Opinion Editorials, December 2011

The US Exit from Iraq:

What Were the Reasons for this Costly War?

By Yamin Zakaraia

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, December 20, 2011

Finally, following the announcement made by President Barak Obama, the last batch of US troops are exiting Iraq very soon; the inhabitants of Fallujah are rejoicing by burning the US and Israeli flags; for sure so are the relatives of the victims of this unjust war, especially those who survived the gruesome torture in Abu-Ghraib and other prisons.  The rest of the masses in Iraq were indifferent, ‘ungrateful’ to their liberators! This is a suitable point to reflect and speculate -what were the reason(s) behind this costly war? 

One can imagine the US officials stating to the troops “mission accomplished”, a cliché often seen in Hollywood films. What was that mission? To locate Iraq’s WMDs. Regardless of your viewpoint, according to the ‘official’ figures, the blood of 100,000 Iraqis and almost 5000 US soldiers confirmed that Iraq had no WMDs; thus, Saddam Hussein and the rest of the world were telling the truth. In contrast, George Bush with his neo-conservative Zionist cabal were lying through their teeth, thus the huge mass protests within and all round the world; the maxim of democracy, majority opinion rules was discarded as irrelevant, it was war as usual.

Ironically, the pre-war evidence furnished only corroborated the view that Iraq’s WMD was a false pretext. The UN inspectors failed to produce any evidence, not even one bomb; despite the pleas from UN Inspector, Scott Ritter, this was ignored! The British Cabinet Minister, the late Robin Cook who was a physicist stated that you cannot hide Nuclear weapons, because they are easily detected from space. The heap of lies piled up with a fabricated ‘dodgy’ dossier to outlandish claims of a 45 minute threat posed to British forces was entertained for the tabloid mobs.

Even afterwards, when all sides accepted that Iraq did not have any WMDs, unlike the Israelis or the Americans, there was no talk of war reparation and immediate withdrawal of troops with an apology. Instead, the lie about Iraq’s WMD continued with a new spin, the Zionist neo-con dominated media propagated that they were shipped to Syria or Iran. Most probably transported on Aladdin’s magic carpet by Saddam’s elite forces, enabling them to bypass all the troops and the high tech monitoring that were placed in the region during the war!

The invasion also revealed certain truths about both sides. It ignited a sectarian war, with regular suicide bombings that were never witnessed in the past under the reign of Saddam Hussein. This implies the Arab-Ba'athist regime failed to unify the nation, as the fault lines were just lying dormant, until ignited by the US invasion.

Concurrently, it also reconfirmed the violent sadistic culture that is a feature of US culture and way of life. Numerous clips surfaced showing the US soldiers brutalising the Iraqis, and the initial denials by the mainstream media was eventually halted by the revelation of the gruesome images from the sadistic torture chamber of Abu-Ghraib. This was later described by one US Senator as their “boys letting off some steam”; indeed it was not the Mujahedeen, but GI-Joes raping and sodomising innocent young boys, women and men, besides raping women is rife within the US forces, so the soldiers do not require much training!

Apart from the human cost, the financial cost runs into trillions of dollars, which has compounded the US debt problem. What did the US really achieve from all this? Abundant supply of cheap oil as often stated by the red comrades and conspiracy minded Islamic activists? This maybe partially true as Iraq has been looted to some extent, yet that has not covered the cost of war, even the reconstruction contracts are now going towards countries that did not participate in the war. A more bizarre theory that the war was to prevent rivals like China and India to acquire the oil, this is not enough to explain the motive behind waging the costly war as the gains would be implicit in that, it prevented some of the resources going to their rivals. The costs still outweigh the benefit. In any case, the issue of oil is overplayed here, the US has plenty of oil and it can access that from numerous other places just as cheaply.

What about ideological motives such as spreading democracy and freedom? This is probably a secondary or a lesser objective, because if the US was that committed to such values, then it would not ally with non-democratic nations. Moreover, the US has not been enthusiastic in embracing the recent genuine movement for democracy in the Middle East, shown by its lethargic response to support the Arab Spring, and committing only when it is sure of the outcome. Otherwise, it supports the causes selectively when it conforms to the foreign policy of Israel. Hence, it shows plenty of support for the Syrian uprising, but not those in Bahrain, Kuwait or Saudi.

Could the Iraq invasion have been primarily an emotional response to 9/11? The US needed to demonstrate their firepower to the Muslim world, in order to show that it means business. Therefore, Iraq was primarily a revenge attack for 9/11, their lust for blood and vengeance was satisfied, like a vampire needing to feed on human blood. It explains partially the brutal behaviour of US Soldiers and why many stated openly that “I got my revenge”. If so, how does that sit with the born-again Christian, George Bush and the Catholic Blair guided by their loving God into war who allegedly teaches that you should “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemy”, but did the Iraqis slap the cheeks of the Americans or the British in the first place?

Maybe it was a combination of all of the reasons stated and more, however, that was still disproportionate to justify this war, because there is no tangible or intangible benefit, the only thing is, US has gone deeper into debt, and Iraq became more violent and instable; it is left with a corrupt dictator and the country is barely holding together along the sectarian and racial fault lines. 

 Yamin Zakaria (yamin@radicalviews.org)

Published on 19/12/2011

London, UK

http://yaminzakaria.blogspot.com

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