US Vain Dream of Controlling the Middle East Not Dashed Yet

The Iraq War of the 21st century was an unjustified war the U.S. waged on the basis of lies that it created itself. In the end, it announced an end to the war using another self-deceiving lie that verged on claiming success for the operation.

On March 20, 2003, citing the development of weapons of mass destruction as its reason, the U.S. called upon the peoples of the world and, with many countries gathered under its leadership, brazenly invaded Iraq, quickly overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime. It was only afterward that the truth was revealed: The alleged development of weapons of mass destruction was a blatant lie.

From the beginning to the end, the Iraq War was really an unjustified war full of lies and doubts. It was also a war of great disparity between the opposing forces, a war in which the weak were the prey, with between 116,000 and 134,000 Iraqi civilians killed for no clear reason and 4 million rendered homeless because of the war. The war also left behind some 5 million orphans and more than 1 million widows. For a country with a population of only 30 million, these figures are extremely cruel and tragic.

On May 22, 2011, when British forces pulled out of Iraq completely, a total of 179 British soldiers had died. On Dec. 18 of that year, when U.S. forces also pulled out of Iraq completely, 4,500 U.S. soldiers had died, and 36,000 military personnel had been injured. For this war, U.S. taxpayers paid a total of $1.7 trillion in military expenses and an additional $490 billion in benefits for veterans.*

Deliberation on Expanding Its Sphere of Influence in the Middle East

In addition to lusting after Iraq’s plentiful oil resources and intending to sell all kinds of weapons to Arab nations, the year that President Bush used all his means to start this war of conquest in Iraq, he also had plans to expand the U.S.’ sphere of influence in the Middle East. It was just that the events that followed did not turn out the way he wanted them to. This U.S. invasion not only caused confrontation between Islamic extremist groups in the Arab world and Western countries, especially the U.S., but also provoked vengeful terrorist attacks and was the reason that the Afghanistan War became so long-running.

The Iraq War overthrew the Saddam regime and, in the process, destroyed local law and order, provoking unending conflicts between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to the point that terrifying news of explosive attacks became commonplace.

The U.S. Has Betrayed the Iraqi People

On March 20 of this year, the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, Iraqi rebels carried out 20 bombings in the capital Baghdad and nearby cities, causing the deaths of at least 65 civilians and security personnel and injuring around 240 people.

These constant upheavals and loss of life have already led to extreme dissatisfaction among the Iraqi people. In their eyes, through the so-called Iraq War, the U.S. has betrayed the Iraqi people. Everyone once dreamed of building an Iraq where the happiness of the people was the primary interest of the country, but now, the sweet dreams of the past have become the nightmares of the present. Even in the U.S., large numbers of conscientious Americans can see that independent regimes have been set up in Iraq, corruption is rampant, infrastructure is at a standstill and the unemployment rate is high, all of which create political and societal instability. According to a recent Gallup poll, about 53 percent of Americans think that this war was a mistake. Lies will be lies, and the masses of conscientious Americans have sharp eyes to spot them.

The Iraq War caused U.S. debt to rise, which, in turn, caused an acceleration in the decrease of the U.S.’ national power and international influence, making it nearly impossible to stop the decline of the U.S. The war has brought catastrophic consequences and a clear warning to the U.S.

Will the U.S. learn a painful lesson from this costly, unjustified war that benefited no one? Now that it is knee-deep in a financial crisis, will the U.S., which has always been domineering, tyrannical, arbitrary and set in its own ways, carry out a foreign policy that reduces the number of threats toward others and lessen its use of military force to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries?

* Editor’s note: For his statistics, the author cites an article published in The Lancet and a study conducted by the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.