by eurogreen
Wed Feb 22nd, 2023 at 07:36:30 AM EST
On the 20th of February 2003, George Bush the Lesser invaded Iraq, on the pretext, which he knew to be false, that Saddam had stocks of weapons of mass destruction.
The real reason, arguably, was that his neocon clique, closely tied to US oil interests, wanted to confiscate Iraq's hydrocarbons, for profit, and in order to break the power of OPEC.
The political cover was that ordinary, otherwise decent American citizens were baying for blood. They were thirsting for revenge after September 11, 2001, and they wanted to see Muslims killed on their behalf. Afghanistan was not enough.
And they appear to have genuinely believed (some of them, at least) that destroying Saddam's regime would bring freedom, democracy, and prosperity to Iraq.
So, how did that turn out?
Frontpaged - Frank Schnittger
I remember the feelings of despair I felt at that time. Also, the certainty that we were being lied to. And the difficulty of getting real information about what was going on.
One blog I found became a daily fixture for me in that period. It's still on line : Where is Raed?
Sunday, March 09, 2003
A BBC reporter walking thru the Mutanabi Friday book market (again) ends his report with :
"It looks like Iraqis are putting on an air of normality"
Look, what are you supposed to do then? Run around in the streets wailing? War is at the door eeeeeeeeeeeee! Besides, this "normality" doesn't go very deep. Almost everything is more expensive than it was a couple of months ago, people are digging wells in their gardens, on the radio yesterday after playing a million songs from the time of the war with Iran (these are like cartoon theme songs for people my age, we know them all by heart) they read out instructions on how to make a trench and prepare for war, that is after president saddam advised Iraqis to make these trenches in their gardens.
The blogger often mentioned a friend he called "G". This turned out to be Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who at that time an architect and military deserter, now a photographer and journalist. Here's his anniversary take on the early days of the US occupation.
American soldiers, stupefied by the Baghdad heat, stood clueless amid that chaos, and Iraqis - accustomed to decades of efficient centralised bureaucracy - were baffled at the rash and arbitrary way the Americans were running the country. Everything was decided on the spur of the moment. Sometimes the soldiers tried to stop the looting, but mostly they just stood by; sometimes they tried to control the massive traffic gridlocks, while at others they drove their tanks into the middle of roads causing even bigger snarl-ups. The Iraqis could not believe that their new colonial masters had made no preparations for what was going to happen after the invasion. Or that the whole adventure was based solely on their might and the messianic half-beliefs of Bush and co. When the myth of American-generated prosperity clashed with the realities of occupation, chaos and destruction followed. All the suppressed rage of the previous decades exploded.
War is never a zero-sum game. I don't know if the instigators of that war profited from it; I know that it didn't turn out well on the basis of any of the motivations I mentioned above :
- No WMD
- ExxonMobil seems to be the only American oil company operating in Iraq
- The revenge motive was clearly perceived by Muslims all over the world, and has triggered an ongoing low-intensity war with no borders.
