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Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Why We Need to Remember the Iraq War—As Well as the Global Resistance to It | The Nation

Why We Need to Remember the Iraq War—As Well as the Global Resistance to It | The Nation: The Middle East is still suffering from the consequences of the US invasion 15 years ago.

Phyllis Bennis writes in The Nation Magazine:

"As we look at the consequences of that war today—Iraq still in flames, wars raging across the region—we need to remember. ...

"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.  ...

"We need to remember that the UN refused to endorse the war, aligning instead with the global protesters. ...

"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.

"We need to remember not only because we still owe an enormous debt to the people of Iraq. We need to remember because the war’s goals remain in place: expanding US military domination, controlling oil and pipelines, building an empire of military bases. ...

"We need to remember that it was Bush’s occupation of Iraq that gave rise to ISIS. ... We need to remember that fact as we work to end the Global War on Terror, now expanded beyond Afghanistan and Iraq to envelop Yemen, Libya, Syria, and beyond. Drones, air strikes, and special-operations forces have replaced the massive numbers of ground troops, but we need to remember that the wars, and the killing, continue. ...

"We need to remember, even as we work to defend the rights of the refugees fleeing these wars, that the most important thing we can do is to prevent and end the wars that create refugees in the first place. ...

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