"Stuff Happens," The Unspooling of neoliberalism 20 years after the start of the Iraq War.
20 years ago today, Shock and Awe came to Iraq. Bagdad was turned into Dresden 2.0 by the USA and Britain on March 20, 2003. We destroyed a nation's infrastructure and people on the pretext of fudged intelligence that said Saddam Hussein an unpleasant dictator had weapons of mass destruction.
Millions upon, millions of people around the world, including my dad marched to try to stop America and Britain from bringing their Gotterdammerung tour to Iraq. But it failed to prevent the war. The modern Horsemen of the Apocalypse: the political class, the industrial-military complex, the news media and the oil lobby were unstoppable because they were riding towards battle motivated by avarice and tunes of glory.
Still, I regret I didn't march against the coming war in Iraq. To my shame, I drank some of that corporate news media Kool-Aid and half-heartedly believed the war was necessary.
My dad, from the get-go, knew it was a folly that would obliterate the lives of millions. He understood the nature of war better than I because he'd served in the RAF during WW2, whereas I was just a baby boomer.
When Bagdad fell, and the looting of it began in earnest, my tepid support for Bush and Blair's military conflict stopped. I was now against the war because even the propaganda footage shown by CNN or the BBC couldn't obscure the scale of needless destruction of life and property.
It was nauseating to watch the hubris of a current empire and a former one pretend they were in Iraq to bring peace and democracy to the region. It was evident each time US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave his daily briefing that the mission was for revenge, greed and hegemony, or as he said when asked to comment on the looting and violence that followed the fall of the Capital, "Stuff happens."
Stuff did happen, including the deaths of at least 500 thousand Iraqi civilians during the course and aftermath of the war. US and British forces were implicated in a litany of war crimes that included murder, rape, torture, and the use of depleted uranium ammunition against enemy forces. Despite human rights groups and independent journalists who outlined thousands of potential crimes against humanity, the corporate press downplayed the incidences or framed them as individual crimes committed in the fog of war rather than state-sanction atrocities.
Two decades after the war, Iraq is a failed state where most of its population lives in rank poverty without access to proper housing, education or medical services. We did to Iraq what the Roman Empire once did to their geopolitical enemies; turn their lands into a desert and called it peace.
But not everybody did badly from the war, the oil companies were the richer for it. America's mercenary contractors earned fat pay packets by being soldiers for hire in Iraq. It allowed them to live the dream of the well-off stateside. Anyone who is still alive from George Bush's War Cabinet, the State Department or War Department has made rich second incomes because of Iraq. They are now military lobbyists, speakers on the rubber chicken circuit, cable news network pundits or authors of books about "Democracy."
Tony Blair and his New Labour team did just as admirably from the conflict because Britain's news media normalised the Iraq War as an "honest mistake." Since the war, Blair has been served to the public by the press as a seasoned statesman. He is cod liver oil; something that tastes awful but is ultimately good for you. The commentariat and the press tell us; sure Tony Blair messed up in Iraq, but without him, there would have been no Labour's "Sure Start" or Good Friday Agreement. I think that is no more true than Germany today would have no Autobahn were it not for the “foresight” of Hitler.
Bush and Blair went unpunished for making the Iraq War. But every ordinary person across our globe has paid a toll for that war. Iraqis lost millions of people to the war, either dead or wounded. Their cities were obliterated, and their sovereignty is still forfeit.
The Mideast is more unstable, violent, misogynistic, sectarian and poverty-stricken since the Iraq War. Democracy was punished because there is less of it now around the world than when the Iraq War began 20 years ago.
The war began the great unspooling of neoliberalism. Everything from the bank crashes, the austerity, unaffordable housing, and the privatisation of healthcare can be laid at the feet of those who directed that war. Even the rise of Donald Trump, fascism and Britain’s Brexit can find their inspiration to exist from the Iraq War and the consequences of holding harmless the makers of that conflict.
You see, we didn't punish those responsible for Iraq. Not doing that gave carte blanche to those who followed after the war in government, business and corporate news media to do as they pleased. They knew all their actions would be held harmless by us as long as consumer choice was abundant and available with easy credit terms.
The only thing is our chickens of that war have finally come home to roost. The good times are now gone for the ordinary because of the cost of living crisis, the covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the potential for war with China and the bank sector on the ropes, not in a repeat of 2008 but in a new horror show. The road ahead won't be pleasant because we can trust no politician to lead us to safety. But face it we must. Let's hope we will have the courage and intelligence to meet what is coming. Although I fear we will display the same foolish, myopia that took us first into war with Iraq and then allowed our societies to be ripped apart like a sail torn from a mast in a storm.
As always, thank you for reading. Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John
