We have been at war with Iraq for 24 years, starting with Operations Desert
Shield and Storm in 1990. Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait that year, the
propaganda machine began agitating for a US attack on Iraq. We all remember the
appearance before Congress of a young Kuwaiti woman claiming that the Iraqis
were ripping Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The woman turned out to be the
daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and the story was false, but it was
enough to turn US opposition in favor of an attack.
This month, yet
another US president – the fifth in a row – began bombing Iraq. He is also
placing in US troops on the ground despite promising not to do so.
The
second Iraq war in 2003 cost the US some two trillion dollars. According to
estimates, more than one million deaths have occurred as a result of that war.
Millions of tons of US bombs have fallen in Iraq almost steadily since
1991.
What have we accomplished? Where are we now, 24 years later? We
are back where we started, at war in Iraq!
The US overthrew Saddam
Hussein in the second Iraq war and put into place a puppet, Nouri al-Maliki. But
after eight years, last week the US engineered a coup against Maliki to put in
place yet another puppet. The US accused Maliki of misrule and divisiveness, but
what really irritated the US government was his 2011 refusal to grant immunity
to the thousands of US troops that Obama wanted to keep in the country.
Early this year, a radical Islamist group, ISIS, began taking over
territory in Iraq, starting with Fallujah. The organization had been operating
in Syria, strengthened by US support for the overthrow of the Syrian government.
ISIS obtained a broad array of sophisticated US weapons in Syria, very often
capturing them from other US-approved opposition groups. Some claim that lax
screening criteria allowed some ISIS fighters to even participate in secret CIA
training camps in Jordan and Turkey.
This month, ISIS became the target
of a new US bombing campaign in Iraq. The pretext for the latest US attack was
the plight of a religious minority in the Kurdish region currently under ISIS
attack. The US government and media warned that up to 100,000 from this group
were stranded on a mountain and could be slaughtered if the US did not intervene
at once. Americans unfortunately once again fell for this propaganda and US
bombs began to fall. Last week, however, it was determined that this 100,000 was
actually only about 2,000 and many of them had been living on the mountain for
years! They didn’t want to be rescued!
This is not to say that the
plight of many of these people is not tragic, but why is it that the US
government did not say a word when three out of four Christians were forced out
of Iraq during the ten year US occupation? Why has the US said nothing about the
Christians slaughtered by its allies in Syria? What about all the Palestinians
killed in Gaza or the ethnic Russians killed in east Ukraine?
The
humanitarian situation was cynically manipulated by the Obama administration --
and echoed by the US media -- to provide a reason for the president to attack
Iraq again. This time it was about yet another regime change, breaking Kurdistan
away from Iraq and protection of the rich oil reserves there, and acceptance of
a new US military presence on the ground in the country.
President Obama
has started another war in Iraq and Congress is completely silent. No
declaration, no authorization, not even a debate. After 24 years we are back
where we started. Isn’t it about time to re-think this failed interventionist
policy? Isn’t it time to stop trusting the government and its war propaganda?
Isn’t it time to leave Iraq alone?
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