Iraq Is a Bitter Lesson for the US

Since the departure of the American troops, the country has collapsed. Terror and civil war are back. The 2003 invasion was a mistake.

For many U.S. veterans of the Iraq war and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the mere mention of the name Fallujah sends shudders down their spines. Here, during the year 2004, one of the most severe and most gruesome massacres of the war took place; here, rebels hung the charred bodies of four soldiers from the infamous U.S. company Blackwater over a bridge. Thousands of people died in those days in Fallujah; for the Americans, it was a matter of using every resource to suppress a rebellion against their occupation. Among these resources for Operation “Vigilant Resolve” were carpet bombing, phosphorus bombs and uranium ammunition. Two years later, leukemia, brain tumors, deformities and other illnesses resulting from the abundantly deployed munitions were rampant. Fallujah is a “symbol for the abyss of the Iraq war.”

Nowadays, 10 years later, the Americans are long gone, Iraq is collapsing, and in Fallujah a massacre is once again taking hold. What is happening there is an appalling history lesson in matters of failed military intervention. We can now conclude that the whole American war in Iraq was not only illegal according to international law, and built upon lies, but was also ultimately — with the exception of the removal of the bloodthirsty dictator Saddam Hussein from power — politically counterproductive and escorted by completely unacceptable victims. Researchers from Washington University declared in a study that at least 500,000 people have died.

The controversial prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s style of government is becoming more repressive and is completely incompetent with regard to the reconstruction of the country. An insular political caste in Baghdad’s halfway secured green zone has barely anything to do with its 32 million inhabitants. The national order is collapsing more and more. The Shiite majority surrounding Maliki is doing everything in order to oppress the Sunni minority, which formed the ruling elite under Saddam. The Iraq that the U.S. wanted to turn into a model democratic state is nearing a state of failure and is becoming a hotbed of Islamic terrorism. The Kurdish north is playing with secession. A large proportion of the blame for this development is carried by the former U.S. governor, Proconsul Paul Bremer. After the victory of the U.S. troops over Saddam in May 2003, he disbanded the 400,000-man army along with the reigning Ba’ath Party. However, the army and the party were the two pillars upon which the Iraqi state was resting. The Americans did not succeed at building functional civil structures.

Since the Sunnis have been deliberately marginalized, the power of the Sunni Islamists has grown — especially the al-Qaida-esque terrorist organization “The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant,” or ISIS for short. They operated previously under the name “al-Qaida in Iraq,” although they are also very active in the Syrian civil war. In this year alone, more than 4,000 people have lost their lives in attacks in Iraq. In 2013, the death toll was almost 10,000.

ISIS has become the commanding force of the Sunni resistance and has recently won back control of Fallujah. At present there are supposedly 42,000 Iraqi security forces engaged in a counteroffensive. More than 300,000 people are thought to have fled contested regions. Being introduced by the Iraqi army — as by the Syrian army — are barrel bombs, whose shrapnel and splinters have a devastating effect on “soft targets,” meaning people. Prime Minister Maliki has clearly taken the Syrian tyrant Assad as a role model, and is ruthlessly taking action against the Sunni uprising. The complete withdrawal of U.S. troops by President Obama was an admission to a disaster that was not of his making. Now the U.S. wants to sell weapons to Iraq for almost $1 billion. This will only increase the fury of the war.