Wars And Battles

"Just as in Pakistan, where Zia had to repeatedly, continuously subjugate critics with violence to stay on top, so Hezbollah would have to repeatedly beat down opponents. In July 1990, just months before the official end of the war in Lebanon, thousands demonstrated in Tyre. “We want to speak the truth!” they chanted. “We don’t want to see any Iranians!” Lebanese Shia clerics called for the end of the “Iranian invasion” and the departure of the Revolutionary Guards who had come to the Beqaa Valley after the 1982 Israeli invasion and still maintained a presence. But the Guards could in fact leave; Hezbollah, their local affiliate, was in place. And by allowing Assad to send troops into Lebanon, America had unwittingly provided a way for his ally Iran to maintain its foothold on the Mediterranean. The black wave from Iran would not recede."

"The invasion of Kuwait ushered in another geopolitical change in the Middle East. As President George H. W. Bush put together the largest possible military coalition, he was eager to involve as many Arab participants as possible, including Syria. Hafez al-Assad agreed to participate. In exchange, in a quid pro quo that was never explicitly stated, the United States turned a blind eye when Syrian troops invaded the Christian areas that had remained outside their control in Lebanon, on October 13, 1990. The Syrian tanks silenced everyone’s guns and imposed the Pax Syriana. Alliances and proxies had shifted over the course of the war in Lebanon. Syria had invaded several times and was in control of dominantly Muslim areas of the country and West Beirut. The Palestinian Liberation Organization was gone; the Palestinian refugees were still there. Christians had slaughtered one another. Israel still occupied large parts of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah’s rise had continued, and its ruthless campaign to eliminate intellectual opponents within the community had reached Beirut, claiming the lives of well-known writers and journalists. One of the most prominent, Hussein Mrouweh, was shot dead at home on his sickbed. The power of ideas was simply too much for Hezbollah to bear. And still the critics were not silenced. They never would be."

"Satellite reconnaissance and other intelligence breakthroughs also contributed to the obsolescence of major wars by diminishing the possibility of surprise in starting them, and by eliminating opportunities for concealment in waging them. Surprises could still happen, like Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990, but only because the interpretation of intelligence failed, not its collection. Once the liberation of that country began early in 1991, Saddam Hussein found his military deployments so visible, and therefore so exposed to attack, that he had no choice but to withdraw. Transparency—a by-product of the Cold War strategic arms race—created a wholly new environment that rewarded those who sought to prevent wars and discouraged those who tried to begin them."

"We are now an empire, and when we act, we create our own reality. A reality that you observers study, and on which we then create other realities that you will study again." An arrogant absurdity, of course: but eight years earlier, the philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard had argued that the Gulf War was nothing more than television fiction. (p. 23)"

"Europe is an economic giant, a political dwarf, and a military worm."

"British and US forces fired about 320 tonnes of depleted uranium munitions in the 1991 Gulf war and may have used up to 2000 tonnes in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Because of its extreme density it is used to make the tips of armour piercing shells. Reports from southern Iraq have documented a steep rise in the incidence of cancers since the 1990s, especially cases in children."

"Because if we had gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over and took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq, you could easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have, the west. Part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim. Fought over for eight years. In the north, you've got the Kurds. And if the Kurds spin loose and join with Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. The other thing is casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had, but for the 146 Americans killed in action and for the families it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein was, how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? And our judgment was not very many, and I think we got it right."

"Whose life would be on my hands as the commander-in-chief because I, unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the stated mission, and said we're going to show our macho? We're going into Baghdad. We're going to be an occupying power — America in an Arab land — with no allies at our side. It would have been disastrous. We don't gain the size of our victory by how many innocent kids running away — even though they're bad guys — that we can slaughter. … We're American soldiers; we don't do business that way."

"Tonight in Iraq, Saddam walks amidst ruin. His war machine is crushed. His ability to threaten mass destruction is itself destroyed."

"A very different demonstration of military power was provided in February 1991 when Iraq was driven from Kuwait in a swift campaign by an American-led coalition. In this conflict, the Americans used their post-Vietnam weapon systems, including the Blackhawk helicopter introduced in 1979; the M1A1 Abrams tank, deployed from 1980; the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, designed to carry a squad of infantry and armed with a TOW (tube-launched, optically tracked, wire command data link) missile system, introduced in 1981; and the Apache attack helicopter, equipped with radar and Hellfire missiles, introduced in 1986. The Americans also employed airplane stealth technology. The use of Cold War assets involved the new grasp and employment of the operational dimension of war, a grasp that had developed with the doctrine, planning and training of the 1980s as the Americans enhanced their capability to fight the Soviets without having to make an automatic resort to atomic weaponry. About half the Iraqi army was rapidly destroyed."

"A Texas firefighting team today extinguished the first of 500 oil-well fires set by Iraqi troops and declared a "small victory" that could mark a turning point in the operation. The team from a Houston-based company, Boots & Coots, using liquid nitrogen and water, put out a relatively small fire on its second attempt this morning. "I think it's very important," Boots Hansen, the boss of the firefighting team, said of the achievement. He said the method -- injecting nitrogen into the fire through a large cylinder attached to a giant bulldozer while spraying water at the base of the cylinder -- was less time-consuming than other methods, like the use of dynamite. "It's a small victory," said Larry Flak, a Houston oil engineer coordinating the entire firefighting effort. "Now we can go from well to well to well without a lot of rigging up or preparation." Mr. Hansen estimated that the nitrogen method, which deprives the fire of needed oxygen, could probably be used on half the fires set by the Iraqis late in February, before allied ground troops drove them from Kuwait."

"Has the Mexican War terminated yet, and how? Are we beaten? Do you know of any nation about to besiege South Hadley? If so, do inform me of it, for I would be glad of a chance to escape, if we are to be stormed. I suppose [our teacher] Miss Lyon would furnish us all with daggers and order us to fight for our lives."

"Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit... Military glory,—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood."

"Having lived in Texas as a youth I had been accused of murder several times and been forced to study Texas history, I thought I knew the story of its admission to the Union pretty well. But I never knew the profound importance of race to that history. In particular, I did not know that Mexico had abolished slavery and that this was a key reason for the war for Texas independence. The Texans were determined to keep their slaves and were willing to fight to the death for that right. And of course, the admission of Texas as a state was critical to the maintenance of slavery in the United States, which was threatened both economically and politically in the 1840s."

"It’s been well said—and by many people in many circumstances—that whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. These people in the Deep South were mad because they could have elected Douglas, and Douglas would have given them everything they wanted—everything that they wanted that was consistent with his election in the free states... Douglas was a radical expansionist. Both parts of the Democratic Party in 1860 called for the annexation of Cuba. And there were 100,000 slaves in Cuba, and Cuba was the place that slaves were still being brought from Africa and then resold in the United States. So under a Douglas presidency, we would have taken over the rest of Mexico and Central America whenever we had the resources and the appetite to take to do so. You can be sure that most of the Mexicans would have either been reduced to peonage or to slavery. In the Mexican War itself, in case you don't know it, we appropriated 60 percent of the land area of Mexico as it was then defined through the Spanish Conquest. So we increased the size of the United States by 40 percent and reduced Mexico by 60 percent."

"The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times."

"Generally, the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day, regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory."

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us" but he will say to you, "Be silent; I see it, if you don't."The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood."

"When I was in London, talking with Lord Beaconsfield, he spoke of Mexico. He said he wished to heaven we had taken the country, that England would not like anything better than to see the United States annex it. I suppose that will be the future of the country. Now that slavery is out of the way there could be no better future for Mexico than absorption in the United States. But it would have to come, as San Domingo tried to come, by the free will of the people. I would not fire a gun to annex territory. I consider it too great a privilege to belong to the United States for us to go around gunning for new territories. Then the question of annexation means the question of suffrage, and that becomes more and more serious every day with us. That is one of the grave problems of our future."

"With a soldier the flag is paramount. I know the struggle with my conscience during the Mexican War. I have never altogether forgiven myself for going into that. I had very strong opinions on the subject. I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign. I had taken an oath to serve eight years, unless sooner discharged, and I considered my supreme duty was to my flag. I had a horror of the Mexican War, and I have always believed that it was on our part most unjust. The wickedness was not in the way our soldiers conducted it, but in the conduct of our government in declaring war. The troops behaved well in Mexico, and the government acted handsomely about the peace. We had no claim on Mexico. Texas had no claim beyond the Nueces River, and yet we pushed on to the Rio Grande and crossed it. I am always ashamed of my country when I think of that invasion. Once in Mexico, however, and the people, those who had property, were our friends. We could have held Mexico, and made it a permanent section of the Union with the consent of all classes whose consent was worth having. Overtures were made to Scott and Worth to remain in the country with their armies."

"The Mexicans were badly commanded, and there was very little hard fighting during that war, at least nothing to be compared with what was seen afterward in our own. Our soldiers had only to show the bayonet at the Mexicans and they would run. As to the bowie-knife, I do not think one was used during the war. It was a pity to see good troops used as the Mexican soldiers were in those campaigns. I do not think a more incompetent set of officers ever existed than those who commanded the Mexicans. With an able general the Mexicans would make a good fight, for they are a courageous people. But I do not suppose any war was ever fought with reference to which so many romances were invented as the war in Mexico."

"After the United States gobbled up California and half of Mexico, and we were stripped down to nothing, territorial expansion suddenly becomes a crime. It's been going on for centuries, and it will still go on."

"The United States will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic, which brings him down in turn. Mexico will poison us."

"Charge of inferiority is an old dodge. It has been made available for oppression on many occasions. It is only about six centuries since the blue-eyed and fair-haired Anglo Saxons were considered inferior by the haughty Normans, who once trampled upon them. If you read the history of the Norman Conquest, you will find that this proud Anglo-Saxon was once looked upon as of coarser clay than his Norman master, and might be found in the highways and byways of Old England laboring with a brass collar on his neck, and the name of his master marked upon it were down then! You are up now. I am glad you are up, and I want you to be glad to help us up also... The story of our inferiority is an old dodge, as I have said; for wherever men oppress their fellows, wherever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved. When we wanted, a few years ago, a slice of Mexico, it was hinted that the Mexicans were an inferior race, that the old Castilian blood had become so weak that it would scarcely run down hill, and that Mexico needed the long, strong and beneficent arm of the Anglo-Saxon care extended over it. We said that it was necessary to its salvation, and a part of the 'manifest destiny' of this Republic, to extend our arm over that dilapidated government."

"You will tremble at my voice: Grunwald, swords, King Jagiełło! Armors were hacked while wind blew and howled; piles of corpses, piles of bodies, and a river of blood flowed! It is there!!..."

"And the Polish units, abandoning a hesitation which delayed them, threw themselves with many regiments at the enemy, who were positioned in sixteen regiments, in which found refuge also those who had suffered defeat under other banners, and the Poles waged a mortal battle against them. And although the enemies put up a resistance for some time, ultimately, surrounded by great numbers of the king's army, they were put to the sword and virtually all units fighting in the sixteen regiments either perished or were taken prisoner. After defeating and crushing the enemy's army, during which – as it is known – Grand Master Ulryk, marechals, commanders and all the more prominent knights and lords of the Prussian army perished, the remaining crowd of enemies beat a retreat and once they turned tail they began to run away with determination."

"When the emissary of Your Majesty, Oneš of Hurka, brought the definite news of victory and the praiseworthy armistice, it caused me great joy in my heart, which no pen can describe nor my voice express as is fitting. (...) Where, then, are the two swords of the enemies? They were indeed cut down with those swords with which they tried to terrify the humble! Behold, they sent you two swords, the swords of violence and of pride, and have lost many thousands of them, having been utterly defeated. Where are the swords, where the caparisoned horses, where the mail-clad warriors in whom they trusted? Where are the innumerable ducats or treasures?"

"To arms! Fight the Germans wherever you encounter them! Assault their transports, provide information, aid Polish and Soviet soldiers! On liberated territories, fulfill mobilization orders and enlist for the Polish Armed Forces, which will avenge the September defeat and, together with the armies of Allied Nations, will deal the Germans another Grunwald!"

"The most portentous national disaster was not the sad downfall of the Hohenstauffens owing to the intrigues of Papal and French policy, but the defeat of Tannenberg, which resulted in the loss of a large portion of the colonisation work of centuries, and the cession to the Poles of West Prussia and Danzig, and which put an end to the proud independence of the State of the German Order of Knighthood. (...) It may be questioned whether, had it not been for the black day of Tannenberg, the State of the Order of Knighthood would have been able to keep the East permanently German, in defiance of the superior power of Poland."

"The battle turned into carnage and pursuit. Those who refused to surrender, died. There had been many battles and engagements in those times across the world, but none of those alive remembered a devastation so terrible. At the great king's feet fell not only the Teutonic Order, but all of Germany, whose foremost knights supported the Teutonic avant-garde that was biting deeper and deeper into the Slavic flesh. Out of seven hundred "white cloaks" leading this Germanic deluge, only fifteen survived. More than forty thousand bodies lay in eternal sleep in this blood-soaked field."

"Hostilities with Pakistan were to flare up again in 1965 after the Indian government unilaterally announced that Kashmir and Jammu were henceforth to be regarded as similar in status to the other Indian states. This resulted in some fierce, entirely orthodox fighting for local objectives. Apart from skirmishing in the Rann of Kutch (April-May), Pakistan began infiltration backed by artillery across the Kashmir cease-fire line which showed the effectiveness of guerrilla tactic in such terrain, some 10,000 irregulars keeping 50,000 Indian regulars backed by over 200 guns and mortars fully occupied. Hoping that the Indians were sufficiently distracted in this way, on 1 September 1965 the Pakistanis attacked in the lightly-held Chamb sector north of Jammu where there was good tank country, in great armoured strength and with massive artillery support, and were checked by the Indians only after hard fighting. The Indians in turn mounted a limited offensive astride the axis Amritsar-Lahore on 6 September with the aim of drawing the Pakistani tanks away from Chamb and, as it got under way, the larger mission of inflicting decisive casualties on the Pakistani army. Offensive and counter offensive followed for another fortnight and the fighting died down with little territorial advantage, but the score in terms of tanks clearly favouring the Indians who, the Pakistanis began to perceive, were no push-over."

"India fought a second war with Pakistan over Kashmir in 1965, little more than a year after Nehru's death. Pakistan's ruler at the time, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, personally planned Operation Grand Slam, which he hoped would totally cut Kashmir off at its narrow southern neck from India's Punjab. Ayub was a giant of a man, as tall and sturdy as India's Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was small and physically frail. But India's army was four times larger than Pakistan's, and quickly dispelled the popular Pakistani myth that one Muslim soldier was “worth ten Hindus.” Operation Grand Slam ground to a halt as soon as India's tanks rolled west across the Punjab border to the environs of Lahore. In three weeks the second IndoPak War ended in what appeared to be a draw when the embargo placed by Washington on U.S. ammunition and replacements for both armies forced cessation of conflict before either side won a clear victory. India, however, was in a position to inflict grave damage to, if not capture, Pakistan's capital of the Punjab when the cease-fire was called, and controlled Kashmir's strategic Uri-Poonch bulge, much to Ayub's chagrin."

"The fact that Pakistan's army managed to fight the Indians to a standstill is amazing, and much credit should be given to the Pakistan air force for its part in countering its much larger Indian opponent and supporting the ground forces. The PAF was 'well-handled and controlled by the C-in-C, Nur Khan. A tremendous sense of purpose was displayed and attacks were carried out with considerable determination... It is also clear there was excellent cooperation between the army and the air force at all levels, in contrast to poor Indian inter-service liaison."

"In 1965, when he was thirteen, Salman became aware of another kind of Islam. This was at the time of the short, inconclusive war with India. “There were songs exhorting mujahids to go to war and promising them paradise, heaven. Mobs of people from the city of Lahore, armed only with clubs, set out to fight the holy war against the infidel Hindu. They had to be turned back. They had been charged up by the mullah. The interesting thing was that the mullah was not leading those people. He was sitting safe in his mosque.”"

"Pakistani textbooks are particularly prone to historical narratives manipulated by omission, according to Avril Powell, professor of history at the University of London. History by erasure can have its long-term negative repercussions. An example of this is the manner in which the Indo-Pak War of 1965 is discussed in Pakistani textbooks. In standard narrations of the 65 War manufactured for students and the general public, there is no mention of Operation Gibraltar, even after four decades. In fact, several university level history professors whom I interviewed claimed never to have heard of Operation Gibraltar and the repercussions of that ill-planned military adventurism which resulted in India's attack on Lahore.... Because they were not fully informed about the adventurism of their military leaders, they can only feel betrayed that somehow Pakistani politicians once again "grabbed diplomatic defeat from the jaws of military victory”."

"“The most superficial scanning of the statements produced in connection with the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 and the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 provides abundant evidence of the continuing power of the jihad concept in its original drastic and military intent. Fighting the unbeliever is a religious duty of the collectivity and secures religious merit; however ‘secular’ the issues, the simple fact of their involving a confrontation between Muslim and non-Muslim suffices for popular sentiment, and hence for governmental direction, to identify the armed dispute as religious warfare. Denials of this fact by the authorities when they address themselves to a Western audience have no meaning beyond constituting an attempt, inevitable in the present international situation, at making their point in a manner likely to be acceptable to a forum averse to the spirit of the religious crusade and altogether disposed to take for granted the separation between religious sentiment and political action.…"

"The most important departure from determinism during the Cold War had to do, obviously, with hot wars. Prior to 1945, great powers fought great wars so frequently that they seemed to be permanent features of the international landscape: Lenin even relied on them to provide the mechanism by which capitalism would self-destruct. After 1945, however, wars were limited to those between superpowers and smaller powers, as in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, or to wars among smaller powers like the four Israel and its Arab neighbors fought between 1948 and 1973, or the three India-Pakistan wars of 1947-48, 1965, and 1971, or the long, bloody, and indecisive struggle that consumed Iran and Iraq throughout the 1980s."

"The struggle between India and Pakistan was another postcolonial rivalry that tested détente. The core source of antagonism was the region of Kashmir, whose division in 1948 was (and still is) contested by Pakistan. Initially, India had sought a neutral Cold War stance, but after the Sino-Indian War in 1962 it had gravitated toward the Soviet Union. Pakistan, a formerly staunch member of the Western bloc, after its 1965 war with India moved closer to China. In both instances, the United States, immersed in Vietnam, had stayed aloof, but the Soviet Union in 1966 had gained the gratitude of both parties for its positive role as a mediator."

"Both sides claimed victory in the conflict, with the Indians demonstrating greater tactifcal skill in the use of armour due to superior crew training. It must be realized that the Indian Armoured Corps had been seduced by Pakistani propaganda and entered the conflict in considerable trepidation, believing the Patton (i.e. M-47s and M-48s) to be vastly superior in terms of firepower, protection and mobility to any tank possessed by the Indians. This concern was reflected in many of the official citations for heroism following the war, one of which commended an NCO for an action against "several of the supposedly invulnerable Pattons...". Indeed, it appears the Pakistanis were victims of their own propaganda and believed the Patton to be virtually indestructible. This led to their rash tactics in assaulting Indian positions frontally and suffering proportionately higher losses among the Pattons, which invariably led their attacks. In the swirling dust of the Sialkot battles, Centurion fought Patton at ranges seldom exceeding 1,000 yards. The robust Centruion with its simple fire control system proved superior to the M-47 and M-48 Pattons equipped with stereoscopic range-finders and sophisticated ballistic computers, which proved too complex for the ordinary Pakistani "sowar"."

"Lamia al-Gailani says her Arab friends had trouble accepting that Baghdadis may have been responsible for looting their own treasures. "Everyone had their own theory of who looted the museum," she says. "It depended on who they don't like. Was it the Americans? Was it the Israelis? Was it the Kuwaitis? It was very funny, but also sad that they never, never accused the actual people in Baghdad of looting.""

"The damning Chilcot report on Britain’s involvement in the war later found that the UK had chosen to join the invasion before peaceful options had been exhausted, and then the prime minister Tony Blair had deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Britain’s intelligence agencies produced “flawed information”, working from the start on the misguided assumption that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and made no attempt to consider the possibility that he had got rid of them, which he had. Blair ignored warnings that Iraq could degenerate into civil war after the invasion, including from US secretary of state, Colin Powell who accurately predicted “a terrible blood-letting of revenge after Saddam goes”. The British government had no post-invasion strategy and no influence on Iraq’s postwar US-run administration. Overall, Britain did not achieve its objectives in Iraq, Chilcot found. The war undermined US and British authority on the international stage, with the reputational damage continuing until today, when it has hampered efforts to gather support for Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion."

"Twenty years ago today the US and the UK invaded Iraq in a disastrous military mission based on flawed intelligence, months of lying to the world, and a casual disregard for international law. The invasion would lead to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, decades of civil war and vicious sectarian violence in Iraq, and the rise of the Islamic State militant group. Incubated in a US prison camp, IS was directed and staffed in part by former members and officers of the Saddam-era Ba’ath party. In a pattern that would be repeated again and again over the following two decades of the “war on terror”, the US and its allies, including the United Kingdom, assumed that overwhelming technical and military superiority was all they needed to control a distant nation and its people. A “shock and awe” bombing campaign showcasing that military power launched the invasion, and ground troops moved into Iraq the next day, 20 March. Saddam was soon on the run, and in early April, Baghdad was formally occupied. On 1 May, US president George Bush set up a theatrical spectacle on an aircraft carrier, flying in to announce “mission accomplished”. America had ended “major combat operations” in Iraq. It was a speech that betrayed American arrogance, ignorance and disdain about realities on the ground in Iraq, where decades of bloodshed were only just beginning."

"[On the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan] From a strategic point of view, it has to be seen as a complete failure, and yet it went on for 20 years, why did it go on for 20 years? Because the defense industry companies that make the bombs, that make the planes, that make the vehicles, and also the private military contractors that now are fighting the wars in lieu of public military personnel, they made trillions of dollars as long as the war continued. So they didn't care if the war was ever won, the goal was for the war to simply continue forever... the point is not to win the war, but to make sure it never ends because you're going to keep making profits."

"Some of the wars America fought were "simply for profit" and the sanctions it has imposed on certain countries have been as destructive as wars... The American people have virtually no say over when we go to war. These decisions are made in back rooms somewhere...The American people continue to be lied to about why we go to war, because again, one of the big reasons is simply for profit, and that's always been true to some extent, but now it is in a very naked way."

"The invasion of Iraq has resulted in the almost complete annihilation of that country’s Christian community, and the attempt to remove Bashar Assad from power in Syria has seen that country’s Christians mercilessly attacked by the agents of US power, radical Islamists. To be a Christian in the Middle East is to be in constant fear that the USA will set its sights on your country because wherever it arrives, Mujahideen are never that far away."

"Then the 9/11 attacks happen. And the simplest way to put it is that Joe Biden just supports almost everything that the Bush administration wants in the immediate aftermath. Biden not only votes in favor of the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, he plays a key role in facilitating a war based on lies."

"The first Gulf War ended not with a crushing defeat of an enemy, but with a cease fire, leaving a large army in place that continued to defy the UN treaty and waste millions of US taxpayer's dollars every year. Untold thousands of Iraqis lost their lives due to the conditions under the emboldened Saddam Hussein. After twelve years of this the United States went to war with Iraq again. That second war became known as the Iraq war, though some call it the Second Gulf War. The war seemed to finally end for the United States in 2011 when the last major US forces returned home, but the coalition forces pulled out too quickly, under President Obama, and ISIS rose up in the vacuum. Finally, under President Trump, ISIS was destroyed in Iraq and Syria and Iraq finally has some sort of peace."

"The U.S. military also appears to have been involved in the production of Six Days in Fallujah, which raises questions about how it is intended to shape perceptions of the Iraq war. In the mid-2000s, Tamte led a different video game developer named Destineer, which partnered with the Japanese publisher Konami to release a version of Six Days. Back then, Tamte claimed the game had no stance on the politics of the war in Iraq, as he repeated this year. At the time, Destineer ran a thriving side business making training simulations for the Pentagon and the intelligence community. The U.S. Marine Corps was an official consultant for the company’s first game, Close Combat: First to Fight. And In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture investment arm, partnered with the company in 2005. The suggestion that a company with such deep ties to the government could make a game without politics sparked an outcry, and Konami deemed the game too controversial. They canceled its publication in 2009. No one is canceling Six Days in Fallujah anymore. Tamte’s current company, Victura, is also a publisher, so he is moving forward with a new developer contracted to update the game’s code and gameplay. The game is slated for release later this year."

"Consider Full Spectrum Warrior, a 2004 game that began development as a training simulator for U.S. Army soldiers. The company behind it, Pandemic, modified the game into a commercial release that so the Army could send the game downrange for soldiers to play while deployed. Set in a fictionalized version of Iraq, the game features an empty, crumbling urban landscape coded to be obviously Middle Eastern, filled only with Arab men to shoot. The strongest incentive not to engage in [combat isn’t to safeguard civilians, but to avoid personal injury to your squad mates. Despite its marketing as “realistic” and messaging that it was developed with input from the Pentagon, the game-world it creates removes the complexity of urban insurgency and substitutes simplified moral dilemmas that portray the military in unambiguously good terms—an enjoyable setting for a game, but hardly reflective of the reality of the war in Iraq."

"A game about the Iraq War might not seem like it poses big questions about the politics of war, but as a hugely popular form of mass media, video games can influence people’s emotional states, thought patterns, and perceptions. Every year, military-themed first person shooters (FPS), which simulate combat from the point of view of a combatant, generate billions of dollars of revenue."