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, including some 40,000 stranded on
a mountain, 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 only about 2,000 were on the mountain
and many of them had been living there 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?
