Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Saturday, March 18, 2023

Platinum Anniversary

As some readers know, for many years I maintained the Today in Iraq blog, during the U.S. occupation. The invasion of Iraq was an illegal war of aggression, and U.S. troops and mercenaries committed innumerable war crimes. The result was an indescribable catastrophe for Iraqis, with a conservative death toll estimate of 800,000 and most likely far higher, at least as many people injured, and entire cities destroyed. (Notably Fallujah and Mosul.) 


The consequences for the U.S. were not as dire, but $8 trillion wasted and immense damage to the nation's international standing, along with 4,400 military dead and 32,000 wounded. (Mercenaries who were killed were often labeled by the corporate media as "civilian reconstruction workers," btw.) Alissa Rubin in the NYT gives an in-depth update on Iraq today. The country does have an independent press, and it has elections of a sort, but the result is not anything resembling democracy. The country is run by corruption and theft.  Most people live in poverty and squalor, despite the country's oil wealth it is economically backward, and there is no safety or security.


We're still arguing about why the U.S., along with Britain, invaded in the first place. Bush, Cheney, Powell and Blair ginned up a campaign of blatant lies to make it happen, that the corporate media swallowed without even chewing. A leading theory is that the real target was Iran. With the U.S. already occupying Afghanistan, by occupying Iraq we'd have them surrounded. Of course the exact opposite happened and Iran is now a dominant power in Iraq outside of Kurdistan, and occupies the country with Shiite militias loyal to Iranian leaders. 


The architects of this atrocity, and the vast ranks of their cheerleaders in politics and journalism, have paid no price at all. I do think some of them are chastened a bit -- reporters seem to be more skeptical of official claims, and the country as a whole no longer gets enthusiastic about military adventures. On the other hand that was true after Vietnam but it was soon forgotten, and neither disaster stopped the military industrial complex from continuing to bloat without apparent end or limit. 

 

When will they ever learn.


1 comment:

Chucky Peirce said...

Actually, the fact that Iran is now our enemy is largely our own doing also.
Until 70 years ago the Iranians had a positive view of the US and looked to it as a model for their country. There is actually a perpetual shrine there to an American, Howard Baskerville, who died in 1903 while participating in a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire.
In 1951 the Iranian parliament overruled the Shah's choice for prime minister and elected Mohammad Mosaddegh as Prime Minister. He was by most accounts a charismatic and honest leader. However, the parliament voted to renegotiate an extremely one-sided deal with the oil company currently known as BP. When the company refused parliament nationalized the oil company. The British would have none of that, blockaded Iran ports and threw the country into a major depression causing political turmoil. In a referendum Iran voted overwhelmingly (>99%) to give Mosaddegh autocratic powers to restore the economy. The CIA sent some agents to see what the situation was, and they discovered that one segment of the coalition supporting Mosaddegh was the Iranian Communist party. The Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen, would have none of that so, together with the British, they engineered a coup against the government using propaganda and hired local thugs. This led to the Shah being reinstated and Mosaddegh being tried and jailed. The Shah weak and indecisive but the US propped him up militarily (in exchange for a large helping of Iranian oil). The Shah found that the only way he could control his country was through brutal and repressive measures.
And the rest is a history that we're all to familiar with.