Remembering the Iran-Iraq War | Hacker News Reader

Remembering the Iran-Iraq War

notevenpast.org

71 pointslermontov32 comments

What's effaced from history is how closely the US supported Hussein's Iraq throughout the 80's, right up to the invasion in 1991. The US removed Saddam from the official terrorists lists, sold him advanced weaponry and weapon producing capabilities, including chemical weapons, and nuclear capabilities, at a time when he committed his most egregious crimes, including the gassing of the Kurds. Just before he invaded Kuwait Saddam was even visited by a high level us delegation led by Bob Dole.

https://chomsky.info/20020901/

It's very ironic that most of these strategies were seen as ways to counter Soviet influence, whereas the opposite happened in practice: Moscow "lost" the Iranian revolution when it turned religious, and Iran went back to Russia only in order to counter US influence.

I can vividly remember watching reports of the Iran-Iraq war when I was at school in the UK - there was no doubt in my mind that at the time that Iraq was on "our" side.

"Who controls the past controls the future...."

I remember this too when I was at school (I was ~12/13 at the time the war started). The British media and government were firmly onside with Iraq whilst writing up over egged horror stories of torture and depravity being inflicted by Iran on its own citizens, all the time ignoring Hussain's human rights violations (and those of the then exiled Shah of Iran). There was a palpable sense of glee that Iran might get it's comeuppance for having the audacity to overthrow the Shah.

I bet the US and UK governments are ruing the day they decided to interfere in Iran's democratic affairs back in 1953.

What with Reagan shooting his mouth off about the Russians, a deepening cold war (not helped by the Iran/Iraq war - US and allies backing Iraq, the Soviet Union backing Iran), the Soviets deploying to Afghanistan....all in all, not a great time to be growing up as a teenager aware of world affairs. I really thought the world was about to bite the big green nuclear banana between 1980 and 1985.

It very nearly did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83

For more reading, here is a Congressional report on the sale of those weapons and the resulting blowback

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riegle_Report

What's even more unbelive is that the US is allies with Germany and Japan after WWII, and relations with Cuba reversed after they allied themselves with the USSR.

It's almost like nothing in international affairs is static, things change, and things being one way in one decade and another in a different decade doesn't mean anything or anyone is "wrong."

None of those are really comparable. Nice try though.

This was due to the US seeing how the "punish the losers" strategy after WWI led directly to WWII and us trying not to repeat that same mistake after WWII (sorta kinda, there was more at stake, such as the Cold War, which helped shift alliances also).

But basically the US decided helping the people who lost the war reconstruct can keep our influence in the area and reduce the desire to rise back up and retaliate against them.

The US actually tried exactly this same approach after the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (remember all the money spent on rebuilding afterwards, training police forces, etc?), and it turned out to not work out so well for them this time around.

This is such an obvious example of the divide to conquer strategy which is still alive and well in the region. Iran Contra revealed the MIC was selling weapons to both Iran and Iraq at the same time.

Profit from endless weapons sales, profit from cheap oil, and keep the dollar strong by only selling the oil for the dollar. 3 birds with one stone.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro

And now here we are, oil is cheaper than it has been since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the dollar is more valuable than it has been in decades (relative to other currencies) all the while the instability in the middle east continues to increase.

http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-char...

"The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous."

basically every argument you make is cherry picked. the dollar was near multi-decade lows ~2 years ago. oil was at near multi-decade highs ~2 years ago.

the only thing consistent in anything you said was mid-east instability. the mid-east has been unmanageable / unstable for several eons.

And why do you think that is? Could it be the arbitrary borders drawn by the colonial powers? Or perhaps the carefully chosen dictators placed by some great power or other? I hate it when people make the instability in the Middle East seem like its entirely our (i.e. people of the Middle East) fault.

i haven't presented anything remotely resembling an argument of causality for mid-east dysfunction, nor do i want to. what i'd like is for people with political axes to grind to back their arguments with facts instead of imagined nonsense.

Of course.

it's our ancestors faults.

i'm talking way back during the industrial revolution. these decaying empires of the region in that time were ripe for the picking for the emerging powers of the world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Russia_relations

check the history section, particularly the 1800s:

"In his later years of rule, Peter the Great found himself in a strong enough position to increase Russian influence more southwards in the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea at the cost of the two declining empires; the Safavid Empire and the Ottoman Empire."

Good point, but it's not that simple. There are simply too many factors in play when it comes to the Middle East.

>dollar was near multi-decade lows ~2 years ago. oil was at near multi-decade highs ~2 years ago.

Yeah, that's exactly the correlation I am pointing out. Guess who started really blowing up ~2 years ago? ISIS.

More instability = less control over oil resources by the sovereign = cheaper oil for everyone else

Decrease the oil price, and you increase demand for oil.

Increase the demand for oil, and you increase the demand for the dollar.

Increase demand for the dollar and you increase its value. Basic economics.

6/7 of the richest companies in the world in terms of revenue are oil companies, and oil is primarily traded in dollars. You'll notice that when a country starts trying to sell oil in something other than the dollar, they go on the NATO shit list: i.e. Iraq, Iran, Venezuela.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency#Currencies_used_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r...

"War is a matter not so much of arms as of money." -Thucydides

isis is who we have to thank for $32 oil? we should all send a card.

If you have anything of actual substance to say I'm open to debate. I see from your comment history you have specialized financial knowledge which might offer valuable comment on this economic theory.

Oil price is a tool and is not so much affected by world events as used to affect world events. Most oil producing nations (after the 70s opec shocks) have enough money and stockpiles that they can control production to affect smaller producers and consuming countries.

Some of the results of the current low oil prices:

reduced income for isis,

reduced income for russia

competitive pressure on shale oil, gas, solar and electric vehicles (although that one now seems to be driven by tech/luxury appeal rather than by being more economical).

The first two have the smell of foreign policy about them.

The dollar is more valuable than the last decade? How come the Euro exchange rate changed from 2 for 1 USD (about 2010?) to 0.9 for one USD today? Did the Euro increase so much more? Without oil?

Why does any discussion around the Middle East produce incredibly shallow, edgy comments?

It's incredibly, incredibly, incredibly complicated stuff, and the discourse is all soundbites.

There is a really strong bias among people in the west to overemphasize their role in complex international events.

The US absolutely played both sides in the Iran-Iraq War. However, let's not strip the very real agency that Iraq and Iran exercised in the conduct of it.

What the US did was tilt the scales in Iraq's favor when things were looking exceptionally grim for them. This probably prolonged the war or at least prevented it from reaching an early decisive end. However, this shouldn't be surprising given the events of '79 and what that did to the US's prior Middle Eastern strategy.

Read Noam Chomsky, a lot of the facts aren't made public, particularly the huge US neocolonial interest in the region, spanning back a century.

Noam Chomsky doesn't have the answer. You'd need a PhD on the subject of a single conflict in order to talk about it with authority. He does not have that, though he is a gifted linguist.

You're talking about conflicts that legitimately have roots to the beginning of human history.

Let's see if history repeats itself. The "West" armed and supported Saddam Hussein's brutal regime and he went to war with Iran. Today, the West is arming the brutal regime of the Saudis and they just bombed Iran's embassy in Yemen, things are heating up.

Direct conflict is unlikely. Both sides are content with the proxy wars being waged in Yemen and Syria. Why involve your own army when you can pay some other country to do it? Besides, Saudia has a large Shia community, and Iran has a sizeable Sunni community, and I believe both countries are engaged in trade.

I hope you're right - but note that Russia and NATO are already too close for comfort in Syria. There’s a limit to the number of fighter jets that can be accidentially (or intentionally) shot down before escalation becomes almost inevitable.

It's not inconceivable that we'll see NATO special forces casualities in Russian air raids (or vice-versa).

The House of Saud has been in UK and then US pockets since T.E. Lawrence. That's not a new development.

The only way to stabilise middle east is to stop selling arms, I'm not a fan of conspiracy theory but there are parties benefiting from heating up shite and sunni confrontation, Not Middle eastern people definitely.

I believe these two group can live in peace together if dictator regimes fueld by arms companies let them to do so. Its all about propaganda , Heating up emotion and selling more arms.

- Iranian.

I don't think the fact that two armies fought a war across contrived borders makes them any less contrived.

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