In lay-person's terms, can anyone help to explain the US's interests in Iraq, which is keeping us at war?

Question

Although I definitely support our troops overseas, regardless of the cause, I still find keeping up with the political state of the union very confusing.

Why are we still in Iraq? What are our interests there and why don't we let the Iraqis solve their turmoil internally?

Answer 1

It's called "OIL". Millions are being made by people close to the Bush administration in dealing with the oil and military supplies that is costing billions to the American tax payers. Bush had plans over 6 years ago to get the oil in Iraq and his war was a way to get it. Many reasons for his war in the first place but I won't go into that at this time as I would run out of memory.

Answer 2

The U.S. and its allies are filling a vacuum until the Iraqis can take care of themselves. The U.S. has trained about 500,000 Iraqis for police and military duty, but they die or flake off (as in just show up to collect their checks) and so more have to be trained. It takes about 6 months to train those guys and they only had like 10,000 instructors. Also those guys have to be equipted and that's been slow as everything has to be imported from the U.S. or captured from the enemy.

Iraq isn't like a modern country. It's a very feudal system. The U.S. is just trying to get it up to speed. It doesn't help that the population of Saudia Arabia, Syria and Jordan is backing the Sunni resistance and Iran is backing the Shitte resistance.

It's only been 3 3/4 years since the start of the invasion. It took 9 years to get Japan and half of Germany up to speed after WWII (plus 3 years of fighting them). The Reconstruction after the American Civil War took a long time too (and there were church bombings and lynchings in the 1960s that were related to the Civil War) .

Answer 3

Oil, the Black Gold of the Middle East is the primary motivator for supporting the backstabbers! Very few of the United Nations member countries ever votes in favor of the United States, even though we give them billions of American Taxpayers money! Most of them are dictatorships. How's that for diplomacy? I'm all for alternatives to oil: Bring Back the Star Wars Program and increase wind and solar power. That should help fix that problem!

Answer 4

Okay, here's where it started: The Iraqi leadership had enough wealth(they took it from their own ) to come to the US and mess around. It was no secret that they ruled out of fear, they were a dictatorship. We knew about them for years. You don't quietly behead your subjects in public. You draw attention. Then they grab up all the American currency and bonds they can get.Then you threaten Kuwait(our ally). While we are after terrorists, why would we stop?

Answer 5

The protection of the Iraq people, If we moved out, Iran or Syria would move in to take over.

We also need bases in the Middle East.

We are there to help the Iraq people gain control over thier own government

And we are helping them solve thier own problems,
(alot of which is Iran and Syria)

Answer 6

Ok.

First it has nothing to do with oil. Anyone who says that shows that they don't know what they are talking about.

Second, it's Bush's attempt at winning the War on Terror.

Lots of people don't understand the War on Terror. It didn't start on Sept. 11th, and it's not the sort of thing we can just fight and win and go home, like WW2 was. It is more like The Cold War. Iraq and Afganistan are just small parts of a much larger effort.

The Cold War lasted from 1945 to 1989, and it had many fronts. The wars in Vietnam and Korea were not separate wars, they were just parts of the BIG Cold War against the USSR. The Cold War wasn't just military either, it was also economic, political, and scientific. The Apollo Moonlandings, the Missile and Arms race, NATO, the SALT and START treaties, The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua and Angola and Rhodesia were all part of the Big Cold War.

Similarly Iraq, Afghanistan, and 9/11 are just small parts of this war against the Islamic terrorists. So is what happened in Somalia during Black Hawk Down, so is what happens in Israel and Lebanon and Sudan and the Iranian nuclear program and the war Ethiopia is fighiting against Somalia as I type this. It's economic, its political, its technological, and it won't be over any time soon.

What Bush got right was that Afghanistan was just part of this new Jihad. The plan was to take out Afghanistan first because that is where Al Queda was hiding, but just taking out Afghanistan wasn't going to be enough to win this thing for us. Bush knew he had to take out "The Axis of Evil" because he knew that sooner or later one of these terrorists was going to get a nuke and use it on an American city. It might happen next year, it might happen 10 years from now, it might happen 100 years from now, it might happen next Tuesday, there is no way to know; but what IS sure is that these guys wern't going to stop trying till they pulled it off, no matter how long it takes.

So Bush hit Iraq. I think the plan was/is to into Iraq and make it into something like what West Berlin was back during the Cold War. Make it into a wealthy, free, and safe society; a tollerant liberal democracy with oodles and oodles of oil money. The plan was that the Syrians and the Iranians and the other Arabs would look at this and say "I want to live like that!!" then they would overthrow their backwards screwed up governments for us, sort of like the way the Poles, Hungarians, Russians, Ukrainians, and Romanians overthrew their messed up governments in 1989. We took down the USSR without having to ever DIRECTLY fight them, Bush wanted to do the same to the terrorists and their supporters.

The thing is, Bush and Rumsfled's strategy relied upon the Iraqis acting just like the Poles, Germans, and Hugarians would. THAT is where they were wrong.

The Islamic Culture is very different from the Judeo-Christian culture in the West. Arabs think DIFFERENTLY. They don't think worse or better than Westerners do, just DIFFERENT, because they come from a different culture and they have VERY different values. The UN wrote a report a couple of years ago, and they (the UN) said that more books are translated into Spanish in one year than have been translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years. How can you expect the Iraqis to act like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington if they have never read about them, don't understand even their ideas, or know who they are?

Bush thought that Iraq was screwed up because Saddam was in charge. He was wrong. Saddam was in charge because Iraq was screwed up to begin with. The Arabs aren't stupid. Most of the Islamic world is still run by kings or dictators. These leaders know that when France started talking about Freedom and Rights and Equality the French had a revolution and their King got his head cut off. They don't want that to happen to them, so they supress talk of freedom and rights and independent thought, and tell everyone to just read the Koran and don't disagree with it. Don't laugh, the European kings are either dead or powerless, but in most of the Arab world kings, or dictators or "President for Life" are still in charge.

The reason we are still there is that the Iraqis won't solve their turmoil internally. Our plan was that they would work together to solve their problems; because that is what WE would do; but like I said they don't think like we do. (Example, who thought the Iraqis would loot their own national museum, clean it out, and try to sell all the artifacts? We didn't prepare for that because nobody though they would do that.)

If we pull out now, Iran will move in and take over, and we want to make Iran WEAKER not stronger, what with them promising to nuke Israel.

There was a lot of talk about spliting Iraq up into three parts, so that the folks who don't get along with each other wouldn't have to get along with each other. This could really work well because the Kurds in the north are running a pretty peaceful and profitable state. The problem is there are lots of Kurds in Turkey, and if the Iraqi Kurds get their own country the Kurds in Turkey will want to break away from Turkey and join Kurdistan. The Turks don't want to give up a big chunk of their country to Kurdistan, so if Kurdistan becomes independent they will attack it within 24 hours. Since both the Turks and the Kurds are technically our allies that would mean that no matter who won we would be selling one of our allies down the river, and we don't want to do that.

So we are stuck. Rumsfled's mistake was to base our strategy on something we can't control, the Iraqis working together. There is no sign of them doing that anytime soon, but we can't pull out and let the Iranians and the terrorists take over either. We let them chase us out of Somalia and that just encouraged them.

So that is why we are still there. Hope this made sense.

Answer 7

We are trying to get the Country Democratic, and break the Religious ruler...

Instead of a Theocracy...(Religious rule), we want it to become Democratic, (like us), so that the other Nations may follow suit and revolt against thier Leaders, because they see it will be better for them.

I wish you well..

Jesse

Answer 8

Welp, its like this. We is intrested in Irak cause they support johhny kerry the coward, and all his ilk.

Weez are fightin for freedum frum swiff boat scumbags.

Hab a merrie xmas

Answer 9

we are there to protect oil interests, but it is also a strategic position for troops in the continuing cold war with China

Answer 10

reason number one is oil. reason number 2 is if terrorists want to kill a abunch of Americans all they have to do is go to Iraq