Ten years ago today, the United States invaded Iraq — a country that had not threatened the US and that had no means of attacking it. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed; two million became refugees. A total of 4,475 American soldiers were killed, and another 32,221 suffered significant injury, disfigurement or amputation. Many more suffered traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Over a trillion dollars — about 40 percent of the annual budget of the United States — was spent, not including long-term costs, which continue to add up.
All this to go after one guy and effect what was euphemistically called “regime change”.
For and against
There were reasons for doing something. Since the 1991 Gulf War, which pushed Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, the United States had spent $1 million a week containing the regime of Saddam Hussein, mainly by patrolling the no-fly zones over the northern and southern thirds of the country. Things were not sustainable on the ground either: international sanctions had led to a scarcity of food and medicine and reduced ordinary Iraqis to poverty.
Those weren’t the reasons given, however. Nor was the cure better than the disease.
Expressed in 2011 dollars, $770 billion was spent to destroy and invade Iraq and $230 billion to occupy the country. Only $60 billion was spent to rebuild it.
Among a long list of sobering statistics, the Associated Press offered a ray of hope in that Iraqis have iPads now, that young people listen to rap music, and that individuals now can and do criticize their leaders.
Al Jazeera, however, pointed out that depleted uranium, lead and mercury from American bombs continue to cause extremely high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, leukemia and cancer.
The US is also bankrupt.
The $1 trillion question
Overall, the question that’s being asked in the American media this week is: “Was it worth it?”
The typical answer from members of the US military and ex-military is “yes, but it should have been done differently”. Prominent politicians like John McCain, once cheerleaders for the war, have toned down their earlier enthusiasm and now say that the war was caused by false information. The argument continues to be put forth, however, that Saddam Hussein could have become dangerous by now and was worth removing from power.
CNN, which a decade ago ignored the mass anti-war protests and largely failed to question the administration‘s fabrications, now uses the word “lie” to describe the latter. The network is airing a half-hour special this week about the difficulties faced by Iraqis today.
Fox News, a vocal proponent of the war in 2003, mentioned a recent Gallup poll in which 53 percent of Americans now consider the war “a mistake”. (Forty-two percent say it wasn’t.)
Yesterday, the New York Times editorial board wrote:
“None of the Bush administration’s war architects have been called to account for their mistakes, and even now, many are invited to speak on policy issues as if they were not responsible for one of the worst strategic blunders in American foreign policy. In a video posted recently by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Mr. [Paul] Wolfowitz said he still believed the war was the right thing to do. Will he and his partners ever have the humility to admit that it was wrong to prosecute this war?”
Something’s missing
What’s missing is any mention from the media that they were just as much to blame — for failing to research their stories properly, for failing to question the statements that the administration fed them, for spreading the lies they were told, and for helping to generate a sense of fear and panic about nonexistent threats from Iraq.
Maybe The New York Times felt it had already atoned. In May 2004, the newspaper printed, well, not an apology, but an editorial statement acknowledging that it had repeatedly printed unverified rumors put out by anti-Hussein Iraqi exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi and by administration officials such as Condoleezza Rice who were dead set on going to war. In some cases, the paper had been duped by its own reporters and had failed to exercise proper editorial oversight, the statement read.
The Times‘ executive editor, Bill Keller, said his newspaper made the statement only because of the growing controversy — in other words, because the newspaper was losing readers.
If we can’t trust our government or our media to make the right decisions, whom can we trust?
