The Iraq Retrospective We Deserve

U.S. Soldiers from Echo Company, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 172nd Infantry Brigade 

prepare to clear a room in a joint training exercise near Bahbahani, Iraq, on June 4. 

(Photo: Kim Smith / US Army)

 

 By Anthony DiMaggio

 

March 19, 2003 marked the 10^th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.  For those who remember those polarizing days, it doesn’t seem like so long ago, although I’m constantly reminded of how much time has passed every day when I lecture with my 18 year old students who were just eight years old at the time of the invasion.  Sadly, the youngest generation of American adults remembers little about this war in light of the failure to promote critical awareness in our K-12 educational system.  University professors have hardly fared any better from what I’ve seen, as most seem preoccupied with esoteric research of limited practical utility.  When it comes to teaching, most professors avoid controversy or engagement in real world politics like the plague.

 

America’s critical awareness of the Iraq war hasn’t been helped along by the mass media either, which prefers to remember Iraq as a noble mistake.  This much was apparent in the New York Times’ March 19 retrospective news analysis and editorial.   One the one hand, the memory of Iraq has been nearly erased from political-media discourse.  In a news story titled “Iraq War’s 10^th Anniversary is Barely Noted in Washington,” the Times reported on the “conspiracy of silence” in which “Republicans and Democrats agreed” in in the run-up to the anniversary “that they did not really want to talk about the Iraq war.  Neither party had much interest in revisiting what succeeded and what failed, who was right and who was wrong.  The bipartisan consensus underscored the broader national mood: after 10 years, America seems happy to wash its hand of Iraq.”

 

This point is true.  Americans from what I’ve seen do seem happy to move on from the terrible, criminal affair that was the invasion and occupation of Iraq.  But the wrong lessons were being drawn from the New York Times’ story, as it merely focused on the failure to assess “what succeeded and what failed.”  This limited criticism in retrospect was reaffirmed in the New York Times’ March 19 editorial, in which the paper wrote that “none of the Bush administration’s war architects have been called to account for their mistakes, and even now, many are invited to speak on policy issues as if they were not responsible for one of the worst strategic blunders in American foreign policy.”  It’s not that I disagree with the Times’ assessment of the war.  This had to be one of the most incompetent occupations in world history, considering the colossal ignorance that was at play in invading a country on the brink of collapse after decades of war and sanctions imposed and supported by the United States.  It was extraordinarily naïve to assume that the government, military, and police forces of Iraq could be dissolved under “de-bathification,” and that there would be little to no security risks associated with this action.  Quite the opposite was true, as the dissolution of Iraq sparked a civil war and terrible ethnic-sectarian violence.  The U.S. disenfranchisement of former government and military officers – coupled with the continuation of an unwanted and extremely violent military occupation – meant the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s government and military apparatus would have plenty of time to target and kill American forces.  Coupled with the deterioration of Iraq after years of sanctions and criminal U.S. bombing of Iraq’s military infrastructure during the first Gulf War in 1991, the dissolution of any recognizable government carried with it very real dangers considering the latent ethnic-sectarian tensions that had built up during the Hussein years.  As part of the Sunni minority in Iraq, Hussein had long favored this group and violently suppressed and terrorized the Shia majority, as well as the Kurds....

Sadly, I have not seen a single polling question asked in the last ten years that measured whether Americans thought the war in Iraq was imperialist or not.  The question of whether the war was a “well-intentioned mistake” or “fundamentally wrong and immoral” has never appeared once in the national discourse when it comes to public opinion surveys.   Polls that might have questioned whether the U.S. invaded Iraq primarily for its massive oil reserves seldom materialized because the answers would have been too damning to report in a country where the political discussion revolved around whether the war was just and necessary or a noble mistake....

The 10-year anniversary of the Iraq war should be remembered as a teachable moment – one in which Americans reflect retrospectively on the reasons for why they rejected the war in Iraq.  Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to do so when there’s an unspoken effort in the mass media to ignore the basic reasons for why Americans turned against the invasion and occupation of Iraq.  The real reasons for why so many opposed the war are unspeakable in a political-media system that prides itself on promoting an image of the United States as committed to selflessly promoting democracy, human rights, and American security abroad.  When academics, journalists, pollsters, and politicians all join together to consciously ignore moral challenges to U.S. foreign policy, then it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to have a rational national dialogue on war.  Without such a dialogue, it also makes it difficult to have a productive discussion about how to challenge and reject official propaganda, misinformation, and lies in the future.  On this 10-year anniversary, that dialogue is needed more than ever if there’s to be any hope of limiting wars of aggression in the future.

For the complete article, please go here: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15292-the-iraq-retrospective-we-deserve

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 Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower 

If we don't end war, war will end us. 
H. G. Wells 

 If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa 

The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.
Carlos Santana