{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "3 things to understand about Iraq War I that make Iraq War II make sense 1) it was the apex of Reagan\u2019s renormalization of war...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/174330277493/", "html": "<h2>3 things to understand about Iraq War I that make Iraq War II make sense</h2><p>1) it was the apex of Reagan\u2019s renormalization of war after Vietnam</p><p>They called it curing the Vietnam Syndrome. Started small - Granada, which proved you couldn\u2019t salami-slice us in the Caribbean, all the South American stuff that flew as \u201cthe Drug War\u201d and was largely using our lessons-of-Nam (F-teen fighters, look-down AWACS and SIGINT, in-country trainers who know the local ways\u2026) to reassert the Monroe Doctrine</p><p>Panama! You know Ronald Reagan made his foreign-policy name before presidency by denouncing the treaty that turned control of the canal over to the country we\u2019d set up as a convenient fiction. It was like when Egypt claimed the Suez canal to choke off (with American subtle moneyman backing) the French and British empires! But we were doing it for free, for what, to sooth Jimmy Carter\u2019s soul?</p><p>We didn\u2019t even go to war, we arrested the head of state and put him in US prison. Who\u2019s a convenient fiction? Who\u2019s a convenient fiction still?</p><p>2) The Dems, especially the \u201cWatergate class\u201d of Nixon-backlash Democrats were ferociously opposed to Iraq I in large part because they saw 1). They warned of it like people warned of Iraq II - endless tarbaby trap that alienates everyone, flag-draped coffins, etc. The Republicans stuck by their pres and a segment of the newer, more professional, technocratic, post-hippie Atari Democrats backed it, incl. especially Al Gore</p><p>3) The war was a riotous success, international backing (we had tried to pretend the UN mattered for a decade after WWII before the Cold War took off, but it was social democratic bullshit and we (probably) had to shoot down Dag Hammarskjold\u2019s plane when he threatened to take the equal sovereignty of post-colonial African states seriously, we tried again for another decade AFTER the Cold War), a quick in and out victory. The \u201cHighway of Death\u201d turkey shoot and all where we proved Air Power Can Too Win A War By Itself mightve been a pretext to war-crimes us but we won and were the only country that could project power a foot off its doorstop against opposition so</p>"}