Iraq’s wounds do not heal in the USA

Neither the slip, nor the truth it hides, nor its protagonist is a subject that can and should be taken as a joke. war in 2003 chose to throw The then president of the United States was inaugurated multiple wounds In Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Also, across the international community and within the United States. Many, 20 years later, just They didn’t heal, but they leaked.

a real way to brand them responsibility that never comes. There was not even a resignation at the top of the Bush administration. After his inauguration, Congress had neither a trial nor a mere commission of inquiry. Not even when it was confirmed that it was. WRONG The premises on which the invasion was justified: Allegations of Saddam Hussein being linked to terrorists in Iraq September 11 or nonexistent weapons of mass destruction program (tried justify as intelligence failures). When neocon dream of “developing and building” turned to democracy nightmare. or when savagery waves torture They entered the handbook approved by Washington, as written by Juan Cole, a professor of history in Michigan, USA, who would also create the Guantánamo prison. “lost moral compass”.

External and internal heritage

The country hasn’t just seen it since Complex politics in the Middle East and one erosion of the effect there, now a fact when confirmed Chinese Helping to negotiate an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. he left one legacy of instability. He also touched reliabilityand her image in the global arena.

With this war To strike a blow to the sovereignty of a country, the rules-based international order and the United Nations convention, without whose support he intervened. Thus, it reinforced the suspicions of much of the world and the so-called global south. fertilized the soil like this Vladimir Putin talk about now hypocrisy or double standards When Washington uses these arguments to denounce the invasion and war in Ukraine. As the saying goes “Countries have memories” Josep Borrell.

Within the US, this war contributed to: undermine confidence in government (From 57% to 20% in 20 years) political class, in institutions or in the mediamany gave up their posts while their influence on the internet and social networks did not diminish and contributed to the spread of propaganda that permeated much of the world before the invasion began. population i already have fear And desire for revenge after 9/11.

bushes it was re-elected In 2004, even when the country had seen pictures of it before Abu Graibpartially assisted by others wars, cultural, then focused on conservative opposition to same-sex marriage. When he left the White House in 2008 after a troop increase in Iraq in 2007, triggered partisan polarization and extremismgaps that have only deepened since then.

No support for war Hillary Clinton maybe he wouldn’t have lost his primaries barack obamaAfter officially ending the war in 2011, He sent troops again in 2014 To fight the Islamic State. Today There are 2,500 soldiers in Iraq and 900 in Syria. (Obama, under the weight of the Iraq war, authorized the use of chemical weapons, which he marked as responsible. Red line, showing US undecided to act precisely against other attackers).

embers

Without the repercussions of that war, in addition to more than one half a million direct Iraqi victims to give permission 4,599 US soldiers dead, over 32,000 injured in action and tens of thousands more with sequelae sanityand cost calculated about two trillion dollarss will not fully understand Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. He surrounded the Republican Party with an inward-looking perspective, moving from its classical postulates in favor of a robust, interventionist and militaristic foreign policy. populist nationalism And there the education continues.

Listen to Trump, the presidential candidate once again today, or see his potential rival Ron DeSantis talk about war Ukraine like land dispute“And look at Congress, where the anti-intervention wing is growing in numbers. Inquiry calls that continue to help Kiev. This Friday, the Republican leader of the Lower House majority, Kevin McCarthy, did not even guarantee that, 20 years after the war in Iraq, he will put the bill proposed and put forward in the Senate this week to a vote. 2002 Use of Military Force, in which Congress waives its responsibilities and gives Bush full authority.

“turn the page”

One of the problems in the USA is forgetfulness. Washington lives on as Heather Conley, head of the German Marshall Fund, describes it: “persistent historical amnesia“Both Obama of his time and Joe BidenThe USA, which put a more chaotic end to another war that Bush started in Afghanistan, in their presidency “turn the page” It’s about Iraq. Biden directly tore that page while denouncing Vladimir Putin’s war in a speech in Poland after visiting Kiev last month, and without blushing said: “The idea that more than 100,000 troops will invade another country… It’s happened since World War II.” And Bush and Dick CheneyHE they never showed remorse or remorse and what he sees politically and through the media, as he continues to defend his decisions. the image has been greatly restored, Even when compared to the Trump Administration. It is not surprising that some of the public is outraged. elite impunity

Some, like David Frum, who wrote Bush’s speeches at the time and now writes for ‘Atlantic’, are calling for war on this anniversary. “It was a serious and costly mistake”. But more is needed to close the wounds. “The country cannot move forward without looking back. Stephen Wertheim, a Columbia professor, wrote in “Foreign Affairs.”

Wertheim believes in what he has learned.”some lessons believes it is necessary. not enough. “Faced with the rise of China and the aggression of Russia, the United States has found a new purpose for its global power. But if it applies to its rivals the same desire for dominance it brought to a much weaker country, Iraq, the consequences are serious. ‘The next Iraq’ could well take the form of a war between powers“, wrote an expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

current time and date

For more and more Americans (62% in 2019, according to a Pew Center poll), the Iraq war was not worth fighting. In another more recent survey by the More in Common group and YouGov, 30% still say it’s justified, and 31% say it makes the US safer. However, only one in four interviewees said that they think about this war sometimes or often. One in five think it has changed their life. This most could not name the five events of that war. And for many, especially the youngest, the war in Iraq is increasingly becoming a distant memory, even history.