Comments by "Yo2" (@yo2trader539) on "Iraq War Veterans, 20 Years Later: ‘I Don’t Know How to Explain the War to Myself’ | Op-Docs" video.

  1. I fear way too much propaganda--like duty or honour or right vs wrong--is directed towards Americans when it comes to military affairs. It's just war. Someone high up decided it's in US national interests to remove Saddam. No different from Panama or Libya. The primary role of the US military is to serve US interests. Nothing more, nothing less. Militaries rarely get to decide when, where, why, how or with whom to fight.
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  2. It's not a soldier's job to feel. You go wherever you're ordered to go, fight with whomever you're ordered to fight, and disengage whenever your ordered to do so. "Freedom and Democracy" are slogans for recruitment, and justifications for military actions designed to serve national interests. US involvement with Iraq goes back before the Iranian Revolution. And after the Iranian Revolution, the United States backed and supported the Iraqi regime to counter the Iranians. (Tehran was the hub of all US intelligence, political, and economic operations in the middle-east until 1979.) You and many others were sent to Iraq to restore a regime that deviated from US interests. Hussein (and Noriega of Panama) were US puppets that no longer listened to the US, and needed to be replaced. If you were under the assumption that "Freedom and Democracy" is a sufficient reason why the US would spend billions and trillions to go to war....then you were misled. Modern borders of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc after WWI had everything to do with oil interests, which was the single most important commodity in 20th century. It shaped all relations with Iraq, Iran, Saudi etc.
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