Source: The Nation
The Middle East is still suffering from the consequences of the US invasion 15 years ago.
Fifteen years ago, on February 15, 2003, the world said “No to War”: Some 10 million to 15 million people, in hundreds of cities and dozens of countries all over the world, embraced the same slogan, made the same demand, in scores of different languages. A war against Iraq was looming, with Washington and London standing virtually alone in their false claims that Baghdad had amassed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
As we look at the consequences of that war today—Iraq still in flames, wars raging across the region—we need to remember.
Throughout 2002 and into 2003, while George W. Bush’s “Global War on Terror” raged across Afghanistan, Washington continued to build support for a war against Iraq. We need to remember how the mainstream media obediently fell—or eagerly jumped—into line with the propaganda churned out by the Dick Cheney–Donald Rumsfeld policy shops. The most influential papers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, led the way, helping to legitimize the spurious predictions of Iraqis welcoming US troops with sweets and flowers, of yellowcake uranium from Niger, of aluminum tubes that could “only” be used for nuclear weapons. Some among the liberal and independent media collaborated as well. Even Patrick Tyler of the Times (who coined the term “second superpower” to describe the February 15 mobilization) acknowledged years later the “grand deception in which we all share in the responsibility…. The military-industrial complex has its analogue in the press, the media-industrial complex.”
Bush had identified Iraq as part of his “axis of evil,” claiming that it, along with Iran and North Korea, was “arming to threaten the peace of the world.” Then–Secretary of State Colin Powell, just 10 days before the massive global protests, lied to the United Nations Security Council and the world regarding the so-called “WMD” claims, with CIA director George Tenet sitting behind him stone-faced and silent. The day before the protests, the UN’s weapons and nuclear inspectors told the Security Council directly that they had seen no evidence of such weapons. We need to remember that the UN refused to endorse the war, aligning instead with the global protesters.
As millions of Iraqis remember so clearly, a little over a month after the protests, US bombers tore through the skies over Baghdad, laying waste to a vast modern city and its sanctions-devastated population. “Shock and awe” was under way. We need to remember how the overthrow of Iraq’s government, the dismantling of its military, and the eradication of its civil service set the stage for years of military occupation, imposition of a US-controlled sectarian political system, and 15 years of death and devastation for the Iraqi people. We need to remember that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, perhaps over 1 million, died in the US war and occupation—and that doesn’t even count the hundreds of thousands already dead from the 12 years of brutal sanctions that preceded it.