A lot to ask for I know. Ive more or less avoided the subject fearing I would categorize events into false dichotomies. E.g. “Saddam Hussein was based” or vice versa.

There are a lot of historical “facts” that float around which sound like fabricated propaganda. E.g. Saddam used chemical weapons. Which echos of the completely unsubstantiated claims about Assad (https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/). But the USA admits they backed him and more or less supplied chemical weapons so…?

-did Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons?

-how responsible was the USA for the use of chemical weapons?

-how (un)justified was the war, or was it more or less inevitable?

-anything else one should know

What are some good resources?

Also what are some other resources that lay out the different ethnic/religious groups and those conflicts. Like druze, alawhite, shia vs sunni and the situation in Rojava.

Which (if any) religious groups are the “” bad/weird"" ones like Mormons, Protestant vs Catholic. Or is that an unfair comparison.

  • Malkhodr @lemmygrad.ml
    9·
    21 days ago

    I come from Iranian ancestry, so I’m going to provide a biased answer. First, the invasion itself was the western imperialist powers attempting to use a local proxy to destroy/kneecap the new Iranian revolutionary government. Although not communist, the Iranian revolution was a shift towards the sovereignty of Iran and a break with imperialism. The US, having lost their puppet dictator, wanted to reinstall the shah or at least kneecap the burgeoning Islamic Republic, and decided to use Sadaam, who wanted to claim Ahwaz (a southern Iranian territory with a large Arab minority) for Arab nationalist reasons and because the popular revolution in Iran threatened his own power due to the Shockwave it sent through the Shia Muslim community.

    It was also done to weaken Iraq after letting them rot once the war was done and their economy was sabotaged. Both countries would leave the conflict battered and with an economy that was more desperate overall, directly leading to Sadaam’s invasion of Kuwait years later.

    On the topic of chemical weapons, Sadaam undeniably used them, many Iranians who suffered from them are still alive to tell you. Multiple of my own family members had been on different fronts of the war, and others can tell the tale of hearing the air sirens. Sadaam obtained the chemical weapons from West Germany at the time with the explicit approval of the US.

    The thing that really cements the US approval of the invasion is how the US constantly sheilded Iraq in the UN during the 8 years of war. They did the same thing with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia when Vietnam fought to dislodge them for 10 years.

    I’d argue the war was far from inevitable and it was a massive mistake on the part of Sadaam. It probably left the wound most responsible for crippling Ba’athist Iraq for the years to come after. Mind you, I think Iran was also at fault in the aspect of continuing the war for the entire 8 years. I don’t think that was necessary, as the Iranians had managed to completely liberate their territory relatively soon after about 2 years I believe. Continuing the war in an attempt to take territory or force out the government in Iraq was not a good decision by Khomeini in my opinion, as it crippled both countries for decades and left a massive rift between the two countries.

    This is the most I’m willing to say, there’s some more I could say about the political struggle in Iran with respect to the war, but I don’t want to go on to long (I’m quite tired rn).

  • Cletus@lemmygrad.mlOP
    5·
    22 days ago

    About once a month I get a sudden urge of motivation to engage with some form of religion/psychology/ philosophy but it passes before I explore it much. Idk if one should foster that desire or to ignore it. Bozo gotta read more Lenin perhaps.

    “Yooo I wonder what Taoism is all about that sounds cool”

    “Jung seems to have some interesting insight. I wanna read Jung to own the mainstream psychology libs”

    “Yoo Malcolm X, and Muhammed Ali were dope af, I should explore Islam”