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Twenty years ago! Unbelievable! And worth an exclamation point or two!! (Or three!!!) Think of March 20th, the day in 2003 when the U.S. began its invasion of Iraq, as the anniversary from hell. And worse yet, in this country, as TomDispatch regular Juan Cole (whose Informed Comment website is a daily must-read) reminds us, it's largely been buried in the graveyard of history. Meanwhile, Washington continues to transform itself -- with a recent helping hand from Vladimir Putin -- into the planet's preeminent good guy when it comes to war. However, in March 2003, as Cole suggests today, this country was Russia. President George W. Bush was Vladimir Putin, and we were the ones who invaded another land without significant cause.
If there was a difference between the two invasions, it was only perhaps that the Russians launched a war against a neighboring country based on a set of lies, while President George W. Bush took on a country thousands of miles away based on another set of lies. In both cases, the invaders headed into a hell on Earth of their own making.
Without sounding too self-important, let me say that 20 years ago I tried to stop that invasion (as Russian protesters, in far more frightening circumstances, bravely attempted to oppose Putin's war). I mean, it was obvious that Bush and company were intent on invading Iraq long before they did so. In response, that February (as I wrote at the then-young TomDispatch), I took to the streets in protest. And it was, or at least should have been, no less obvious that such an invasion would be a terrible, not to say criminal, act. In case that makes me sound quite heroic, let me just add that I was one of literally millions (yes, millions!) of protesters who hit the streets of cities and towns across the United States and around the world, carrying signs of protest in that moment.
And sadly, although so many millions of us grasped that such an invasion was madness personified, we couldn't stop it. No less sadly, once it began, the protests largely vanished and life went on here as more recently -- after so many potential protesters fled that country -- happened in Russia, too. With all that madness and sadness in mind, let Juan Cole who, unlike so many, never forgot what our leaders -- none of whom were called to account for their actions -- did in Iraq, prepare you for the 20th anniversary moment. Tom
The American War from Hell, 20 Years Later
How Washington Lost Its Moral Compass in Iraq
By Juan Cole
Who remembers anymore that, in 2003, we were Vladimir Putin? Today, our cable and social-media news feeds are blanketed with denunciations of the president of the Russian Federation for his lawless and brutal invasion of Ukraine. When Secretary of State Antony Blinken met briefly with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in New Delhi on March 2nd, he told him in no uncertain terms, "End this war of aggression."
Putin himself, however, has a longer memory. In the speech that launched his "special operation," he pointedly denounced the U.S. for "the invasion of Iraq without any legal grounds." Then he added, "We witnessed lies made at the highest state level and voiced from the high U.N. rostrum. As a result, we see a tremendous loss in human life, damage, destruction, and a colossal upsurge of terrorism."
Yes, it's true, on the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, that war is long forgotten here. No one in the Biden administration today cares that it ruined what credibility America had as a pillar of international order in the global south and gave Putin cover for his own atrocity. So, sit back for a moment and let me take you on a little trip into a long-lost all-American world.
Mission (Un)Accomplished
On May 1, 2003, arrayed in Top Gun gear, President George W. Bush sat in the co-pilot's seat of a fighter jet and was flown to the USS Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier then stationed just off the coast of San Diego. No rationale drove this high-priced jaunt save the visuals his propaganda team hoped to generate.
Then, from that ship's deck beneath a banner that proclaimed, "Mission Accomplished," he made a televised speech about the invasion of Iraq he had ordered less than two months earlier. Bush proudly announced that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." Of course, neither assertion would prove faintly true. In fact, some 2,500 U.S. troops are still stationed in Iraq to this day, aiding in the fight against leaders of that country's former Baath Party government who have now become fundamentalist guerrillas. And keep in mind that those troops remain there even though the Iraqi parliament has asked them to leave.
The rest of Bush's speech deserves more infamy than it's attained. The president declared, "Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians." Dream on, but of course Bush gave that "Mission Accomplished" speech to whitewash a war of aggression as a routine instrument of presidential policy. Describing the ramshackle, fourth-world country of Iraq then as "dangerous" and "aggressive" was as hyperbolic as Putin's categorization of Volodomyr Zelenksy's Ukraine as a "Nazi" state.
Note, however, that one phrase was missing from Bush's Napoleonic screed about forcibly spreading "democracy" and "freedom" with that new tool, "precision warfare," and that was, of course, "international law." At the Nuremberg trials after World War II, the International Military Tribunal had observed,
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