The GOP has reasons for warmongering in Iraq

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by Bob Paul Connors
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The GOP has reasons for warmongering in Iraq

Project for New American Century

The GOP has reasons for warmongering in Iraq

The GOP chicken-hawks such as Cheney, in their Project for New American Century (PNAC) lusted for US hegemony. If there was a war they wanted it to reach this goal. They knew that attacking Iraq would be a very difficult undertaking, but they didn’t have their relatives in the frontlines so they didn’t care as long as Halliburton's interests were furthered. We all know about Cheney and Halliburton.They wanted a base a base in the Middle East and they knew that the World War 1 Sykes-Picot agreement didn’t stabilize Iraq. They knew that Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting for centuries. They knew that Iraq has always depended on violent dictators to maintain order, Hussein was just the latest. They knew that the US soldiers wouldn’t be greeted as liberators. They knew that the Sunnis had portions of the Ottoman Empire that are now Syria and Iraq. ISIS can be seen as only an attempt to get the area Sunnis had occupied.

Attacking Iraq would be difficult, but they could gain domestically as inciting fear in US’ citizens gains the GOP votes and the GOP has fat cat cronies in the military-industrial complex who benefit from wars. Cheney’s company, Halliburton, in particular made huge profits off of the war.

To gain these profits, Cheney, had to reverse his earlier held position of 1995 which was against going into Baghdad.

Iraq has always depended on violent dictators to maintain order, Hussein was just the latest.

The US knew it was opening a Pandora ’s Box when they attacked Iraq. The PNAC individuals knew that Hussein was an evil tyrant; they supplied him with weapons of mass destruction to use against Iran which they also used against Iraqi Kurds, and Rumsfeld is pictured above shaking hands with him. Doesn’t a picture tell a thousand words? They knew the consequences of deposing Hussein would be diametrically opposed to being greeted as liberators.

The article ”Does Iraq need a Saddam Hussein II?”states “What Iraq needs is a strong man, a man who can keep a violent, bloodthirsty argumentative Iraqi population all under total control. Iraq has always been violent, that’s how Iraqis are. You have to show an iron fist. They are not ready for democracy. Iraq must have a dictator to survive…. Perhaps the most atrocious date in Baghdad’s history is 1258 when the Mongol leader, Hulagu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, raised the once great city to the ground. Hulagu personally boasted in a letter to Louis IX of France that he had massacred 200,000 in Baghdad although other estimates reach as high as 800,000. Tamerlane, the leader of the Tatars, was hardly less brutal in 1401 as he ransacked the city. Ottomans and Persians fought over Iraq, and later Britain played out its rivalry with other powers such as Germany and France in Iraq.”

The Middle East was redrawn by Westerners as a result of the World War Sykes-Picot agreement

France and England didn’t care about the Middle East when they redrew it after World War 1. They wanted to further their interests.

The article “40 maps that explain the Middle East” states “You hear a lot today about this treaty, in which the UK and French (and Russian) Empires secretly agreed to divide up the Ottoman Empire's last MidEastern regions among themselves. Crucially, the borders between the French and British "zones" later became the borders between Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. Because those later-independent states had largely arbitrary borders that forced disparate ethnic and religious groups together, and because those groups are still in terrible conflict with one another, Sykes-Picot is often cited as a cause of warfare and violence and extremism in the Middle East.”

The article “Why border lines drawn with a ruler in WW1 still rock the Middle East”states “For the period from the end of the Crusades up until the arrival of the European powers in the 19th Century, and despite the region's vibrant trading culture, the different sects effectively lived separately from each other.

But the thinking behind Sykes-Picot did not translate into practice. That meant the newly created borders did not correspond to the actual sectarian, tribal, or ethnic distinctions on the ground. “

The Sunnis had portions of the Ottoman Empire that are now Syria and Iraq

Now the Sunnis are only attempting to live together in as they have wanted for centuries.

The article “ISIS Declares Establishment of Caliphate in Iraq and Syria” states “In a chilling move over the weekend, the extremists of the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) declared the establishment of a caliphate or an Islamic state in large areas of Iraq and Syria…..Such restoration, which brings with it a measure of glory and pride connected to Islam’s 1400-year long golden age beginning in mid-7th century, has been the stated goal of Sunni Muslim activists for decades, from the Muslim Brotherhood to al Qaeda.” The article “Extremists in Iraq need a history lesson”. states “ISIS released a promotional video entitled "The End of Sykes-Picot." The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement is a flash-point for Arab resentment.”

Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq have been fighting for centuries

The article “Conflict in Iraq Follows Centuries of Shiite-Sunni Mistrust” shows what is occurring in Iraq is nothing new.

The article states “The Iraq conflict plays out on several levels between Sunnis and Shiites. First and foremost, it's about how to share power in a 21st century state. The prime minister, a Shiite, has failed abysmally in creating a formula to share power with the Sunnis, the traditional political masters in Iraq," said Robin Wright, a joint fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center, non-partisan institutions.

Tension between other countries in the region has also stoked the fighting, which revives suspicions that have existed between Shiites and Sunnis that date back 1,400 years, she said.”

Inciting fear in US’ citizens gains the GOP votes

The article “The Roots of Fear” illustrates that President Obama realized that the GOP was fearmongering.

It states “For the candidate whose slogans include "Got Hope?" the question was so perfect he might have dreamed it up himself. At an appearance this month at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, a foreign student asked Barack Obama about the fear that has gripped the American psyche since September 11, 2001, and which a number of politicians are hoping to ride to victory….So when the student asked about America's climate of fear, Obama pounced. "We have been operating under a politics of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of immigrants, fear of people of different religious beliefs, fears of gays that they might get married and that somehow that would affect us," he declared. "We have to break that fever of fear … Unfortunately what I've been seeing from the Republican debates is that they are going to perpetuate this fearmongering … Rudy gets up and says, 'They are trying to kill you' … It's absolutely true there are 30,000, 40,000 hard-core jihadists who would be happy to strap on a bomb right now, walk in here and blow us all up. You can't negotiate with those folks. All we can do is capture them, kill them, imprison them. And that is one of my pre-eminent jobs as president of the United States. Keep nuclear weapons out of their hands."

The article “Cheney to public: Be afraid; be very afraid” shows how the master of fearmongering operates.

It states “For Americans who’d forgotten what shameless fear mongering sounds like, a certain former vice president offered a timely reminder.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney offered an extremely morose prediction about the country’s future on Tuesday.

Asked on the Hugh Hewitt radio show whether he believes the United States could survive the decade without another attack on the homeland, Cheney said, “I doubt it.”

Cheney specifically told the conservative host, “I think there will be another attack and next time, I think it’s likely to be far deadlier than the last one. Imagine what would happen if somebody could smuggle a nuclear device, put it in a shipping container and drive it down the Beltway outside Washington, D.C.”

Why is Cheney like this? The article states “That this is practically the definition of demagoguery doesn’t seem to bother him because, well, he’s Dick Cheney.”

The GOP has fat cat cronies in the military-industrial complex including Cheney’s Halliburton

The article “Rand Paul Says Dick Cheney Pushed for the Iraq War So Halliburton Would Profit” shows Cheney’s ulterior motive for forcing a war with his Iraq intimate cohort Hussein.

The article states illustrates how Rand Paul is convinced Cheney led us into the Iraq War for his company’s profit.

Paul used recent history to illustrate this as the article states “There's a great YouTube of Dick Cheney in 1995 defending [President] Bush No. 1 [and the decision not to invade Baghdad in the first Gulf War], and he goes on for about five minutes. He's being interviewed, I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and he says it would be a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it'd be civil war, we would have no exit strategy. He goes on and on for five minutes. Dick Cheney saying it would be a bad idea. And that's why the first Bush didn't go into Baghdad. Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton. Makes hundreds of millions of dollars, their CEO. Next thing you know, he's back in government and it's a good idea to go into Iraq.”

GOP reasons for warmongering including Iraq

The GOP PNAC lusted for US hegemony via wars. They wanted a base a base in the Middle East and Iraq would do. Wars with and Syria and Iran, among other Middle Eastern countries have been promoted by the GOP also.

Attacking any Middle Eastern country will be difficult, but the GOP could gain domestically in two ways. Inciting fear in US’ citizens gains the GOP votes and the GOP has fat cat cronies in the military-industrial complex who benefit from wars. If it is not Cheney’s Halliburton another of their fat cronies in the military-industrial complexwill be in line to make huge profits off of another preemptive war. There are UN sanctions against preemptive wars, which Bush 43 ignored to attack Iraq, and which any other GOP president will happily shrug off for another disastrous Middle Eastern war.