Iraq: Should America, Britain and other western powers intervene?

[-:Undertaker:-]

Iraq: Should America, Britain and other western powers intervene?


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Territorial_control_of_the_ISIS.svg/250px-Territorial_control_of_the_ISIS.svg.png

During the past few months, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has steadily been gaining ground in war-torn Syria and northern Iraq, with huge gains made in the past few weeks with much of the sunni north of Iraq falling to the ISIS. The shia government of Prime Minister Maliki is losing control of the country, with attacks on Baghdad threatening to tip the entire country into a religious holy war between sunni and shia forces for control of the Iraqi capital city. The ISIS are also threatening to move on towards the Kingdom of Jordan once Iraq has been captured, and create an Islamic state stretching from southern Turkey to the Sinai region in Egypt.

The question is, what should be done? Should western powers intervene to halt the ISIS and protect allies such as Jordan and Iraq, or is the 98-year old border settlement (Sykes-Picot) disintegrating before our eyes? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Do America and Britain now have a moral responsibility to nuture a stable Iraq after the collapse of the country and security forces in the 2003 invasion?


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The debate is open to you.

[GommeInc]

Iraq and Syria seem to be doing well enough without intervention. They're already taking out a few groups and fighting them and taking over taken over towns and cities. If the last conflict is anything to go by, we should definitely not intervene. The US only escalates these problems and we just get dragged along for the ride.

[IWishIWasCool]

SMALL steps should be taken to defuse the conflict but that is near to impossible, I do not believe we should have boots on the ground and a lot of people on the left and right would tell me how do we do that without having boots out there and to be quite honest I don't know, I just don't want another slaughter fest like we had during the last Iraq conflict, Syria was held poorly and that scares me to think if the big headed morons in office decide to do one stupid action it'll have a major consequence.

[-:Undertaker:-]

It's a great shame we didn't take the chance in 2003 to partition the country into what it should really look like, ie an independent Kurdistan in the north, a sunni state in the middle (including Baghdad) and a shia state in the south (including Basra). But then that's western foreign policy for you. :P

[The Don]

It's a great shame we didn't take the chance in 2003 to partition the country into what it should really look like, ie an independent Kurdistan in the north, a sunni state in the middle (including Baghdad) and a shia state in the south (including Basra). But then that's western foreign policy for you. :P

There's no way Turkey would allow an independent Kurdistan state to rise up on its border.

[Fustraton]

Time for criticism.

Without US and UK intervention, most wars and conflicts would still be going on today. For example, Korea and Vietnam had significant wars that killed many of the populations of each country (Korean war killed just less than a million Koreans, Vietnam war ranges around 500,000) even with US and UK intervention. If you just let a country sort itself out, a conflict could kill more than these figures because there is no intervention.

[FlyingJesus]

The problem is as it always has been that people are looking for sectarian resolution to an entirely imagined problem, which as with most things arises from just plain easy ignorance. Ah fun.

As for armed intervention in these areas, that is an issue to be dealt with as they change - it's clear to everybody aside from Area 51 nuts that the governing body in the currently impacted area are of one resolve without any just reason for one to assume otherwise, and so that is who we should be talking to at the moment about what "the people of Iraq" are after, with contracts one way or another written up and agreed upon for whatever outcome to everyone's mutual agreement, sign on the dotted line, I didn't realise you spelt "Blair" with three 6's, lovely. If of course that means that al-Maliki opens his cabinet to stock up on defences or heaven forbid military advisors [READ SECRET DEADLY KILLERBOTS FROM OS/BAMA!!], then that's what happens, and if not then we have zero reason, as well as (importantly for many people) zero responsibility, and (most importantly) zero dominion to do anything at all on any level above the individual, for which one can be accounted for as they come and according to their crime.


Also I'm not the only one who sees this right
http://i.imgur.com/Gdnk1Ev.gif

[KingEvan]

no.

[-:Undertaker:-]

There's no way Turkey would allow an independent Kurdistan state to rise up on its border.

That's true.

But then again, if Iraq and Syria are fragmenting then they won't have a choice. Turkey can't ignore the realpolitik of the area.


Time for criticism.

Without US and UK intervention, most wars and conflicts would still be going on today. For example, Korea and Vietnam had significant wars that killed many of the populations of each country (Korean war killed just less than a million Koreans, Vietnam war ranges around 500,000) even with US and UK intervention. If you just let a country sort itself out, a conflict could kill more than these figures because there is no intervention.

One could argue that South Vietnam was an invented creation and caused war, rather than preventing it. If you look at Vietnam today, whilst still under Communist Party control, by opening up to free trade with the western world (and America in particular) it's doing pretty well and getting better. There's a key example of free markets and leading by example doing what meddling in foreign country couldn't do.


The problem is as it always has been that people are looking for sectarian resolution to an entirely imagined problem, which as with most things arises from just plain easy ignorance. Ah fun.[/IMG]

But this isn't an imagined problem, sunni vs shia has been going on since the dawn of time and it's been proven time and time again that homogenised a country is, the more successful and peaceful it is - and the opposite for the more multicultural it is. Whether western liberals like to imagine it or not, tribal/ethnic/religious and cultural divisions have existed forever and will always exist - people resent having people they don't view the same as them meddling in their affairs, much as you wouldn't want me to come into your house and try to change your colour scheme.

Iraq and Syria are completely invented creations, an epic disaster since their creation after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

[FlyingJesus]

Forced segregation of cultures wouldn't work either - if it did then no wars would ever have happened and no invasions would have been attempted in all of history. You seem to think that if you give someone a bunch of like-minded people to sit next to they're never going to want to move or look outside that circle, and yet:

The ISIS are also threatening to move on towards the Kingdom of Jordan once Iraq has been captured

And it is an imagined problem because it's only the violent radicals who really care about oppressing the opposition; most Sunnis and Shi'as are quite content to live alongside each other just as my Christian and Muslim friends don't stone me as a heretic. Also you completely ignored my response to what the thread is actually about :P

[-:Undertaker:-]

Forced segregation of cultures wouldn't work either - if it did then no wars would ever have happened and no invasions would have been attempted in all of history. You seem to think that if you give someone a bunch of like-minded people to sit next to they're never going to want to move or look outside that circle, and yet

It isn't forced at all, what is forced is keeping these people together in an aritifcial politcal, economic and cultural union called Iraq which was invented out of thin air. If you look at the history of Iraq, it's been one of each of the groups attempting to gain dominace over the other - hence a history since independence of one strong man after the other. Even the Ba'ath regime, a supposed secular regime (composed almost entirely of minority sunnis) used sectarianism to keep other groups at one anothers throats so that sunni rule could continue.


And it is an imagined problem because it's only the violent radicals who really care about oppressing the opposition; most Sunnis and Shi'as are quite content to live alongside each other just as my Christian and Muslim friends don't stone me as a heretic. Also you completely ignored my response to what the thread is actually about :P

And yet if you look at the events in Iraq since independence and especially since 2003 you'll notice how it's essentially been a battleground for control of Baghdad between the sunni population (backed by the Gulf states and the Saudi Kingdom in particular) and the shia population who've been backed by both the Assad clan in Syria and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Saying that people should just learn to live together is very nice, but isn't realistic. If you have distinct groups who consider themselves literally foreigners to the other group then settling things over democracy isn't going to work, no more than the Christian South Sudan could tolerate the Islamic northern Sudan imposing it's will over the south, hence the partition.


most Sunnis and Shi'as are quite content to live alongside each other

Doesn't appear to be the case in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain - all contries which have a sizable sunni or shia minority.

Indeed if you look at reports coming in from Iraq over the past few weeks, there have been reports that the ISIS forces have been greeted as liberators in sunni areas who absolutely detested the Prime Minister Maliki (shia) government.

[FlyingJesus]

I don't know if you missed the point on purpose but the first paragraph was in response to your ideals about placing X type of person in country Y and F type of person in country G and so on - historically we know for an absolute fact that that solves nothing whatsoever. Violent people create conflict wherever they can no matter how many friends you sit them next to. You talk about one group imposing their will over another yet I'm the one saying not to do that while you're claiming it's best for people to be forced into whatever culture they were born near and never move or learn. You're also mistaking radical leadership for general populace