during the Iran-Iraq war, were the Iranian troops greeted as "liberators"?

[arcane1]

just wondering :shrug:

I mean, the Iranian army surely wanted a "regime change" in Iraq, right? And Saddam was still an evil (though U.S.-backed) bastard at the time, and apparently (according to Too-stupid-to-eat-a-pretzel) the Iraqis don't care WHO drops bombs on them, as long as it isn't Saddam....

this rhetorical question is based on a conversation yesterday w/a friend, claiming that the Iraqis are evil, basically, for shooting back at us. It seems the Iranian case was "different" in some vague and ill-defined way.

I'd think that from the point of view of your average Iraqi family, bombs are bombs, and there is no damned difference whatsoever who is dropping them, they kill just the same...

[GRClarkesq]

1. Which Iraqis?

I can see the Shia Iraqis in southern Iraq maybe being happy to see Iranians due to the common religion and that Saddam kept his thumb on the Shia.

Also, did the Iranian ever get far enought to "liberate" any Iraqis?

[arcane1]

3. whichever ones were supposed to be throwing flowers at us...

from the rhetoric I assumed they expected ALL Iraqis to do so...

and the argument can easily be made that we haven't "iberated" any of them, either. There is a lot of barbed-wire, roadblocks, checkpoints, detentions, searches, etc, going on over there right now, and doesn't look like anything I would call "lierated"

and the Iraqis damned sure don't think they are

[lib13]

2. Not sure but....

I know that Saddam started that war with Iran after the Ayatollah (sp?) took over. Saddam was not a religious guy until the last couple of years, he was afraid of the religious Shi'ites in his own country. The entire war was a stalemate and thousands of people died on both sides.

Most Iraqis welcome us and still do, they are glad to have Saddam gone but they are very frustrated at the lack of electricity, jobs, stable government, etc...One good thing about Saddam was that he ran a tight ship. When we got in there it all fell apart and now we have to build it back up.

[arcane1]

4. "Most Iraqis welcome us and still do"

and this is based on what...?

we've killed what, 10's of thousands of civilains, each of whom has family out there somewhere that I doubt are happy to see American boots on their streets

and the 100's of thousands that dies from Gulf War #1 and the ensuing sanctions?

I'm afraid I have little confidence in the word "most" in that respect. "Most" Iraqis know someone who has been killed by Americans

[lib13]

6. okay maybe not most...

I looked up a poll, this is from September, it is pretty mixed. I don't know how much it has changed from then.

Via Yahoo! News, 62% in Bagdhad think ousting Saddam was worth the hardships, 67% think things will be better in 5 years than before the war. 47% think they're currently worse off though while 33% think they're currently better off.

"Most" Iraqis know someone who has been killed by Americans

True but ALL know someone killed by Saddam.

[arcane1]

10. ah, a poll

they have been so reliable lately, that I trust ANY poll put out by Bushco and the "librul" media, especially when it re-enforces their bullshit claims...

[Columbia]

12. Check out

the Gallup Baghdad Poll (use google to find articles on it, you have to pay to see the articles directly from Gallup.com). Gallup is probably the most reputable poller out there, so I hope if there is a poll you would trust, it'd be Gallup.

[Terwilliger]

7. See a film entitled "Hidden Wars of Desert Storm"

It explains claerly that Iraq and Iran had just patched up relations before Saddam invaded.

Saddam got instructions to attack Iran...there's no doubt.

[Art_from_Ark]

14. Just patched up relations?

Somehow, I doubt that. The Iranian Revolution had just deposed the secular but unpopular dictator of Iran and replaced him with a religious fanatic whose equally fanatic followers had pledged to spread their revolution throughout the Islamic world. Since Saddam himself was the secular but unpopular dictator of an Islamic country that was not only one of Iran's neighbors but also had a majority ethnic group that had close ties with the Iranians, he knew his butt was on the line. Any "patching up" of relations was, in all likelihood, an attempt to buy time.

[Terwilliger]

5. That's a great point

If Saddam was a bad guy who needed to be toppled because he was a dictator, wasn't Iran fighting the good fight?

Iran is our hero!

[lib13]

8. Saddam was our 'friend' back then...

We backed Saddam against Iran because we thought Saddam was the lesser of two evils.

[Terwilliger]

13. no...we backed Saddam because he would keep the pressure on Iran

not because we thought he was "less evil"

[jpak]

9. Saddam started that war to sieze Iranian oil fields

near the Faw Peninsula

It was not an Iranian-led war of liberation for the I-raqi people.

As the result of US sanctions against Iran, and US material support for Saddam's naked unprovoked aggression, Iran suffered horrendous causalties - both military and civilian.
Stalemate was the best they could hope to achieve.

It's also telling that the Reagan administration blamed the infamous gas attacks on Halabja on the Evil Iranians. (wasn't Colin Powell National Security Advisor then????)

So yeah - so it's sort like a special case of Republikan policies that prolonged a horrific bloody war and backed the wrong side.

All of which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of I-raqis and Iranians (as well as 37 US sailors aboard the USS Stark - killed by Saddam).

Thank you very much Reagan and Poppy.

[ctex]

11. The Iranians were usually liberating their own territory

Most of the war was fought on Iranian territory. Consequently, most of the areas liberated by the Iraniana were their own cities and towns.