All For Nothing

The sun had not yet risen over Baghdad when a shower of missiles shot toward the city in the early hours of March 20, 2003. Backed by a handful of countries, most notably the U.K, the U.S. had just launched its war against Iraq.

In one of those semantic deliriums that come with all great military deployments, the offensive had been christened “shock and awe.” George W. Bush and his advisers wanted to dive into Iraq with panache. And for what? To destroy the supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and, as an added benefit, to liberate the Iraqis from the implacable dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

Six weeks of effort were sufficient to overthrow his regime, but it was only in January 2005 that Washington and its allies abandoned their search for the nonexistent arsenal. Contrary to what the dramatic scenarios justifying the war had suggested, Saddam Hussein was not sitting on a huge reserve of destructive weapons, and his regime was not a serious threat to the region nor to Washington.

This pre-emptive war was, therefore, a war without a purpose, except maybe for the sake of freedom and democracy. Well, 10 years later, Iraq is still far from anything like it: To be frank, it has been two years since it seemed to be moving even farther away from these concepts.

The end result of this murderous decade is terrible. At least 120,000 people, 93 percent of whom were civilians, lost their lives in Iraq, and that is not counting the wounded, the displaced and the elites that deserted the country.

The U.S. has also suffered great losses: About 5,000 of its soldiers perished in Iraq. According to a recent study, the final costs of this war surpassed their budget by far: $2 trillion — yes, trillion — an amount large enough to dig further into the deficit and plunge the country into debt.

Recently, the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had zealously pushed this war forward, confirmed that, given the results, he did not think that this was too high a price to pay.

Let us see … Where is this beautiful democracy delivered to the Iraqis on a platter forged with blood and iron?

According to recent studies by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group, here is, in summary, the current state of affairs in the region.

First, security. After years of civil war, Iraq was appeased. Life had taken on a semblance of normalcy in Baghdad. However, the conflict that has been tearing apart neighboring Syria exacerbated the rekindled tensions in Iraq. As a result, in 2012, the spiral of violence resumed in confrontations that mostly follow a sectarian logic. They follow it so closely that most fear the country is on the brink of another civil war.

As for democracy, the U.S. occupation has left Iraq a terrible legacy: The Sunni minority, to which Saddam Hussein belonged, has been kept from power to the benefit of the Shiites, current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s religious group.

A secular coalition of Sunni majority attempted to turn the tide in the parliamentary elections in March 2010. Faced with this relative success, the regime has hardened. It has tightened its grip on its opponents with mass arrests, widespread torture to extract confessions, a failing judicial system and the repression of any protests of opposition to the government to prevent any contagion from the Arab Spring.

What else? In 2012, the Iraqi tribunals condemned 129 detainees to capital punishment, a record in post-Saddam Iraq. Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists has ranked the country first on its index of impunity for murders of journalists.

This is Iraqi democracy in 2013, a mere handful of weeks away from the 10th anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein. Did the Iraqis actually live better lives under the iron fist of dictatorship? One cannot be sure, but in Iraq, many are starting to ask this question, which, by itself, is proof of failure.

Is the situation a lost cause? Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group believes that it is still possible to put democracy back on track and prevent new bloodshed between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq.

Sami Ramadani, a journalist of Iraqi descent, is more pessimistic:

“They say that time is a great healer,” he wrote in a touching article published in The Guardian, “but, along with most Iraqis, I feel the pain even more deeply today.

“But this time the tears for what has already happened are mixed with a crippling fear that worse is yet to come: an all-out civil war.”

We can only hope that he is mistaken.