Iraq Lacks Key Freedoms, and No Redemption For U.S. War Hawks
March 29, 2023—In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, the atmosphere in Washington, D.C. was like a giant groupthink exercise. Most people knew it was an illegal war and the Bush administration’s claims about chemical weapons were shaky at best. But they dared not counter the president’s position.
President George W. Bush had a “freedom agenda,” and that agenda made him susceptible to treachery and manipulation. His administration became convinced that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction, and they became determined to make that belief become a truth that needed to be corrected.
Intelligence Battle
Inside Washington, it wasn’t just an intelligence failure. It was an intelligence battle. The CIA quietly battled behind the scenes as the Defense intelligence agency pushed an agenda and phony narrative. DOD rallied behind an ex-Iraqi named Ahmed Chalabi.
Chalabi had a personal and vested interest: Iraq’s oil. He spent years in London and Washington, D.C. forging documents about Iraq’s alleged weapons program. And he was determined to overthrow Saddam using American and British manpower and resources.
The CIA, State Department, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew Chalabi was a bad asset. But that didn’t matter to the war hawks in DOD who wanted Saddam Hussein out. The regime-change camp was led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board Chair Richard Perle, and it ultimately won.
Media Cheerleading
In the buildup to the war, most of the U.S. media acted more like cheerleaders for the U.S. government’s assertions. TV and print reporters signed up to be embedded with the military as it fought. Judith Miller cited unnamed administration officials in her New York Times articles about Saddam Hussein‘s so-called quest for nuclear weapons and holdings of chemical and biological weapons. It’s interesting that some of the information she and Michael Gordon relayed in September 2002 came directly from Iranian intelligence. And, while they acknowledged as much in their article, that didn’t seem to arouse any question of trust at the time. The drumbeats for war were that strong.
For those too young to know or too old to remember, no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq.
‘Shock and Awe’
Just days before the war, I attended an event where then-House GOP Leader Tom DeLay told a conference full of accountants to get ready to enjoy the sights and sounds of the war. It’s going to be a show you won’t want to miss, he said. The Bush administration and neoconservative allies in Washington were proud they would finally get to display U.S. military might. They’d called it “Shock and Awe.”
For the reporters who got the story right—namely, Knight Ridder’s Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, it was a lonesome path. Their story was later illustrated by movie director Rob Reiner.
Those who got the story wrong “paid no price for their failures,” FAIR reported.
Cool To Be For ‘Free’
As the war started and U.S. victories were quick to come, influence peddlers in DC aligned themselves with the wins. They pushed their agendas for tax cuts and other domestic policies on Capitol Hill, saying they’d ride the wave of wartime fervor. Meanwhile, Bush administration officials had already planned for a post-war Iraq. They said it would be a free country. It would even have a flat tax—something U.S. conservatives had long desired. Moreover, they promised U.S. senators the war would pay for itself once oil revenues could be tapped. When senators later found out they’d be stuck with the costs, they fumed, mostly in private.
But in the run-up to war, it was all a go. Capitol Hill stirred with activity as if that would make the illegality of it easier to stomach. It was, after all, for “freedom.” In the public sphere, it was for democracy, not oil.
Notably, the new Iraq would be a beacon for freedom and a model for the rest of the Middle East, if not the world. But events didn’t turn out that way.
The Costs of War
Soon after George W. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” on a U.S. Navy ship in May 2003, sectarian conflicts and insurgency erupted in Iraq. The banner statement that Bush waived that day carried a message to the world that America gets in and gets out. U.S. enemies and adversaries took note.
Soon, U.S. soldiers were drawn in closer. It would take more than the shock and awe of missiles. It would take on-the-ground fighting and door-to-door searches. Instability kept U.S. soldiers engaged off and on until 2011. One could argue, it still keeps the U.S. military in the Middle East.
All told the impact of the war was devastating for many U.S. and U.K. soldiers who fought it and many Iraqis who lived it or didn’t survive at all. The costs of the war were immense. In short, it led to the following:
- The U.S. military became distracted from containing extremism in Afghanistan. It turned the U.S. “War on Terror” into an unwinnable nation-building exercise spanning multiple countries.
- Approximately 400,000 Iraqis died due to conflict between 2003-2011. (WaPo March 20, 2018)
- It led to 9.2 million Iraqi refugees or internally displaced people. (Brown University)
- The U.S. Dept. of Defense lost 4,431 people, including civilian casualties between 2003-2011. (DOD)
- U.S. financial costs added up to $1.79 trillion (not including future veterans’ care) plus $1.1 trillion (including an obligation for future veterans’ medical and disability care) (Brown University)
- It led to sectarian conflict in Iraq, the rise of the so-called “Islamic State” terror group known as Daesh, and subsequent destabilization in Syria.
- It gave Iran political influence and control of Iraq.
It’s not all negative. The U.S.-government-funded U.S. Institute of Peace said in 2020, “For all its turbulence, Iraq’s transition produced some positive changes. Iraq reintegrated into regional and international forums. The number of media outlets increased dramatically. The long-repressed citizenry became politically active.”
Iraq ‘Not Free’
On the 20th anniversary of the U.S. Operation Iraqi Freedom, many media outlets made note of the spirit of freedom. For example, NBC Nightly News reported about street vending and dancing in Baghdad. It only briefly mentioned that Iran now has significant influence over the government.
Still, is it a “free” country? Is Iraq now free?
Not according to Freedom House, a U.S.-funded think tank. Although the country holds “regular, competitive elections” and provides representation to various political and religious groups, its “democratic governance is impeded in practice by corruption, militias operating outside the bounds of the law, and the weakness of formal institutions.”
New Era Of ‘Truth’
Other outlets, however, reported on the failures of the war and of the media’s reporting. What’s more, The Guardian published an opinion piece by Moustafa Bayoumi crediting the 2003 US-Iraq war—and, notably, not former President Donald Trump— for ushering in a post-truth era.
“The Iraq war ushered in a style of politics where truth is, at best, an inconvenience,” Bayoumi writes. Long before Trump was president, ” we were already living in a post-truth world, one created in part by an established media willing and able to amplify government lies.”
Global Instability
Aside from internal issues of truth and justice in the United States, the decision by then-President Bush to invade a sovereign country without a resolution of support by the U.N. Security Council has greater implications. Most notably, it led to a devastating era in international relations and rule of law. One only needs to look at Russia’s actions against Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, and of Ukraine in 2022 to see the reverberations of an illegal war.
The international order is broken. The question now is, what do we do about it?
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