is their fault' moving forward. So it just drags up VERY old prejudices.

 

maybe we pretend to be French, oui..

 

Meaning?

 

Oh, so everything's back to normal there? Good.

 

Yes, most of the responses are based on the fact that the U.S. should not have wrecked that country and murdered its people. So, the question as to whether or not the U.S. has a responsibility to help the Iraqis is a no-brainer.

 

"Take the side of one...the other side will bite the hell out of you....."

Yes, common sense always....

 

they didnt sell them a royal with cheese..

atriot:atriot:

 

And let's not forget about the U.S. looking the other way after supplying Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons back in the 80s.

 

Has anyone asked the Iraqi people, aside from those who would rule, what THEY want?

 

As if all Iraqis are one "people" ... you have the sunni Arabs of central Iraq, the Kurds in the north, the majority Shiites of the south, and other groups, including Turkomans, Assyrian Christians..They all likely have different ideas about what should go on and what shouldn't...

 

Well, deh, obviously not.

Ho-hum snooze.

Like I said...

 

That's my point, maybe we should allow the Iraqis to work out their differences on their own and only become involved if the safety or security of the U.S.A. or American citizens becomes imminent.
No Nation is comprised of one "people".

 

oden

The driving force behind the invasion of Iraq came from the US, the policies pursued during the occupation came from Washington.
*
try and read Imperial life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

I think it gives and insight - Here is something from a review of the book.

Mr. Chandrasekaran, an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post and the paper’s former Baghdad bureau chief, spent nearly two years reporting from Iraq, and in “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” he draws a vividly detailed portrait of the Green Zone and the Coalition Provisional Authority (which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004) that becomes a metaphor for the administration’s larger failings in Iraq. An insular, often blinkered approach to decision making; a reluctance to listen to experts; Pollyannaish expectations leading to inadequate allocations of resources and staff; a willful ignorance of Iraqi culture and history; and an obliviousness to realities on the ground: all are on unfortunate display in the Emerald City.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/books/13book.html?_r=0

 

Some thoughts

To me the US has a clear responsibility for the problems being encountered in Iraq today

Some are saying that the US should be pursuing it own self interest and that at the moment doesn’t involve helping out the Iraqis.

But to me the problems go back to the US pursing what it saw as its self interests back then (and not those of the Iraqi people).

The Bush Administration as representatives of the US people (and with a great deal of support at the time) invaded and occupied Iraq and saw it as being a policy that served the best interests of the US.

It wasn’t the oil (although the idea that the war would pay for itself was probably attractive) but about strategical positioning.

The thought I believe was that Saddam was weak, the country could be quickly taken over pacified and a pro-American democracy could be installed and bases established from which the US could pin down Assad in Syria and threaten Iran.

It didn’t work because they fucked up from the beginning and kept on fucking up.

The first fuck up was that they didn’t seem to understand the country and culture and region they were invading.

The Bush Admin seem to treat Iraq as if it was a single natural nation, but many people pointed out that it was a construct (of the British) and had three areas, a Kurdish north, Sunni middle and Shia south

And some thought that splitting then apart might be the best policy seeing as the Kurds were already semi-autonomous anyway, and given the animosity between the Sunni and Shia populations

It has to be remembered that Saddam’s regime had been Sunni heavy and many officers, civil servants and the ‘middle class’ came from this group.
The almost exclusively Sunni Republican Guard was reported to have been brutal in its suppression of the Shia uprising that had followed the First Gulf war. They lost jobs and property in the fall and the disbanding of the army caused a lot of Sunni disgruntlement. The suppression of the Sunni triangle by US troops didn’t help (Fallujah).

Mainly Shia government have done little or nothing to address that situation, and in fact has exacerbated it.

The violence that has been going on in Iraq has often gone unreported in much of western media but the problems that US involvement stirred up never really went away.

The problem was that there seems to be a certain amount of embarrassment over Iraq and many Americans seem to want to blame the failures there on the Iraqis rather than see their part in it.

 

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As I’ve said the Bush Admin policy didn’t seem to be aimed a helping the Iraqi people, it seem driven by other agendas.

 

So the book is talking about experiences the writer had (for year) just over a decade ago?

The Obama Admin' have been in office for the last 5 years.