Remember Fallujah? Shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US military
fired on unarmed protestors, killing as many as 20 and wounding dozens. In
retaliation, local Iraqis attacked a convoy of US military contractors, killing
four. The US then launched a full attack on Fallujah to regain control, which
left perhaps 700 Iraqis dead and the city virtually destroyed.
According to press reports last weekend, Fallujah is now under the control
of al-Qaeda affiliates. The Anbar province, where Fallujah is located, is under
siege by al-Qaeda. During the 2007 "surge," more than 1,000 US troops were
killed "pacifying" the Anbar province. Although al-Qaeda was not in Iraq before
the US invasion, it is now conducting its own surge in Anbar.
For Iraq, the US "liberation" is proving far worse than the authoritarianism
of Saddam Hussein, and it keeps getting worse. Last year was Iraq's deadliest
in five years. In 2013, fighting and bomb blasts claimed the lives of 7,818
civilians and 1,050 members of the security forces. In December alone nearly
a thousand people were killed.
I remember sitting through many hearings in the House International Relations
Committee praising the "surge," which we were told secured a US victory in
Iraq. They also praised the so-called "Awakening," which was really an agreement
by insurgents to stop fighting in exchange for US dollars. I always wondered
what would happen when those dollars stopped coming.
Where are the surge and awakening cheerleaders now?
One of them, Richard Perle, was interviewed last year on NPR and asked whether
the Iraq invasion that he pushed was worth it. He replied:
I've got to say I think that is not a reasonable question. What we did at
the time was done in the belief that it was necessary to protect this nation.
You can't a decade later go back and say, well, we shouldn't have done that.
Many of us were saying all along that we shouldn't have done that - before
we did it. Unfortunately the Bush Administration took the advice of the neocons
pushing for war and promising it would be a "cakewalk." We continue to see
the results of that terrible mistake, and it is only getting worse.
Last month the US shipped nearly a hundred air-to-ground missiles to the Iraqi
air force to help combat the surging al-Qaeda. Ironically, the same al-Qaeda
groups the US is helping the Iraqis combat are benefiting from the US covert
and overt war to overthrow Assad next door in Syria. Why can't the US government
learn from its mistakes?
The neocons may be on the run from their earlier positions on Iraq, but that
does not mean they have given up. They were the ones pushing for an attack
on Syria this summer. Thankfully they were not successful. They are now making
every effort to derail President Obama's efforts to negotiate with the Iranians.
Just last week William Kristol urged Israel to attack Iran with the hope we
would then get involved. Neoconservative Senators from both parties recently
introduced the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, which would also bring
us back on war-footing with Iran.
Next time the neocons tell us we must attack, just think "Iraq."
