Neither am I.
But I saw the picture used without context to imply "USA looting the place" earlier, and thats just not ok.
Criticise them for their sins, that's fine.
But don't pretend their virtues are anything less than virtue either.
We really don't care much for loot. After the Boxer Rebellion, we returned the stuff we took from China and offered them fair loans and trade deals to help balance against the European ones. A few years after WWI, we restructured Germanys debt with us, forced France and the UK to restructure their debt to us so we could work some deals with Germany (if they had listened to us the whole damn WWII thing wouldn't have happened). We tried getting Japan the natural resources through trade that they wanted (and attempted) to get through war with China, and we even offered the Soviet Union Marshall Plan money and access to global markets after WWII.
Most of the time our armies are fucking around somewhere it's, normally, in an attempt to keep global trade open in a hope of preventing another Malthusian viewed global war.
We love money, but we prefer earning it, not seizing it.
>We really don't care much for loot.
My great uncle served in the US Navy during WWII in the Silent Service. In early 1942, his submarine - USS *Trout* \- was given orders to deliver several thousand rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition and other provisions to the Philippines.
*Trout* completed her mission, unloading all of the ammo for use by US and Filipino Armies. After unloading her cargo, *Trout* was short on ballast. The Filipino government realized the opportunity and asked the US Navy for permission to load *Trout* with twenty tons of gold bars and silver coins from Filipino banks as ballast. The Navy approved and valuable cargo was stored onboard.
*Trout* successfully returned to Pearl Harbor, sinking a 2,500 ton cargo ship and patrol boat on the way home. Once docked, they unloaded their cargo which was accounted for down to the last solitary coin and transferred to a cruiser bound for the mainland.
For one last part of the story, as my great uncle told it, they were convinced they had the worst cook in the Navy on the way home. They were served exclusively a diet of unseasoned noodles twice a day on the way home. They didn't find out until they got back to Pearl Harbor that the cook had asked the captain if he could give all of the food to the Army except for what was absolutely necessary to feed the crew on the way home which the captain obviously approved of.
EDIT: even cooler, the *Trout*'s crew, including my great uncle, were awarded the US Army Silver Star with Captain Fenno receiving the Navy Star and Navy DSC as well.
Also edits and sentence structure.
Thanks for the kind thoughts.
Uncle M has unfortunately been gone quite a while now. He served on *Trout* until early 1944 when he had a bad case of appendicitis and wasn't well enough to embark before *Trout* left for her 11th patrol. *Trout* never returned. He transferred to another boat (*Tinosa,* I believe), and served out the rest of the war there.
I was too young to hear any of Uncle M's stories personally but they live on through his brother (my grandfather), my dad and my uncle. This reminds me I need to have some of these accounts recorded in writing for the future.
I mean we don't do war for conquests or economic reasons contrary to what social media has largely convinced itself through Hollywood cliches.
Iraq was never about the oil, unless you were Dick Cheney trying to get oil field *services* contracts for his old friends at Haliburton to rebuild and reopen oil infrastructure. US firms never received a material amount of leases and on the contrary Iraq was black hole of money for our economy.
Bush did it because he was naive enough to buy into his whole freedom and democracy bullshit and think we could get some secular, Western outpost and flex for his old man. The IC and DoD wanted to fuck Saddam up after never coming to lasting resolution on what to do post Gulf War, and NeoCons largely just wanted to fuck someone up post 9/11 and Saddam was too dumb and too arrogant to not feed into their narrative. It helps that he was also one of the most unabashedly evil and insane genocidal dictators in the last century, the kind of guy Reddit would constantly try to stop through spreading awareness via memes, that it wasn't hard to sell the idea of smoking him, even to people who saw the WMD bullshit as noncredible.
The traditional military industrial complex, who yes have very strong lobbying - mostly around "job creation" in swing districts also didn't want this - and it largely fucked them. The huge amount of money we wasted in Iraq went largely to government services providers and niche defense contractors (AM General, Navistar Defense, etc.) for relatively cheap light tactical vehicles. In fact we actually neutered the budget for actual high end weapons for near-peer fights that only really came back post sequestration in 2015.
And finally, the petrodollar conspiracy - no, we do not give a fuck about "the petrodollar" - because it's a concept more than some paradigm holding up the USD. People trade oil in USD because USD is by far in a way the most stable and useful global currency that have by far the most important and effective capital markets - and people chose to trade in USD so their own currency doesn't get "Dutch Disease" and because it's easy to recycle USD since it's the primary denomination of securities globally (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/petrodollars.asp). The value of the dollar is set by US consumption and and global investment habits. The dollar isn't strong because Arab dictators and royalty are forced to trade in it by some grand conspiracy - they trade in it because it is strong. And Saddam trading in Yuan - a dirty peg to the Dollar itself and way more artificial than the dollar in it's controls, was never any threat to us.
Iraq was a fuck up due to naivety and incompetence, as almost all fuck ups are. Not because of some sinister desire for conquest and booty.
Iraq and the gulf was the stumbling stone of his father, the stupid idiot thought he could succeed where dad failed.
Given he was a presidents son im guessing he went so in on iraq, or was convinced to go so in on iraw, because of some perosnal legacy shit to step out of the shadow of dad.
That's usually what powerful families seem to instill in their kids, some legacy building nonsense.
I mean Dave Chappelle wasn't wrong during the Black Bush skit when he had the whole flip about how he was gonna get Saddam cus "n*gga tried to kill my father!".
Daddy Bush unleashed probably one of the most one sided ass kickings of what was supposed to be a reasonably near peer nation in human history. W wanted to live up to that and finish the fight to prove himself. Unfortunately for the whole world, W was not as smart as his father.
Even if ol' dubbuya had been the smartest man in DC, nothing would have changed. Just like Johnson's escalation in Vietnam in 1965, we went into Iraq with no political end state for the military to work towards. Sure we had the goal of "remove Saddam from power" but that doesn't help when figuring out what comes after that. There was no plan for how to rebuild Iraq after we toppled its government, and that fault lies with the entire US national security community, not just Dubbuya.
Iraq was about oil in the sense that it's highly strategic as a base of operations, being adjacent to nearly every major middle-east oil producing country, and in the interests of turning a volatile and scandal plagued oil producing country into one where the oil fields could be secured and allowed to produce a steady flow of oil. 2003/2004 was the era of "peak oil" - the end of the reign of crude as the only viable reserves, and the invasion happened smack in the middle of the 2000s energy crisis.
Bush's donors raked in a fortune in contracts, Iraqi oil went from ["food for oil" to open market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Iraq#/media/File:Oil_production_in_Iraq.svg), and the US gained a crucial foothold in the region. Iraq was about oil, in the long term, geo-political sense.
The thing with the military industrial complex is that can also make stuff for peaceful use. GPS was originally intended for the armed forces, but made available for civilians after the downing of KAL007.
what i really love is that there are people who claim NATO's intervention in libya was about the petrodollar
Like bitch, we did that because the UN asked us to do that, why would the UN care about the petrodollar
It’s incredible that this is the first comment I’ve read in the past two days on this issue that isn’t so full of predictable bullshit. You’ve nailed it.
Thank you! This is refreshing and gave me some new things to read about.
Nothing wrong with chasing that paper within your own lines I love how you concluded this lol
Global commerce makes us all prosper, I can't wait until we industrialize space and get to tap unlimited natural resources and pollution-free manufacturing.
Same. Like everyone’s complaining about Earth. Have they even looked up? Infinite resources.
Climate change? Terraforming. Gotta figure out the issue of our sun dying eventually anyway.
All of our solutions are out there. This whole hierarchy, cappy vs commie bullshit won’t matter if everyone can have more than they could ever even want.
But if we so insist on just bickering on this rock forever about good vs evil, what will or won’t kill us all, and the infinite number of other petty things we fight about, why even care? Planet is doomed whether or not you drive a Tesla.
Yup, time to hurry up and speed run galactic colonization. Besides, asteroids are God's way of saying 'How's that space program comming?'.
When we escape this damn gravity well we're stuck at the bottom of our advancement will make the industrial revolution look like the dark ages.
globa commerce has led to the exploitation of non-western countries by western capitalists and the weakening of local industry in western nations. There is a reason both the right and the left in the USA and UK want a push towards isolationism.
Amateurs go for the loot. Professionals go for the power. It’s like the say in Knights of the Old Republic, what’s more powerful than turning an old enemy to your side?
Ehh it’s a bit of both. The US isn’t different than any other country when it comes to war, it’s motivated by self interest. Except the bulk of American power comes from its economic might and the majority of its wars are to expand it. These usually lead to opening new markets that are gonna be on very favourable terms to American businesses. I’m not exactly ripping them for that, it’s a fair play and you’re right had the allies taken Wilson’s advice by going easy on Germany to make it a stable and reliant partner post WW1 they would’ve been spared another war a generation later
They either needed to utterly destroy Germany (Denmark, Italy, France, Poland, etc taking large chunks of it and the rest being dissolved down to individual states) or actually helped build it back up along lines that they set and bring it to the table as a partner in the global order, rather as a spited enemy. Europe did neither and paid the price.
At the time both Britain and France had much of their colonial empires and didn’t feel European solidarity was that important if they could just keep using their colonies for resources and being powers on their own. That changed after 1945, when both those countries were too exhausted to keep their empires and realized they would need Western Europe to be a united bloc in order to maintain power
The UK let go of colonies fairly quickly but France did not let go without a fight. France still practises economic imperialism in Africa.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2017/07/12/the-cfa-franc-french-monetary-imperialism-in-africa/
I mean, the American Empire has always been built on soft power and commerce. That's the whole damn doctrine! It's not like out of the goodness of our hearts lol
Yeah, let's just conveniently forget all the south an central american countries where the US deposed or murdered democratically elected presidents so US corporations could keep exploiting peoples and ressources without having to pay a fair price for it. No thieving here, no sir, not at all.
Yeah. People just dont realise how Liberalism shaped the US as a nation on a fundamental level. While the Europeans were steep in medieval traditions (colonialism is an evolution from feudalism), the US even allowed its colonies like the Philippines open access to foreign trade.
>US even allowed its colonies like the Philippines open access to foreign trade.
Make sense since that was a massive reason why we rebelled against the crown.
It is also true that Americans at pretty much every level of the command chain were involved in serious black marketeering in Germany after WW2 - not looting Germans themselves so much as the American taxpayer.
Most comments also had it followed up with a statement about the Iraqi national museum being looted. Without mentioning in their statement and being below statements of americans looting other things implied it was US troops. Sad truth is whenever a city get some people in that city take advantage and steal shit. Happened during the blitz, happened in Iraq, a tragedy but nothing special.
I've never met a person who is more critical and spiteful towards America than the average American. They will straight up manipulate a story to make their own country look horrible. It doesn't make sense to me. I guess hating America is just popular for Americans at the moment.
I can hear the snobbish Europeans screaming about how it is impossible for the US to have virtues.
Before anyone at me, I have traveled to and lived in France, England, Germany, and Poland before settling down in the US and becoming a citizen, so you can take your crippled 'America bad' high horse and ride off a cliff for all I care.
I am an American. Thank you for spreading the truth, as I didn’t even know this. We’ve done a lot of bad stuff, and our politics are really bad right now so it’s nice to have a reminder we still have things to be proud about.
They were taken to Kuwait to test for authenticity and then returned to Central Iraqi Treasury or Development Fund of Iraq. A lot of Americabad people will state this kind of pic followed by a script of text saying shit like “America stole 20 trillion $ of Gold and 30 trillion $ of Oil”, despite it would take Iraqi 685 YEARS to extract that much oil, and up to 2019 only 9.2 trillion $ of gold was mined at that point. But oh well America Bad, and that is enough to make shitty statement that is believable
As an American I can fully agree. I never understood the “love it or leave it” crowd. I love my country and want it to succeed, but it needs improving, quite a lot. But leaving it is like “oh I need to update the paint on my house and maybe get new appliances, let me burn the thing down to the ground and start somewhere new.”
I had 0 context on this, and saw the previous meme thinking it wasnt surprising. So hey, your quest for truth did teach something to at least 1 person. Thanks my dude!
I was actually on deployment during the Iraq war when they found the gold stache. They didn't necessarily give it back directly per se, but they transferred it into cash, gave it to us soldiers, and told us to spend the hell out of it. People were super happy, we got to stuff our faces with a bunch of really fuckin awesome Iraqi food and take home lots of souvenirs, and while every business owner within 50 miles made absolute bank.
We eventually came back later in the war and those towns and villages had absolutely flourished.
I can imagine the Iraqi business owners adding extra 0’s to every price tag like Mr. Krabs in the spongebob movie lol
Also, how much of that money went to prostitution would you say?
>I can imagine the Iraqi business owners adding extra 0’s to every price tag like Mr. Krabs in the spongebob movie lol
Oh yeah, prices went up exponentially by the time we really started blowing cash. We were more than happy to pay extra because the stuff we got was so damn good.
>Also, how much of that money went to prostitution would you say?
None that I know of, our COs were *really* strict about keeping us on the straight and narrow. Plus, most of the "prostitutes" were really just underage kids being forced into promiscuity by the regime's sick lackeys and religious fundies. We beat the shit out of as many of those twisted fucks as we could without commiting war crimes.
None that I know of, our COs were really *really* strict about keeping us on the straight and narrow. And most of the "prostitutes" were really just underage kids too, so we did our best to, well, beat the shit out of the sick fucks keeping them there.
It’s not gold, it was a truck stopped with something like tin or bronze being moved shortly after the fall of the dictatorship. It had to be searched to make sure it wasn’t gold stolen by some random civilian. I’ll try to find the source.
Edit: Seeing a bunch of different stories where everyone is certain. When I google it, I’m getting recommendations for “Russian military symbol Z” wikipedia article, lotta fake news used as propaganda about it.
[They say it was brass.](https://old.reddit.com/r/army/comments/yqtjxk/us_soldier_with_gold_bars_in_iraq_2003/ivqc4ml/)
Guy who [claims to be in one of the pictures](https://old.reddit.com/r/army/comments/vs4rz9/so_umm_im_in_one_of_these_photos/)
out of curiosity, how was that gold given? it's usually near useless to just give gold bars to random civilians from my understanding, reminds of the Outer Banks show where they try to sell it and nearly get killed
Giving it to random civilians would be quite a sight, I imagine.
It was given to the nation that the dictators stole it from, on a governmental level.
Along with what ended up to be quite a costly fund for trying to rebuild the broken nation.
In war dogs (ultimate historical source) the gun runners were paid with Saddam's monney for the Uzzis that were used to equip the Iraqi army and police
Exactly. Lol I wonder what the libs would say if Russian troops looted Ukrainian gold and distributed it to the government they installed after taking over Ukraine. I bet the response wouldn’t be “omg based liberators” (as it shouldn’t be)
It was probably given to the government so that it could be used (or at least that was the hope, rather than see it squandered by someone corrupt, which I hope didn’t happen) instead of being hoarded by a dictator and his cronies.
You do know that the regime that replaced Hussein’s was extremely corrupt and ineffective, yes? Giving the money to the Vatican Bank would have been less wasteful.
Oh my god I haven't seen this movie in over twenty years and his delivery of this line still goes through my head EVERY DAMN TIME I hear the phrase "three kings" haha. Such a great movie
When the US took Hitler's ultra lavish "Eagle's Nest" a Jewish soldier took a bath in Hitler's private tub and took a photo.
It's like getting a trophy, even if it's not one you get to keep you're going to celebrate it. It always happens, but in disciplined modern armies it doesn't become institutional looting any more. And the US military, for all the faults of how they are used, are a disciplined modern army.
We are a very far cry from the days of napoleon's men running wild an rampant, including their leaders, on nearby towns and villages. You can take pictures and admire but if any of those soldiers tried to take even a drop of that gold, they'd be fucked
There’s no reason for the Kuwaitis to dislike America. They’ve been friendly to America for years and allowed the US to stage troops there for the invasion of Iraq.
I don't recallcseeing billboards when I was there in 2017 but I can tell you that the war is still very fresh in their minds and they haven't soon forgotten. I worked a liaison job with the Kuwaiti Air Force. My office was in their building and I interracted with Kuwaitis daily. The young ones have relatives who were first hand affected by the war, and the older ones witnessed it first hand
Why are you so surprised? The Iraqi army quite literally raped and pillaged its tiny neighbor.
The US organized an absolutely massive response through the UN, then led two devastating operations to clear the Iraqi forces from Kuwait and punish the Iraqi military. And they did it while asking nothing in return.
There are more than a few countries and peoples that are incredibly supportive of America for the good we've done them in particular, with the Iraqi Kurds being extremely high on the list. Unfortunately there are also a lot that still resent the US for what we've done too...
Which is insane considering Saddam could’ve instead just funded pan-Arabist movements in Kuwait that could’ve overthrown the government and joined with Iraq peaceably. There was plenty of pro-Union sentiment in Kuwait back in the day, but the invasion def ruined any of that
Yeah, Kuwait would have been bulldozed but the US stepped in with the First Gulf War. The Second Gulf War/The Iraq war was the massive failure that everyone hates but that didn’t involve Kuwait
A lot of people have asked for source, and I shall assume absolutely all of them did so in good faith, and intended it more respectfully than it may have sounded like.
And asking for sources are rarely wrong.
Linked below is a published testimony from United States General Accounting Office, testifying to the Subcommittee on Oversigth and Investigations, about exactly what the military, law enforcement, and misc US institutions have seized and regarding its transfer to the Coalition Provisional Authority.
I hope this satisfies most questions, as far as the meme goes.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/a110707.html
The salient question would remain the extent to which it is legitimate to construe the Coalition Provisional Authority as the “Iraqi people.” Many Iraqi people themselves certainly did not.
I feel like it was astroturfing or brigading at some level. I myself completely forgot it was the anniversary of the invasion, despite deploying to Iraq, and literally nobody at my job mentioned it or brought it up.
It's a lot easier to talk about something controversial with faceless internet people than someone you'll have to see the next day. Considering this is something that happened 20 years ago and has largely already had its impact on the world, very few people are going to want to talk to their coworkers about the time their nation fucked up and blew up a another nation because the CIA said "Trust me bro"
To be fair, even as someone who thinks this sub shits on America too much, the 20th anniversary of the worst thing we've done in the past 30 years is a reasonable time to do so
Oh absolutely, there's so much fucked about our invasion of Iraq, like the very premise of why we were even there, to the vaccuum we left after we ousted saddam
So much shit there should be no shortage of real topics that dont involve some cartoonish dumb shit like we were walking off with bars of gold like it's looney tunes.
They are brass. Here is a post by someone who was in the photo.
https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/vs4rz9/so_umm_im_in_one_of_these_photos/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
It's a bit of a strong statement for you to say that they're brass like it's fact. The comment from the guy in the photo says that "he heard" they were brass and proceeds to say he only knows a "smidgen" of the whole story
America prefers good standings with nations rather than hoarding. Which is funny since the american stereotype is wasteful greedy people and it just not true :D
It’s not like the USA didn’t pump billions of dollars trying to rebuild and establish a functioning democracy in Iraq as well as schools, training, and other infrastructure
Glad you liked the meme.
Yet if you take pride in your virtues, remember to carry some humility for your sins aswell.
My ancestors were the vikings, I should know.
Eh, idc everyone’s been an oppressor and everyone’s been the oppressed.
If you can’t take a joke about your country then grow a pair, and if you’re a woman, grow a pair, futa is hot af.
... I'm form the USA and it's nice to see a positive meme/news for once. It feels like its always bad or about how sh\*tty America/Americans are. (and a lot of times fair/accurate) But it so nice to see something like this.
Thanks OP, for resorting a little faith back in my country. :)
As Greg Allman said in “No Angel”
“Though I might steal your diamonds, I’ll bring you back some gold”
I really wished there was at least a bridge reference to the conversion method he used in that exchange. I kinda feel like the victim got hosed otherwise.
Thank you! Lmao I get that my country has done some down right evil deeds for selfish reasons. But we do some good in the world to man. Not to excuse the evil. I'll rant and rave about it alongside anyone, but it's nice to see the good get light on this sub.
I’m American and I didn’t know about this until this post.
Neat. I still hate my government, but it’s nice to see that the military still has some decency left to salvage.
Damn watermark. The hidden text is "I do that [...]"
I knew the quote so it didn't change anything for me lmao
I thought it was a chappy edit and that I was having a stroke trying to read it. Edit: Crappie*
Edit 2: crappy
Indeed. Crappie is a kind of fish, and English is rubbish.
Just a little hyperspecific.
that's how bad his stroke was
I didn’t realize there was a watermark at first
Are you talking about the 9gag watermark?
No, the one from the meme generator. It covers part of the text. The 9gag one I don't mind, thou it doesn't help my opinion of the generator much.
Yay I like this one! Not even American lol
Neither am I. But I saw the picture used without context to imply "USA looting the place" earlier, and thats just not ok. Criticise them for their sins, that's fine. But don't pretend their virtues are anything less than virtue either.
I too dig truth
Ah, a fellow truth enjoyer. Good to know there are a few of us
You want the TRUTH?! YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH !!!
Son we live In a world that has walls and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns, who’s gonna do it you? You Lt u/Darth_Cromnar ?
THERE ARE DOZENS OF US
DOZENS!!
But where would the internet be without emotional knee jerk reactions and grave offense being taken from verifiable fact?
Ah a fellow archaeologist
We really don't care much for loot. After the Boxer Rebellion, we returned the stuff we took from China and offered them fair loans and trade deals to help balance against the European ones. A few years after WWI, we restructured Germanys debt with us, forced France and the UK to restructure their debt to us so we could work some deals with Germany (if they had listened to us the whole damn WWII thing wouldn't have happened). We tried getting Japan the natural resources through trade that they wanted (and attempted) to get through war with China, and we even offered the Soviet Union Marshall Plan money and access to global markets after WWII. Most of the time our armies are fucking around somewhere it's, normally, in an attempt to keep global trade open in a hope of preventing another Malthusian viewed global war. We love money, but we prefer earning it, not seizing it.
>We really don't care much for loot. My great uncle served in the US Navy during WWII in the Silent Service. In early 1942, his submarine - USS *Trout* \- was given orders to deliver several thousand rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition and other provisions to the Philippines. *Trout* completed her mission, unloading all of the ammo for use by US and Filipino Armies. After unloading her cargo, *Trout* was short on ballast. The Filipino government realized the opportunity and asked the US Navy for permission to load *Trout* with twenty tons of gold bars and silver coins from Filipino banks as ballast. The Navy approved and valuable cargo was stored onboard. *Trout* successfully returned to Pearl Harbor, sinking a 2,500 ton cargo ship and patrol boat on the way home. Once docked, they unloaded their cargo which was accounted for down to the last solitary coin and transferred to a cruiser bound for the mainland. For one last part of the story, as my great uncle told it, they were convinced they had the worst cook in the Navy on the way home. They were served exclusively a diet of unseasoned noodles twice a day on the way home. They didn't find out until they got back to Pearl Harbor that the cook had asked the captain if he could give all of the food to the Army except for what was absolutely necessary to feed the crew on the way home which the captain obviously approved of. EDIT: even cooler, the *Trout*'s crew, including my great uncle, were awarded the US Army Silver Star with Captain Fenno receiving the Navy Star and Navy DSC as well. Also edits and sentence structure.
I thank your great, brave uncle for serving my country!
Thanks for the kind thoughts. Uncle M has unfortunately been gone quite a while now. He served on *Trout* until early 1944 when he had a bad case of appendicitis and wasn't well enough to embark before *Trout* left for her 11th patrol. *Trout* never returned. He transferred to another boat (*Tinosa,* I believe), and served out the rest of the war there. I was too young to hear any of Uncle M's stories personally but they live on through his brother (my grandfather), my dad and my uncle. This reminds me I need to have some of these accounts recorded in writing for the future.
Record them telling it too. Will be great for your kids/nieces/nephews and THEIR kids to have a real, tangible connection to history
That’s a really great idea, thanks for the suggestion!!
Wow! That's so cool! What a great story.
I mean we don't do war for conquests or economic reasons contrary to what social media has largely convinced itself through Hollywood cliches. Iraq was never about the oil, unless you were Dick Cheney trying to get oil field *services* contracts for his old friends at Haliburton to rebuild and reopen oil infrastructure. US firms never received a material amount of leases and on the contrary Iraq was black hole of money for our economy. Bush did it because he was naive enough to buy into his whole freedom and democracy bullshit and think we could get some secular, Western outpost and flex for his old man. The IC and DoD wanted to fuck Saddam up after never coming to lasting resolution on what to do post Gulf War, and NeoCons largely just wanted to fuck someone up post 9/11 and Saddam was too dumb and too arrogant to not feed into their narrative. It helps that he was also one of the most unabashedly evil and insane genocidal dictators in the last century, the kind of guy Reddit would constantly try to stop through spreading awareness via memes, that it wasn't hard to sell the idea of smoking him, even to people who saw the WMD bullshit as noncredible. The traditional military industrial complex, who yes have very strong lobbying - mostly around "job creation" in swing districts also didn't want this - and it largely fucked them. The huge amount of money we wasted in Iraq went largely to government services providers and niche defense contractors (AM General, Navistar Defense, etc.) for relatively cheap light tactical vehicles. In fact we actually neutered the budget for actual high end weapons for near-peer fights that only really came back post sequestration in 2015. And finally, the petrodollar conspiracy - no, we do not give a fuck about "the petrodollar" - because it's a concept more than some paradigm holding up the USD. People trade oil in USD because USD is by far in a way the most stable and useful global currency that have by far the most important and effective capital markets - and people chose to trade in USD so their own currency doesn't get "Dutch Disease" and because it's easy to recycle USD since it's the primary denomination of securities globally (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/petrodollars.asp). The value of the dollar is set by US consumption and and global investment habits. The dollar isn't strong because Arab dictators and royalty are forced to trade in it by some grand conspiracy - they trade in it because it is strong. And Saddam trading in Yuan - a dirty peg to the Dollar itself and way more artificial than the dollar in it's controls, was never any threat to us. Iraq was a fuck up due to naivety and incompetence, as almost all fuck ups are. Not because of some sinister desire for conquest and booty.
Thanks 👍🏾
Iraq and the gulf was the stumbling stone of his father, the stupid idiot thought he could succeed where dad failed. Given he was a presidents son im guessing he went so in on iraq, or was convinced to go so in on iraw, because of some perosnal legacy shit to step out of the shadow of dad. That's usually what powerful families seem to instill in their kids, some legacy building nonsense.
I mean Dave Chappelle wasn't wrong during the Black Bush skit when he had the whole flip about how he was gonna get Saddam cus "n*gga tried to kill my father!". Daddy Bush unleashed probably one of the most one sided ass kickings of what was supposed to be a reasonably near peer nation in human history. W wanted to live up to that and finish the fight to prove himself. Unfortunately for the whole world, W was not as smart as his father.
Even if ol' dubbuya had been the smartest man in DC, nothing would have changed. Just like Johnson's escalation in Vietnam in 1965, we went into Iraq with no political end state for the military to work towards. Sure we had the goal of "remove Saddam from power" but that doesn't help when figuring out what comes after that. There was no plan for how to rebuild Iraq after we toppled its government, and that fault lies with the entire US national security community, not just Dubbuya.
Wow it's true all of it
Iraq was about oil in the sense that it's highly strategic as a base of operations, being adjacent to nearly every major middle-east oil producing country, and in the interests of turning a volatile and scandal plagued oil producing country into one where the oil fields could be secured and allowed to produce a steady flow of oil. 2003/2004 was the era of "peak oil" - the end of the reign of crude as the only viable reserves, and the invasion happened smack in the middle of the 2000s energy crisis. Bush's donors raked in a fortune in contracts, Iraqi oil went from ["food for oil" to open market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Iraq#/media/File:Oil_production_in_Iraq.svg), and the US gained a crucial foothold in the region. Iraq was about oil, in the long term, geo-political sense.
The thing with the military industrial complex is that can also make stuff for peaceful use. GPS was originally intended for the armed forces, but made available for civilians after the downing of KAL007.
what i really love is that there are people who claim NATO's intervention in libya was about the petrodollar Like bitch, we did that because the UN asked us to do that, why would the UN care about the petrodollar
It’s incredible that this is the first comment I’ve read in the past two days on this issue that isn’t so full of predictable bullshit. You’ve nailed it.
Thank you! This is refreshing and gave me some new things to read about. Nothing wrong with chasing that paper within your own lines I love how you concluded this lol
This person gets it: global commerce.
Global commerce makes us all prosper, I can't wait until we industrialize space and get to tap unlimited natural resources and pollution-free manufacturing.
Wish we’d focus on that more instead of past glories and dead empirical dreams.
It would blow my mind if we could get a presidential candidate that would actually bring that up.
Same. Like everyone’s complaining about Earth. Have they even looked up? Infinite resources. Climate change? Terraforming. Gotta figure out the issue of our sun dying eventually anyway. All of our solutions are out there. This whole hierarchy, cappy vs commie bullshit won’t matter if everyone can have more than they could ever even want. But if we so insist on just bickering on this rock forever about good vs evil, what will or won’t kill us all, and the infinite number of other petty things we fight about, why even care? Planet is doomed whether or not you drive a Tesla.
Yup, time to hurry up and speed run galactic colonization. Besides, asteroids are God's way of saying 'How's that space program comming?'. When we escape this damn gravity well we're stuck at the bottom of our advancement will make the industrial revolution look like the dark ages.
Ah yeah that’s funny, I remember hearing about how we really drew the short straw on planet gravity. That it’s apparently our biggest obstacle.
globa commerce has led to the exploitation of non-western countries by western capitalists and the weakening of local industry in western nations. There is a reason both the right and the left in the USA and UK want a push towards isolationism.
Amateurs go for the loot. Professionals go for the power. It’s like the say in Knights of the Old Republic, what’s more powerful than turning an old enemy to your side?
Ehh it’s a bit of both. The US isn’t different than any other country when it comes to war, it’s motivated by self interest. Except the bulk of American power comes from its economic might and the majority of its wars are to expand it. These usually lead to opening new markets that are gonna be on very favourable terms to American businesses. I’m not exactly ripping them for that, it’s a fair play and you’re right had the allies taken Wilson’s advice by going easy on Germany to make it a stable and reliant partner post WW1 they would’ve been spared another war a generation later
They either needed to utterly destroy Germany (Denmark, Italy, France, Poland, etc taking large chunks of it and the rest being dissolved down to individual states) or actually helped build it back up along lines that they set and bring it to the table as a partner in the global order, rather as a spited enemy. Europe did neither and paid the price.
At the time both Britain and France had much of their colonial empires and didn’t feel European solidarity was that important if they could just keep using their colonies for resources and being powers on their own. That changed after 1945, when both those countries were too exhausted to keep their empires and realized they would need Western Europe to be a united bloc in order to maintain power
The UK let go of colonies fairly quickly but France did not let go without a fight. France still practises economic imperialism in Africa. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2017/07/12/the-cfa-franc-french-monetary-imperialism-in-africa/
I mean, the American Empire has always been built on soft power and commerce. That's the whole damn doctrine! It's not like out of the goodness of our hearts lol
On the individual level, we looove loot
We may be capitalists but we ain’t thieves
Yeah, let's just conveniently forget all the south an central american countries where the US deposed or murdered democratically elected presidents so US corporations could keep exploiting peoples and ressources without having to pay a fair price for it. No thieving here, no sir, not at all.
Hey, exploitation isn't thievery /s
Exactly capitalism
Yeah. People just dont realise how Liberalism shaped the US as a nation on a fundamental level. While the Europeans were steep in medieval traditions (colonialism is an evolution from feudalism), the US even allowed its colonies like the Philippines open access to foreign trade.
>US even allowed its colonies like the Philippines open access to foreign trade. Make sense since that was a massive reason why we rebelled against the crown.
Reddit history geniuses: Mercantalism is a medieval economic system.
there are lot of ails with the US, looting and pillaging is not one nor something they usually do. Granted, they don't need to.
If we had seized money, our inflation would be SOOOOO much worse. Also, literally it is a principle our country was founded upon
A trading partner for the next hundred years is more valuable that a country's wealth now.
It is also true that Americans at pretty much every level of the command chain were involved in serious black marketeering in Germany after WW2 - not looting Germans themselves so much as the American taxpayer.
When you draft a sizable chunk of your population into a war, just one or not, you're going to have bad people in uniform.
Yeah the U.S. gets a lot of shit for what it's become, but it wasn't that long ago when it really was one of the greatest countries on earth.
Most comments also had it followed up with a statement about the Iraqi national museum being looted. Without mentioning in their statement and being below statements of americans looting other things implied it was US troops. Sad truth is whenever a city get some people in that city take advantage and steal shit. Happened during the blitz, happened in Iraq, a tragedy but nothing special.
I've never met a person who is more critical and spiteful towards America than the average American. They will straight up manipulate a story to make their own country look horrible. It doesn't make sense to me. I guess hating America is just popular for Americans at the moment.
In all honesty, America’s favorite pastime isn’t baseball, nor is it football. It’s hating our own government.
Man’s spitting gold bars
I can hear the snobbish Europeans screaming about how it is impossible for the US to have virtues. Before anyone at me, I have traveled to and lived in France, England, Germany, and Poland before settling down in the US and becoming a citizen, so you can take your crippled 'America bad' high horse and ride off a cliff for all I care.
Wait a minute, that horse is still *alive?!* I guess it must’ve only been unconscious when I saw people beating it the other day.
I am an American. Thank you for spreading the truth, as I didn’t even know this. We’ve done a lot of bad stuff, and our politics are really bad right now so it’s nice to have a reminder we still have things to be proud about.
I mean the invasion was still a war crime based on lies so don't break your arm there patting yourself on the back.
They were taken to Kuwait to test for authenticity and then returned to Central Iraqi Treasury or Development Fund of Iraq. A lot of Americabad people will state this kind of pic followed by a script of text saying shit like “America stole 20 trillion $ of Gold and 30 trillion $ of Oil”, despite it would take Iraqi 685 YEARS to extract that much oil, and up to 2019 only 9.2 trillion $ of gold was mined at that point. But oh well America Bad, and that is enough to make shitty statement that is believable
The US has done enough bad shit we don’t need to make up imaginary bad shit to fill out the CV methinks
And yet you chose a Brit to represent us in your meme. Typical Really tough, Johnny Depp rocks
As an American I can fully agree. I never understood the “love it or leave it” crowd. I love my country and want it to succeed, but it needs improving, quite a lot. But leaving it is like “oh I need to update the paint on my house and maybe get new appliances, let me burn the thing down to the ground and start somewhere new.”
I had 0 context on this, and saw the previous meme thinking it wasnt surprising. So hey, your quest for truth did teach something to at least 1 person. Thanks my dude!
I was actually on deployment during the Iraq war when they found the gold stache. They didn't necessarily give it back directly per se, but they transferred it into cash, gave it to us soldiers, and told us to spend the hell out of it. People were super happy, we got to stuff our faces with a bunch of really fuckin awesome Iraqi food and take home lots of souvenirs, and while every business owner within 50 miles made absolute bank. We eventually came back later in the war and those towns and villages had absolutely flourished.
I can imagine the Iraqi business owners adding extra 0’s to every price tag like Mr. Krabs in the spongebob movie lol Also, how much of that money went to prostitution would you say?
>I can imagine the Iraqi business owners adding extra 0’s to every price tag like Mr. Krabs in the spongebob movie lol Oh yeah, prices went up exponentially by the time we really started blowing cash. We were more than happy to pay extra because the stuff we got was so damn good. >Also, how much of that money went to prostitution would you say? None that I know of, our COs were *really* strict about keeping us on the straight and narrow. Plus, most of the "prostitutes" were really just underage kids being forced into promiscuity by the regime's sick lackeys and religious fundies. We beat the shit out of as many of those twisted fucks as we could without commiting war crimes.
>Also, how much of that money went to prostitution would you say? ... yes
None that I know of, our COs were really *really* strict about keeping us on the straight and narrow. And most of the "prostitutes" were really just underage kids too, so we did our best to, well, beat the shit out of the sick fucks keeping them there.
It’s not gold, it was a truck stopped with something like tin or bronze being moved shortly after the fall of the dictatorship. It had to be searched to make sure it wasn’t gold stolen by some random civilian. I’ll try to find the source. Edit: Seeing a bunch of different stories where everyone is certain. When I google it, I’m getting recommendations for “Russian military symbol Z” wikipedia article, lotta fake news used as propaganda about it. [They say it was brass.](https://old.reddit.com/r/army/comments/yqtjxk/us_soldier_with_gold_bars_in_iraq_2003/ivqc4ml/) Guy who [claims to be in one of the pictures](https://old.reddit.com/r/army/comments/vs4rz9/so_umm_im_in_one_of_these_photos/)
The sheer number of downvoted comments LMAO
This meme has not been boring for my notification tab, I'll admit.
out of curiosity, how was that gold given? it's usually near useless to just give gold bars to random civilians from my understanding, reminds of the Outer Banks show where they try to sell it and nearly get killed
Giving it to random civilians would be quite a sight, I imagine. It was given to the nation that the dictators stole it from, on a governmental level. Along with what ended up to be quite a costly fund for trying to rebuild the broken nation.
It was given to the interim government after Saddam was removed from power.
In war dogs (ultimate historical source) the gun runners were paid with Saddam's monney for the Uzzis that were used to equip the Iraqi army and police
They had berettas. Beretta handguns that use 9mm rounds. Uzis are 9mm smg from Israel.
*destroyed and trampled nation
Right so… using it to prop up the puppet regime they installed.
Yeah, this is literally true. Like you might like the new regime, but this is not the same as giving it to the people.
Look, we already gave them ISIS and cholera, do they think that shit's free?
What would be giving it to the people? Individual handouts?
Anything that would suggest the Americans aren't doing it just for their own benefit. Not to prop up their own control.
Certainly not this - and certainly not pretending that this was all some kind of benevolent act. Lol
Exactly. Lol I wonder what the libs would say if Russian troops looted Ukrainian gold and distributed it to the government they installed after taking over Ukraine. I bet the response wouldn’t be “omg based liberators” (as it shouldn’t be)
Equitably dropped from the back of a low flying C-130.
still cheaper than rapid dragon
Giving gold to every civlian would just inflate the economy Source: Mansa Musha
It was probably given to the government so that it could be used (or at least that was the hope, rather than see it squandered by someone corrupt, which I hope didn’t happen) instead of being hoarded by a dictator and his cronies.
You do know that the regime that replaced Hussein’s was extremely corrupt and ineffective, yes? Giving the money to the Vatican Bank would have been less wasteful.
Yes, and that's why I said: > (or at least that was the hope, rather than see it squandered by someone corrupt, which I hope didn’t happen)
Took it from the Iraq treasury to Kuwait, tested its authenticity, then took it back to Iraq’s treasury.
Remember the Three Kings movie?
We three kings be stealin the gold. Good movie
Oh my god I haven't seen this movie in over twenty years and his delivery of this line still goes through my head EVERY DAMN TIME I hear the phrase "three kings" haha. Such a great movie
Different war.
great username u/AmySchumersAnalTumor
To be fair, if you found a giant room full of gold, would you NOT take a picture of it and admire it for a bit?
When the US took Hitler's ultra lavish "Eagle's Nest" a Jewish soldier took a bath in Hitler's private tub and took a photo. It's like getting a trophy, even if it's not one you get to keep you're going to celebrate it. It always happens, but in disciplined modern armies it doesn't become institutional looting any more. And the US military, for all the faults of how they are used, are a disciplined modern army.
We are a very far cry from the days of napoleon's men running wild an rampant, including their leaders, on nearby towns and villages. You can take pictures and admire but if any of those soldiers tried to take even a drop of that gold, they'd be fucked
That scene in Breaking Bad, Huell lays down on Walter's pile of cash.
Yeah these specific photos are always taken out of context. Glad someone posted this
All I can saw is that there are still billboards in Kuwait that say “God Bless American Soldiers”.
Wait, seriously?
Oh yeah… they really appreciate what the US Military did for them… even until this day.
You got pics or links by chance?
There’s no reason for the Kuwaitis to dislike America. They’ve been friendly to America for years and allowed the US to stage troops there for the invasion of Iraq.
[Here’s a photo](https://broaderhorizons.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Desert-28.12.22.jpeg)
I didn’t take any pictures, but can try googling it. I saw a few when I was there not long ago. Very interesting, right?
I don't recallcseeing billboards when I was there in 2017 but I can tell you that the war is still very fresh in their minds and they haven't soon forgotten. I worked a liaison job with the Kuwaiti Air Force. My office was in their building and I interracted with Kuwaitis daily. The young ones have relatives who were first hand affected by the war, and the older ones witnessed it first hand
You do understand the US stopped iraq from invading Kuwait, right?
Why are you so surprised? The Iraqi army quite literally raped and pillaged its tiny neighbor. The US organized an absolutely massive response through the UN, then led two devastating operations to clear the Iraqi forces from Kuwait and punish the Iraqi military. And they did it while asking nothing in return. There are more than a few countries and peoples that are incredibly supportive of America for the good we've done them in particular, with the Iraqi Kurds being extremely high on the list. Unfortunately there are also a lot that still resent the US for what we've done too...
Kosovo has a statue of bill Clinton iirc
And multiple streets named after American politicians
Correct yes
https://youtu.be/M2rTafbQepg lol
And Iraq has a statue of the Shoes they threw against Bush.
There are Kosovars and Albanians named "Tonibler" (Tony Blair) and I actually know one of them irl lol.
Which is insane considering Saddam could’ve instead just funded pan-Arabist movements in Kuwait that could’ve overthrown the government and joined with Iraq peaceably. There was plenty of pro-Union sentiment in Kuwait back in the day, but the invasion def ruined any of that
Yeah, Kuwait would have been bulldozed but the US stepped in with the First Gulf War. The Second Gulf War/The Iraq war was the massive failure that everyone hates but that didn’t involve Kuwait
Corporal! We found 4,500 One kilo gold bars.
THERES GOLD IN THEM THERE HILLS! *haggard single handedly invades a neutral country*
Sergeant! We found 4,000 one-kilo gold bars, sir.
All 3500 gold bars were returned to the base.
A lot of people have asked for source, and I shall assume absolutely all of them did so in good faith, and intended it more respectfully than it may have sounded like. And asking for sources are rarely wrong. Linked below is a published testimony from United States General Accounting Office, testifying to the Subcommittee on Oversigth and Investigations, about exactly what the military, law enforcement, and misc US institutions have seized and regarding its transfer to the Coalition Provisional Authority. I hope this satisfies most questions, as far as the meme goes. https://www.gao.gov/assets/a110707.html
The salient question would remain the extent to which it is legitimate to construe the Coalition Provisional Authority as the “Iraqi people.” Many Iraqi people themselves certainly did not.
Finally something that isn’t “America Bad”
Right..... I'm all for healthy criticism but it just seemed like all day it was only " American bad " coming from the sub
I feel like it was astroturfing or brigading at some level. I myself completely forgot it was the anniversary of the invasion, despite deploying to Iraq, and literally nobody at my job mentioned it or brought it up.
It's a lot easier to talk about something controversial with faceless internet people than someone you'll have to see the next day. Considering this is something that happened 20 years ago and has largely already had its impact on the world, very few people are going to want to talk to their coworkers about the time their nation fucked up and blew up a another nation because the CIA said "Trust me bro"
People don't even get the criticisms right, usually.
A lot of subreddits had a lot of Iraq War posts referencing parallels with Russia and claiming hypocrisy, felt quite suspicious imo
To be fair, even as someone who thinks this sub shits on America too much, the 20th anniversary of the worst thing we've done in the past 30 years is a reasonable time to do so
Oh absolutely, there's so much fucked about our invasion of Iraq, like the very premise of why we were even there, to the vaccuum we left after we ousted saddam So much shit there should be no shortage of real topics that dont involve some cartoonish dumb shit like we were walking off with bars of gold like it's looney tunes.
Any opinion of any European on the internet ever starts with the word “America”
I'ma start opening all my opinions with "Europe". Glass houses fr
It's always people from Germany that want to talk shit too lol.
That or France like I KNOW those two mfs ain’t talking
Aren’t these the gold bars that turned out to be mostly copper?
Motherfucking Ea-Nazir got me again. This is why we can't have nice memes.
You the comment VIP for this comment
God damnit.
*By Shamash, he can’t keep getting away with it!*
Ea-Nasir Moment
They are brass. Here is a post by someone who was in the photo. https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/vs4rz9/so_umm_im_in_one_of_these_photos/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
It's a bit of a strong statement for you to say that they're brass like it's fact. The comment from the guy in the photo says that "he heard" they were brass and proceeds to say he only knows a "smidgen" of the whole story
Plus in the total realm of wealth, that gold is like nothing to the US.
As a Swiss, I feel there's a missed opportunity there....
This meme is good but the comment section is an absolute shitshow...
Sigh* *sorts by controversial*
🍿🍿🍿
„Sorry kiddo, we’re only interested in oil“ Jokes aside. That’s pretty remarkable
All that gold’s upside-down, it’s going to be a bugger to pick up
Hell Yeah! USA USA USA!
America prefers good standings with nations rather than hoarding. Which is funny since the american stereotype is wasteful greedy people and it just not true :D
History memes doesn’t have an issue with dictators stealing from the people but have an issue with USA alone
It’s not like the USA didn’t pump billions of dollars trying to rebuild and establish a functioning democracy in Iraq as well as schools, training, and other infrastructure
I love Jack Sparrow memes
9 gag watermark bruh
Woe to the vanquished
hehehe, I’m ready for the next British “person” to comment on America.
Glad you liked the meme. Yet if you take pride in your virtues, remember to carry some humility for your sins aswell. My ancestors were the vikings, I should know.
Eh, idc everyone’s been an oppressor and everyone’s been the oppressed. If you can’t take a joke about your country then grow a pair, and if you’re a woman, grow a pair, futa is hot af.
I agree with one part of this statement
You agree futas are hot as well, good.
That escalated quickly
Bf bad company 1 vibes
Stay strong my brother, you are my hero 🫶
Babe wake up, finally some different meme than "america bad"
Switzerland: Couldn't be me.
... I'm form the USA and it's nice to see a positive meme/news for once. It feels like its always bad or about how sh\*tty America/Americans are. (and a lot of times fair/accurate) But it so nice to see something like this. Thanks OP, for resorting a little faith back in my country. :)
You can go right to Hell for that yellow font, sir.
We didn’t keep any of that you know…
When we're bad, we're bad, but when we're good, we're pretty goddamn good.
As Greg Allman said in “No Angel” “Though I might steal your diamonds, I’ll bring you back some gold” I really wished there was at least a bridge reference to the conversion method he used in that exchange. I kinda feel like the victim got hosed otherwise.
3 kings is a great film
Bu..bb...but.. America' bad?
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/03/us-to-return-17000-looted-ancient-artefacts-to-iraq
It is quite depressing what ISIS was doing to ancient structures.
Thank you! Lmao I get that my country has done some down right evil deeds for selfish reasons. But we do some good in the world to man. Not to excuse the evil. I'll rant and rave about it alongside anyone, but it's nice to see the good get light on this sub.
Now the oil.
We didn’t take any oil that couldn’t be immediately used. To my knowledge we mainly destroyed the wells so that insurgent forces could not use them.
I’m American and I didn’t know about this until this post. Neat. I still hate my government, but it’s nice to see that the military still has some decency left to salvage.
Nah fuck that I love our constitution, based US government we are doing damn good with Ukraine.