How To (Not) Win Iraqi Hearts and Minds

[Perknose]

This video from around 2008 epitomizes so much of what was wrong with our arrogant and ignorant Crusader Neocon invasion of Iraq.

The soldier addressing these Iraqi police recruits is a know-nothing ignoramus. So, of course, he got to give this address.

Of course, there is a significant group of posters here who will view this video and take the complete opposite view. This makes the Baby Jesus cry.

 

[Genx87]

We did far worse things than this to not win the hearts and minds of Iraq.

 

[Perknose]

We did far worse things than this to not win the hearts and minds of Iraq.

Yes, yes, yes we did. But here "we" are in this vid, some years after most of our worst was committed, letting this ignorant junior officer speak for the United States of America.

Fucking pathetic.

 

[Genx87]

Yes, yes, yes we did. But here "we" are in this vid, some years after most of our worst was committed, letting this ignorant junior officer speak for the United States of America.

Fucking pathetic.

It is pathetic. And the reason why we shouldn't have our military building or destroying nations. We end up with some guy who is sick of being shot at pushing policy in Iraq. His frustration make an already hard job impossible. He was prophetic in one way. 6 years later Sunni lead ISIS is now coming to lop off their heads.

 

[Atreus21]

arrogant and ignorant Crusader Neocon invasion of Iraq

Just a darn minute.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/381242/looking-back-iraq-victor-davis-hanson

Do we remember that Bill Clinton signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 that supported regime change in Iraq? He gave an eloquent speech on the dangers of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

In 2002, both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution authorizing the removal of Saddam Hussein by force. Senators such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Harry Reid offered moving arguments on the Senate floor why we should depose Saddam in a post-9/11 climate.

Democratic stalwarts such as Senator Jay Rockefeller and Representative Nancy Pelosi lectured us about the dangers of Saddam’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. They drew on the same classified domestic- and foreign-intelligence reports that had led Bush to call for Saddam’s forcible removal.

The Bush administration, like members of Congress, underestimated the costs of the war and erred in focusing almost exclusively on Saddam’s supposed stockpiles of weapons. But otherwise, the war was legally authorized on 23 writs. Most of them had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and were unaffected by the later mysterious absence of such weapons — which is all the more mysterious given that troves of WMD have turned up in nearby Syria and more recently in Iraqi bunkers overrun by Islamic militants.

Legally, the U.S. went to war against Saddam because he had done things such as committing genocide against the Kurds, Shiites, and the Marsh Arabs, and attacking four of his neighbors. He had tried to arrange the assassination of a former U.S. president, George H. W. Bush. He had paid bounties for suicide bombers on the West Bank and was harboring the worst of global terrorists. Saddam also offered refuge to at least one of the architects of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and violated U.N.-authorized no-fly zones.

A number of prominent columnists, Right and Left — from George Will, David Brooks, and William F. Buckley to Fareed Zakaria, David Ignatius, and Thomas Friedman — supported Saddam’s forcible removal. When his statue fell in 2003, most polls showed that over 70 percent of Americans agreed with the war.

 

[Oldgamer]

We did far worse things than this to not win the hearts and minds of Iraq.

Yep, shit just look at what the Blackwater mercenaries did.. killed a shit ton of their innocent people and children.

 

[squarecut1]

Nobody went to Iraq to win hearts and minds. Those kind of phrases are for media consumption only

 

[waggy]

This video from around 2008 epitomizes so much of what was wrong with our arrogant and ignorant Crusader Neocon invasion of Iraq.

The soldier addressing these Iraqi police recruits is a know-nothing ignoramus. So, of course, he got to give this address.

Of course, there is a significant group of posters here who will view this video and take the complete opposite view. This makes the Baby Jesus cry.

know-nothing ignoramus? i think not.

Though his knowledge why he shouldn't be the one talking to the recruits. Though i suspect nobody and nothing would have helped. its ure seems the people of iraq are ok with how it is.

 

[xBiffx]

Honestly not seeing the issue with the video except that the soldier is a huge prick and needs to brush up on his motivational speaking.

 

[Vaux]

This video from around 2008 epitomizes so much of what was wrong with our arrogant and ignorant Crusader Neocon invasion of Iraq.

The soldier addressing these Iraqi police recruits is a know-nothing ignoramus. So, of course, he got to give this address.

Of course, there is a significant group of posters here who will view this video and take the complete opposite view. This makes the Baby Jesus cry.

I'll make baby jesus cry. I don't have a problem with that video at all. Those dumb asses are too chicken shit to fight for their own county. Get your ass out there and make a difference. Those idiots are part of the reason why their country is falling apart right now.

 

[Newell Steamer]

Because bombing weddings, shooting at random cars and running over civilians didn't piss them off already?

125,534 civilian deaths don't help either,... https://www.iraqbodycount.org/

 

[Perknose]

I'll make baby jesus cry. I don't have a problem with that video at all. Those dumb asses are too chicken shit to fight for their own county. Get your ass out there and make a difference. Those idiots are part of the reason why their country is falling apart right now.

The smug, wholesale ignorance contained in your reply didn't make the Baby J cry. Instead he just threw up in his mouth a little.

Too chicken shit to fight for their own country? WTF are you talking about? Some of those recruits are Sunnis. They most certainly don't want to give their lives for the Shia sectarian Nori Al Mailiki (sic_ regime. Others are more radical Shias. They also don't give a rat's ass about the Al Maliki (sic) regime.

The bulk of the rest have loyalty principally to their tribe or their local sheik, and most all of any stripe simply needed a job!

The IGNORANT MYTH that you buy wholesale is that the Iraqi army as presently constituted is some long-standing national army representing some nearly mythical national state.

Educate yourself, good sir.

The one thing ALL of those recruits have in common? They're Muslims, and don't much like or trust American Christians who came in and bombed the hell out of their country.

They see US as the true enemy. They see US, and any Iraqi who helped us, as traitorous criminals quislings.

 

[Zebo]

Ignorant? naw man he's beginning to understand perfectly after being in country there is no such thing as an "iraqi". The very phrase "the Iraqi people" - a phrase much used by Americans who never set foot in country - is a misnomer. Hiding a reality where loyalty is owed, locally, at the family and tribal level, or the most generous case, the same sectarian and ethnic group, but not to the nation-state. He's understandably frustrated being from an army and society in which country comes first.

 

[Orignal Earl]

Ignorant? naw man he's beginning to understand perfectly after being in country there is no such thing as an "iraqi". The very phrase "the Iraqi people" - a phrase much used by Americans who never set foot in country - is a misnomer. Hiding a reality where loyalty is owed, locally, at the family and tribal level, or the most generous case, the same sectarian and ethnic group, but not to the nation-state. He's understandably frustrated being from an army and society in which country comes first.

Because everyone here supports Obama, since he is president, and everyone would gladly gladly give up their family and local church members if the state said so

 

[OutHouse]

considering the stellar performance the Iraqi police and military did when ISIS started their rampage, calling pussies and chicken shits is just about par for the course.

i see nothing wrong with this video.

 

[Nebor]

Heh, we used to play this in the Advisor Academy as an example of what not to do. A tirade like this in front of Pashtos would almost certainly lead to a green on blue attack. Fortunately the Iraqis were a little less prideful and less prone to such betrayals.

That video is still a head shaker.

 

[Orignal Earl]

considering the stellar performance the Iraqi police and military did when ISIS started their rampage, calling pussies and chicken shits is just about par for the course.

i see nothing wrong with this video.

Let's say America fired all the police and military.
Then they recruited accountants and drive though operators to replace them
Then groups made up of the old police and military started to attack.

Of course that's simplifying the issue going on in Iraq now, but a general idea in regards to your statement about chicken shits

 

[Mani]

That soldier is an idiot. "I think a few of you may have loyalties to the militia, so I'm going to denigrate all of you". Hearts and minds.

 

[Whiskey16]

The smug, wholesale ignorance contained in your reply didn't make the Baby J cry. Instead he just threw up in his mouth a little.

Too chicken shit to fight for their own country? WTF are you talking about? Some of those recruits are Sunnis. They most certainly don't want to give their lives for the Shia sectarian Nori Al Mailiki (sic_ regime. Others are more radical Shias. They also don't give a rat's ass about the Al Maliki (sic) regime.

The bulk of the rest have loyalty principally to their tribe or their local sheik, and most all of any stripe simply needed a job!

The IGNORANT MYTH that you buy wholesale is that the Iraqi army as presently constituted is some long-standing national army representing some nearly mythical national state.

Educate yourself, good sir.

The one thing ALL of those recruits have in common? They're Muslims, and don't much like or trust American Christians who came in and bombed the hell out of their country.

They see US as the true enemy. They see US, and any Iraqi who helped us, as traitorous criminals quislings.

Thank you, Perknose. Very well said.