The Iraq War and the Original Sin of a Dying American Empire.
Politically, nothing since the rise of the Nazis has been as fucked up as 2025 for society. Every hour, history is either being made by dangerous geopolitical events or suppressed, spun and gas-lit by a corporate news media owned by a corrupt 1%. There is a catastrophic and tragic end approaching the USA and every nation or corporation that sails under its flag of imperialism. It could could have been prevented if 22 years ago, the West resisted going to war in Iraq. But like the 600, our society rode into the valley of death under the command of George Bush and Tony Blair.
The Golgotha we are being frog marched towards wasn’t your or my doing. It was all orchestrated by the architects of the Iraq war, Bush, Blair, Big Oil, Big Tech, Big Industrial Military Complex and the Corporate news media.
At the start of the Iraq War 22 years ago today, I was an indifferent acolyte of neoliberalism. But by the end of that war, I became a dedicated socialist like my father.
My dad, from the get-go, knew the Iraq war was a folly that would obliterate the lives of millions. He understood the nature of war better than I did because he served in the RAF during WW2, whereas I was just a baby boomer.
When Baghdad fell, and the looting began, 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 America and Britain 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 Baghdad. "Stuff happens."
Stuff did happen, including the deaths of at least 500 thousand Iraqi civilians during the course and aftermath of the war. American 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 incidents or framed them as individual crimes committed in the fog of war rather than state-sanction atrocities.
The Iraq War was the catalyst for neoliberalism to unspool into the fascism that infects our economy, news media and government today. The bank crashes, the austerity, unaffordable housing, the indifferent approach to the climate crisis, and the privatisation of healthcare can be laid at the feet of those who directed and profited from that war. Even the rise of Donald Trump and the popularity of fascism in the West was birthed by the Iraq War and the consequences of holding harmless the makers of that conflict.
The lies that took the West to war against Iraq and the crimes of humanity perpetrated during the war were never punished. The politicians, generals, and pundits who sold the war were held harmless. Moreover, today, they are considered wise counsel for input and advice on geopolitical disruptions occurring in the present.
Iraq normalised war crimes being committed by Western armies and their governments. It conditioned white "Christian" citizens in the USA, Europe, Britain, Canada and Australia to view Arabs and all Muslims as less than human. This disdainful, rabid xenophobia is entrenched in our societies, and Islamophobia has become second nature. It is one of the reasons why the genocide against Palestinians- despite it being the only holocaust in history to be live-streamed, has not been curtailed.
The good times are now gone for the ordinary. We live in a constant state of economic and existential crisis. What comes next for us isn’t a brave new world but terra incognita that will be brutish, short and without compassion or justice. We should have arrested Blair and sent him to the Hague rather than have that farce of an Inquiry called Chilcot. Now it's too late because Donald Trump shifted the goalposts about what constitutes Weapons of Mass Destruction. Before, it was make-believe missiles that could strike London from Iraq in 15 minutes. But today, Trump designates Fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction to justify, future military incursions into Canada and Mexico.
As always, thank you for reading my sub stack posts. I really need your help to keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith and his Last Stand alive, in the public eye and relevant. Your subscriptions to this newsletter do that and also keep my housed which has become a precarious thing thanks to getting cancer, interstitial lung disease and some other co- morbidities during these cost of living crisis times. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. There is also a tip jar for those inclined. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John
So true. The destruction of Iraq was based on a lie to cover greed and imperialist control of resources, and that country has yet to recover. As ye sow, so shall ye reap ......