• @OneCardboardBox
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        1 year ago

        It was pretty avoidable if US diplomats had told Hussein that America would intervene if he invaded Kuwait. Instead, April Glaspie told him:

        We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Glaspie#Meetings_with_Saddam_Hussein

        This meeting took place a week before the invasion.

          • @OneCardboardBox
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            51 year ago

            No, but if America told Iraq not to fuck with Kuwait, then they might never have invaded at all. Then Saddam wouldn’t have attacked the Kurds for helping us during the invasion.

            Not to mention how we bravely stood by and let him use mustard gas on Kurdish civilians after they helped us.

            We might have avoided a lot of death and destruction by being more assertive before the invasion started. I don’t think it’s as simple as calling our intervention based if our mishandled foreign policy caused the invasion to happen in the first place. Like, yeah it was good that we did one thing right, but we did things wrong that made the situation bad in the first place.

              • @OneCardboardBox
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                1 year ago

                Where did I even say America was imperialist? This isn’t hexbear. Nuance is allowed.

                Giving Saddam the idea that invading Kuwait was OK is absolutely a mistake. Independent of any other fact.

    • @Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It would’ve been so if they invaded Pakistan, which is were Bin Laden was.

      Strangelly, the “world police” not only knocked down the door and invaded the wrong house, but they stayed in the wrong house for years knowing he wasn’t there and refused to go right next door which they they knew was the house were the perp was located.

      It’s almost as if the “arrest warrant” thing was nothing more than a shallow excuse and the real reasons were very different.

      • @bemenaker@lemmy.world
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        121 year ago

        That is some piss poor revisionist history, that is 100% WRONG. Bin Laden was in Afghanistan when 9/11 happened. He had been operating in Afghanistan for 15 years or more. When several bombing attacks on US Embassies in Africa in the late 90s happened, he was in Afghanistan. When the USS Cole was bombed, Bin Laden was in Afghanistan. The Taliban gave open refuge to Bin Laden for almost two decades. Bin Laden escaped the battle of Tora Bora, and fled into Pakistan. He then hid in Pakistan until he was killed later. And yes half of the Pakistani government was complicit in his hiding there, but Bin Laden and Al Qaeda did not operate out of Pakistan until after they were pushed back out of Afghanistan. Just about every single thing you said is false.

        Iraq, that was a total and complete farce that many of us were against from the start.

    • @Madison420@lemmy.world
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      -21 year ago

      No it wasn’t, it is clearer and clearer day by day that we knew from the start Osama was not in Afghanistan but rather at the Pakistan border.