Ten Years Since the Iraq Invasion

After a decade of war led by the U.S. against Saddam Hussein, it is agreed that it was a historic error.

The Iraq War, one of cruelest and most destructive in recent times, began on March 20, 2003, driven by the United States and its NATO allies, who argued that Saddam’s former regime had been developing weapons of mass destruction, according to irrefutable intelligence reports. But no evidence ever came to be proven of the existence of such an armament, which supposedly threatened world peace. Neither did the existence of a superior military capacity.

Beyond the overthrow of a tyrant and the liberation of an oppressed people, for Washington, the balance turned out to be catastrophic: 4,475 American soldiers died and 32,000 were wounded during Operation Iraqi Freedom until the transition period, which concluded with the military withdrawal last year. They join the victims of other coalition forces and civilians of different nations, and the Iraqis themselves, in addition to the colossal material losses that came to erode the U.S. economy.

Now, even the same politicians who went along with President George Bush’s decision, such as the new defense secretary, Republican Chuck Hagel, condemn the war, describing it as a serious error. However, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday that Iraq would have been “probably a lot worse than Syria” had they not toppled Saddam, because he had utilized chemical weapons against his own people. The ex-premier believes “sincerely and deeply” that Saddam was a threat to world security, and for this reason, the United Kingdom joined the allied forces’ intervention. Blair’s words contrast with those of his deputy prime minister, John Prescott, who recognized that the invasion, in which 179 British soldiers died, “cannot be justified.”

The American public’s thinking has similarly varied. Support for the invasion at more than 70 percent in 2003, but one of the latest surveys puts it at 50 percent, at a time when there are those who consider it a grave tactical and strategic error, serious enough to be considered a second Vietnam.

Iraq, however, has not overcome its political, economic and social problems or the battering from the Shiite insurgency linked to al Qaida, which has promised to increase its attacks in order to recover the objectives of the fratricidal dispute.