Was the Gulf War justified?

I was involved in the Gulf war in 1990. I was in the Royal Air Force. I was based in Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. I was a pilot on Tornado GR4 aircraft. My job was ground attack. Specifically airfield denial. I flew in low and pushed out a JP233 cluster munition. It fucked up the runway.
Also to patrol the southern airspace in Iraq. To provide air superiority for the ground forces to move in. I also got target indication from SF on the ground. It could be a laser designator or direct RT instructions. War is a shit. I have some regrets about what I did, but I had to protect ground units and cause maximum damage to the enemy.

Was it justified? No. Certainly not. It was an unnecessary bloodbath. Arabs have a very different culture to us. They need a strongman to control them. Taking out Saddam and Ghaddafi resulted in chaos. We should leave them to their tribal culture and not interfere. They know that the West can ruin them. So they'll stay in line with subtle diplomacy and threats.
The west must take a really hard line with Saudi Arabia. They fund terrorist scholls all over the world. My country (UK) sells them advanced weapon systems. We can get oil from the North Sea, Canada and Russia. Fuck the Saudis.

*schools called 'madrassas'. Forgive my typing.

The first Gulf War wad between Iram and Irap between 1980 and 1988 you uneducated namefag.

Iraq fought for 8 years to protect kuwait and the gulf countries from iran eating them up. The gulf countries paid in money, iraq paid in blood. Kuwaitis were being stingy jews.

kuwait is legit iraqi territory that got stolen by the british when iraq was under ottoman occupation and the british put the al sabah puppet rulers in charge. in 1938, kuwaiti parliament democratically voted to join iraq and the british dissolved the parliament. Ordinary kuwaitis and poorer foreign workers, and especially the bidoun kuwaitis, all were much better off under iraqi rule because saddam's iraq actually had more civil rights than the feudalistic monarchy of the emir, but the wealthy elite and ruling family ran a brilliant campaign to make the UN feel sorry for them and convince them that kuwait was better off under their absolute monarchial dictatorship.

No, the US is an Evil Empire.

Yes it was. Saddam had the potential to invade Saudi Arabia if we didn't stop him in Kuwait and he would've used the tool of oil to extort the Free World.

Iraq II was also justified. Even in the absence of WMD (which was a false lie spread by the liberal media to discredit Bush and the war effort), there was still an objective case to be made to topple Saddam. Leaving him in power risked a regional arms race that would've engulfed Israel, Iran, and the Gulf Arabs.

How exactly was Saddam keeping anyone in line by saber rattling and invading his neighbors? I can understand this argument for other leaders, like Assad, Gaddafi, the Shah, Sisi, but for Saddam it really doesn't seem to hold up.

Also, I'm no fan of Saudi Arabia, but the House of Saud is the only thing keeping down the ambitions of the likes of bin Ladens. They aren't perfect by any measure, but if you're willing to accept authoritarian leaders in the Middle East then the Saudis are probably the best example of this. Like >40% of the Saudi population is Wahhabi, it sucks that they fund Madrasas, but Madrasas are less harmful than arms races, chemical weapons, and being the largest state sponsor of terror (in the case of Iran, the other two refer to Iraq).

*Funds ISIS*

Did you miss the "I'm no fan of Saudi Arabia?" ISIS is bad, no doubt, but they have a limited reach. They've been on the run since Russia partnered with the Assad regime and overall pose little to no existential threat to the United States. They're a mild annoyance at most. They'll do attacks like the San Francisco attacks or the Paris bombings, but at no point have they threatened the supremacy of the West.

Iran's nuclear ambitions and Iraq's former ambitions would've posed a threat in that regard. Had Saddam been allowed to take over Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, he would've had control over massive oil reserves and been able to blackmail the West. Should Iran be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon, they would become North Korea-tier untouchable.

Really makes you think.

>Bombs Cradle of Civilisation into the stone age because of Oil
>Supports and funds insane artifact destroyng Jihadist neck cutters troughout the Middle East

>We're totally the goodguys, guys

>North Korea-tier untouchable.
Iran is nothing like North Korea. The fact is if you want to be taken seriously in global politics you need a nuclear weapon. Who created that world order? It certainly wasn't Iran

So you think that a country controlled by a council of fanatic Ayatollahs with no concern for the material world and a literal branch of their army dedicated to aiding radical Islamic terrorists should be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons and receive global legitimacy?

>implying a bunch of sand monkeys should be allowed to hold our economies hostage because of the events of 1000 years ago

>should be allowed
It's not my job to come up with global policy. So let's say Iran "shouldn't be allowed" to develop nuclear weapons. Who enforces that? What's the penalty if they do? What justification does that party have to interfere with another nation's sovereignty? We "allowed" fucking Pakistan have nuclear weapons

>fighting to help Kuwait and Saudi Arabia
>justified

Iraq could have been our best fucking friend in the region, but muh sheiks, fuck America

He needed to exert the strong man image to maintain control of internal politics and build legitimacy by defending Iraq from its geopolitical and ideological enemies.

Certainly not. First the US and the UK prop up a despot in Iran that is so horrible the people rather have a religious extremist in power. Why did they do that? The democratically elected president of Iran dared to nationalize his oil wells. Then the US prop up another despot to fight the Iranian cleric. Thus Iraq is bled dry. Next despot no 2 wants to consolidate his position by acquiring a tiny bit of territory but his former allie, the US, fuck him over and tell him he cannot just invade neighbours. He may only invade neighbours the US approve of. Thus not only the war machinery of the US and their lapdog the UK is rolling in for the Grand Theft Oil but also sanctions are set in place that cost hundreds of thousands people's lives. Now a functioning country with a broad middle class, a high standard of education and living is reverted to Stone Age. Additionally the huge army propped up by the US is set on the streets without a job or pension. All these people have left are their religion and families. Guess where ISIS comes from.
That's Western Values for y'all.

Absolutely NOT . Kuwait is an Artificial State by Britain to cuck Iraq out of the Persian Gulf.

Can someone explain why the West always stops us from anschluss-ing and removing these meme-states.

...

>WAAAAAHHH WHY DID YOU STOP SADDAM FROM ANNEXING KUWAIT AMERICA IS SOOOO MEEEEEEEEAAAAAN!!!!! :(
Fuck off, idiot.

Why would we want to be closer to Saddam than the Saud's? Why would we ever choose Saddam over the Gulf States? Are you fucking retarded?

Yeah right, it"s about good and evil and especially about Kuwait. That"s why the daughter of Kuwait"s ambassador posed as a nurse and lied to the UN about babies being smashed by Iraqi soldiers.
>nooooo, we're the good guys.

There are 2 countries we need to be friends with in the region the rest are ancillary.

I don't care about that. We had no good reason to let Saddam annex Kuwait. He was an unstable asshole. He should've kept his ass in line and not bit the hand that fed him. Instead he ended up on the end of a rope.

Would the Arab Spring have happened without the Iraq War though?

Yeah I get it, your attention span is reduced to 140 characters.
Who put Saddam in place and made him have one of the biggest militaries in the world again?

>Reminder that Saddam Hussein went 0-3 in war
>Reminder that every single war he started was a resource war
>Reminder that he did worse at ethnically cleansing the Kurds than a bunch of disorganized starving islamists.
>Reminder that he was still the best leader Iraq ever had

Like the Arab Spring was a good thing. As per usual, the Middle East an now also Europ pay the prize for Anglo shenanigans.

>the same mess we are in now
Doubtful, Saddam kept Islamists out. Without Islamists in Iraq the Arab Spring stays secular in the Arab world and we end up with a much cleaner civil war.

>Europ pay the prize for Anglo shenanigans.
Has there ever been a time in history where the US, Britain or Australia actually had to pay a social, economic or major physical toll for all the horrible things we have collectively done in the last 300 years?

Probably.

I doubt it would have been as large

US and friends shenanigans in the Middle East are the worst foreign policy fuckups since Vietnam. At least the Soviets in Afghanistan had a clear end goal. We're just there because the CIA and hawks have autism towards the region

U.S. kind of fucked itself from the start with the whole slave thing.

The worst thing Australians ever did was introduce Abos to petrol no idea why you included them in the fold.

Britain is on its unwashed knees already. All that keeps them together is the hubris and populistic bs as an illusio of self determination. We'll see how that pans out.
The population of the US is too retarded to actually notice there's something wrong. Case in point: >we had no good reason.
Reason is what this whole fucking country lacks. At least they got the president they deserve. The corporations are the actual government. For the past 100 years they've been meddling with European and Middle Eastern affairs.
Why don't people wake up and notice that the conflict is rich vs. poor and not christian vs. muslims or brown vs. white?

>Why don't people wake up and notice that the conflict is rich vs. poor and not christian vs. muslims or brown vs. white?
t. Bernie Sanders

I never understood how America justified invading Iraq because a bunch of Saudi attacked the twin towers?

Well to begin with you have to understand that US-Iraq relations didn't start on 9/11.

Sanders would've sold out even harder than Obama. If a US president cannot even close a concentration camp of his own country, who actually is on power

I know but didn't they invade Iraq soon afterwards and use the attack as an excuse, I was young at the time so my memory is hazy.

Veeky Forums answer: yes

Long answer: indirectly, but yes

Actually they justified it with a lie about Weapons of Mass Destruction. Most of the retarded US population is still convinced though that it had to do with 9/11. That might come from the war criminal Donald Rumsfeld stating a few hours after 9/11 that it would be in his interest to hit Saddam.

Reminder that he was supplied and supported by the US in his wars

...

It wasn't so much the attack, which the US had intelligence was most likely not directly committed by Iraq but rather the terrorists had some Iraqi backers, but the Iraqis reportedly buying up arms (aluminum tubing and yellowcake uranium) with which to make WMDs, which we took as a threat of increased attacks against us.

>In the Nu Era you need moral justification to invade a weaker (and despotic) state to secure resources or control

this is the worst time period

for what it's worth Hussein was tyrannical as fuck and genocided to boot, how does that not qualify enough for the Moral Brigade

that's right it's only valid when done by a leftist

What are you arguing exactly?

burger detected. Getting problems with your country's bigotry?
Moral justification is another box of Pandora the US opened with their ex-post facto Nuremburg Trials excluding their own and other allies' war crimes.

Hussein was a willing thorn in America's side, a despot, and we had something to gain from removing him to boot, so that's all the "justification" a superpower needs to exact their will

What a waste

Ok but couldn't Hussein use the same exact justification to invade Kuwait or ethnically cleanse some Kurds?

He's a neocon and supports Preemptive War because of masculinity crisis.

He can try, and he'll get turbofucked by us because Kuwait is our buddy

welcome to geopolitics

>Why don't people wake up and notice that the conflict is rich vs. poor and not christian vs. muslims or brown vs. white?

Rich people go around in expensive cars and play golf. Muslims kill random people for no reason and brown people rape, steal, and murder at a disproportionate rate.

Are you truly so materialistic that you consider someone having a bigger house than you a greater injustice than someone threatening your life and safety?

You still haven't got it. There are no buddies. Saddam was your buddy before, too.

I didn't mean it in a sense other than ally

don't be autistic

And in which world outside of /pol/ does that happen?
Please go and google the casualties inflicted by the US military and US sanctions for say the past 25 years.
>hur durr, we are the good guys

Saddam was you fucking ally before.
youtube.com/watch?v=r42oejmpkgw

I'm aware. Alliances constantly shift. They aren't real friendships, they are agreements predicated on strategic accord.

>Why don't people wake up and notice that the conflict is rich vs. poor and not christian vs. muslims or brown vs. white?
t. Fucking Commie

What? Seriously can you put some effort into making a coherent post? Are you saying Islamic terrorism doesn't exist and is invented by /pol/? Are you saying my government's crime rates are put online by /pol/ hackers?

I have no idea what your last 2 sentences even have to do with what we are discussing.

>Implying Obama wanted to close Guantanamo

Actually I'm more of a social democrat. But that's a concept that cannot be explained in 140 characters, so yes, I'm a fucking Commie. As was Hitler btw.
globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051
First thing I found. But yeah. terrorism is really a big problem. Until recently it wasn't even a problem in Europe until the latest interventions unleashed a brown exodus towards Europe.
20 million people have died for US interests since WW2. Whaaa muh Kuwait!

>For the past 100 years they've been meddling with European and Middle Eastern affairs
Can /pol/ please leave.

What I am saying is: Islamic Terrorism is a scapegoat that replaced the fear of communism which replaced the fear of Nazism.
The victims of Islamic terrorism are very few when compared to the victims of the US and their lapdogs.

>Actually I'm more of a...
You're a fucking commie. "Social Democrats" are just the foot in the door for the eventual revolution.

Pretty sure that the governement did told that it was retaliation for 9/11

My life has never been in danger from rich people. On the other hand terrorism poses a direct threat to my life, and crime from brown people poses a direct threat to my safety.

I have no idea why you insist on talking about the US military and their death toll.

You're the same poster I'm assuming considering this post is again completely incoherent and I have no idea what you are trying to argue.

I am quoting George Friedman of Stratfor
youtube.com/watch?v=NFmfwqzWmHk

How has your life been in danger from muslims or blacks? Are you a poart of the military? Do you live in a ghetto?
And no, is not me.

Oh so it was a scapegoat that shot my friend and left him to bleed out on the floor of a cafe next to his already dead sister.

Here I was under the impression it was a Muslim terrorist...

Yes.

>Until recently it wasn't even a problem in Europe until the latest interventions unleashed a brown exodus towards Europe.
Yes let us completely forget the nearly weekly bombings of night clubs from eastern europeans after the USSR fell.

That's what I meant. You are not able to grasp the concept, why bother.

Yes it has.

Er what? Sauce please? The only club bombing I remember was the La Belle in Berlin which was a club frequented by yankees.

How so, elaborate. "How" is an open question. An answer with just yes or no does not work.

I live in a city that has endured several terrorist attacks and frequent night clubs that have been and are targets for terrorist attacks. I also am at risk of crime, which is disproportionately committed by brown people.

Why do you insist on anecdotal evidence though? Why don't you instead try to refute the facts already before you?

The ETA in Spain would be a big example of constant terrorism but that was mostly in Spain and in the 70s and 80s and other terrorist attacks in Europe were mostly by anarchists and other groups. I may have made too big of a claim there. Either way check the terrorism in Europe wiki.

Which facts? I hear your claims and want to show how much of an emotional thing this is. You personally feel threatened. I get that. How is that worse than the 20 million dead the US have caused since 1945?
The only reason I could half heartedly accept would be that you live in Israel.

I refer you to Daniele Ganser's study about NATO sponsored terrorism. danieleganser.ch/natos_secret_armies_1211363645.html
Even a noticable part of that was "the West's" doing as this study says.

You're again going off on an unrelated tangent, as you try to do in every single post you make.
You claimed that I was at risk from rich people, not from muslim or brown people. I clearly explained why that is nonsense.

Just to reiterate: I DONT GIVE A FUCK about your obsession with the US military and what they do.

>You personally feel threatened.

No, I personally AM threatened. I AM currently at risk. Its not emotional, its factual. I suggest you open the dictionary and look up the definitions of 'risk' and 'threat'.

>going off on an unrelated tangent
Aw man. I'm sorry you don't follow. If you don't give a fuck about what caused the current mess, why bother talking to me.

What a great attempt at diverting away attention from the fact that your original claim was retarded and you got btfo by multiple people.

"Was the Gulf War justified" that's the thread's topic. My answer is still no, none of them. My original claim was showing how the US are responsible for the mess that is the Middle East and islamic terrorism.

Nah mate, your original claim we were discussing was:

>Why don't people wake up and notice that the conflict is rich vs. poor and not christian vs. muslims or brown vs. white?

and you bloody well know it. Since you've given up all pretense at this point, I'm going to stop replying.

>My original claim was showing how the US are responsible for the mess that is the Middle East and islamic terrorism.

How very condescending to claim that these people can not act or think for themselves.

If that's what triggered you in this thread so be it. My original post in this thread is here:

the only justification anglos are giving is that it was fun. Further arguments with them are pointless. It would be much more fruitful to post information guys.