I vividly remember the First Persian Gulf war, mostly because it was the first war which was widely followed and televised by a then still relatively new cable news company called CNN, they focused on the sheer military spectacle of showing Tomahawk missile launches, stealth bombers, tanks and grainy TV missile strikes in Iraq. At the time I thought it was good thing to do, to attack nation and punish it for it's despotic actions against its own people. Youthful, idealistic and very naive I believed strongly in interventionism.
I also believed very strongly in the ideals behind the formation of the UN.
Over the years my understanding of geopolitics and military policy grew, through understanding of Soviet advances into Afghanistan, the 2nd world war and numerous other conflicts. I saw that most military actions are not carried out for ideals of freedom or overthrowing despotic rulers.
But I still believed in interventionism as a way to 'free' a nation from a tyrannically ruler, reinforced by seeing such a person take power within my own nation in Central Asia and countries around Central Africa where I lived at the time.
Seeing wars sprout out while the international world set on it's hands and watched made me angry, I wondered why military intervention doesn't take place in places like Somalia and Rwanda. Somalia was eventually addressed haphazardly as a humanitarian AID mission first, a military operation a far distant second, with limited ROE and slim political support from the Clinton Whitehouse and International world. It underestimated the Somalian people and paid for it in American lives, with some of it's own troops dragged through the streets. Post Somalia there was no space for intervention in Rwanda, the US kept away, European powers sent limited forces. All in all the Rwanda people entered a ethnic civil war of barbaric proportions. The UN set on its hands because no one wanted to get involved in what they regarded as a insignificant nation with internal problems. It was disheartening.
Then 9/11 occurred, I knew the US government would most definitely cease its containment of terrorism policy in Afghanistan and take a far keener interest in Central Asia as a whole.
I supported the war in Afghanistan, I felt that the SF approach of letting the Northern Alliance lead the way with US over watch and NATO support was indicative of how military intervention should be carried out. I knew it wouldn't work totally because a nation that has been at war with itself for close to 30 years takes decades to recover, political intervention by other Central Asian nations and proxy Cold war conflicts saw to that. But I still have hope.
The Iraq war was a far difficult proposition, unilateral intervention, lack of concrete allies, superceding UN policy; all this after leaving after 1991, with no support for the rebel movement that Bush Senior himself urged to "Rise up against Saddam". While I supported righting the wrong, I also thought it was pure suicide at the same time akin to dumping a girlfriend to her abusive father and then coming back years later to resuce her again.
I knew the reasons behind going to Iraq were wrong, but if the case was built properly with international support it would be far easier to support what basically is an invasion of a soverign nation. We all know how it was played and what the consequences have become.
We have seen over the last year and a half abuses and uprisings in Burma, Tibet, Darfur and Georgia. The whole wordl is again sititing on its hands, the UN is quickly becoming as insignificant as the League of Nations before it. The Security Council is a hotly played Poker face game between super powers with totally different agendas and viewpoints.
With the actions in Iraq and now Georgia the policy of interventionism is completely shelved for a long time. I don't think this is completely good idea. The US was wrong in going at it alone under compeltely dubious and false reasons, but it gave Russia the impetus to essentially do the same in Southern Assetia. The US cannot even criticize the Russian actions because it would bring up the reasons for going into Iraq, a dialog the government as a whole wants to avoid taking place in main stream media.
I still believe that balanced, planned, multilateral peace keeping force can be a force for democractic change in nations where there is conflict. I hope that multilateral peace kepping force gone emerge under a more focused and concrete UN structure.
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