18 years ago, a United States-led ‘Coalition of the Willing’ invaded Iraq on spurious pretexts. Toppling the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein.
Iraqis have paid a staggering human cost for Operation Iraqi Freedom, A conservative, independent assessment by Iraq Body Count estimates that between 180,807 and 202,757 civilian deaths from violence have occurred since 2003. By 2006, however, the medical journal Lancet had already pegged fatalities at more than 600,000, with subsequent studies validating and expanding this number to well over one million.
Successive waves of violence since 2003—insurgency, airstrikes, terrorism, communal violence—exacted a terrible toll by displacing people and destroying homes, infrastructure and livelihoods. Today, 8.7 million Iraqis are in need of humanitarian assistance, 2.6 million of whom are displaced, in a nation of approximately 37 million. Compounding the effects of the previous 15 years of war and sanctions, the invasion and its aftermath have turned a breadbasket of the ancient world into a country reliant on food imports.
The rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was Baghdad’s alleged possession of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMDs) that might be provided to al-Qaeda. War-planning began almost immediately following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, yet archive documents show that regime change in Iraq had been on the foreign policy agenda for years. In hindsight it’s clear that the neoconservative administration of US President George W. Bush sought a pretext for militarily confrontation and removal of Saddam Hussein. Linking Iraq to the threat of al-Qaeda provided that pretext.
The regime change agenda took the form of a disinformation campaign, largely driven by the US and UK governments, to discredit UN weapons inspectors and create public fear of Iraq. Bush branded Iraq, along with Iran and North Korea, part of an “Axis of Evil” endangering world security; while the UK Blair government’s notorious ‘sexed-up’ dossier claimed Iraqi weapons posed an immediate danger to the UK. The US sought the UN’s imprimatur to provide international legitimacy for the invasion, hypocritically invoking previous resolutions regarding Iraq’s putative WMDs while simultaneously deriding the UN as irrelevant.
Not only were no WMDs found, there was no evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime. The invasion of Iraq, however, breathed new life into the global jihadist movement. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) prior to 2003; the country’s rapid descent into pandemonium provided fertile recruiting ground for the jihadists.
The chaotic insecurity unleashed by the invasion, and the emergence of insurgency and jihadist terrorism, was compounded by the incongruous US decision to disband the Iraqi army and dismantle the bureaucracy. This effectively hollowed out the capabilities of the state while disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of former members of the security forces and government employees. Former Ba’athist officials and military personnel later constituted the core planning cadres of the successor to AQI, the Islamic State terrorist group: Da’esh.
Moreover, rather than bringing liberal democracy to Iraq—the new mission in the absence of WMDs—the occupying power installed a provisional government based on ethno-sectarian quotas. This was largely filled by ‘carpetbaggers’ returning from decades in exile. Many lacked a natural support base amongst the local population, so appealed to sectarian identities to augment their political standing. Today, Iraqis stage weekly protests demanding an end to this quota system and the corruption they believe it entrenches.
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Iraq: The United States’ endless war :amerikkka:
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Blowback is an excellent 10 episode podcast covering the history of Saddam Iraq and the Iraq war. Cannot recommend enough to anyone interested in learning more. Features Saddam voiced by Jon Benjamin and James Adomian as Bush :president-parrot-patriotic: recomendation by @CDommunist
Hola Camaradas :fidel-salute-big: , Our Comrades In Texas are currently passing Through some Hard times :amerikkka: so if you had some Leftover Change or are a bourgeoisie Class Traitor here are some Mutual Aid programs that you could donate to :left-unity-3:
The State and Revolution :flag-su:
:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:
Remember, sort by new you :LIB:
Yesterday’s megathread :sad-boi:
Follow the Hexbear twitter account :comrade-birdie:
THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:
COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:
Join the fresh and beautiful batch of new comms:
!genzedong@hexbear.net :deng-salute:
!strugglesession@hexbear.net :why-post-this:
!libre@hexbear.net :anarxi:
!neurodiverse@hexbear.net :Care-Comrade:
spoiler :fidel-salute-big:
So i want to tell you guys that im going to take a break from the site for a few days
the current struggle session has taken a very toxic stance with the racism against indigenous people and has honestly drain my will to be in the site, even with some of the posts i liked it just very tiring the constant struggle sesion that has lasted for a week.
so because im going to take some days off i wont the megathread for the next couple of days, sorry for the inconvenience.
by the way in the 21th is the Selma March , so if someone could make the megathread about that and post it in !em_poc@hexbear.net and not main.
so yeah, here is a song i like from a mexican band :cocktail:
Not to sound like a shithead/wrecker but: it'd be nice to actually browse this website for more than a couple of days without asinine drama making the browsing experience miserable. This vegan drama is by far the dumbest, most unforced error that's happened so far. I feel like we're running of the risk of being as bland, overly serious, and joyless as those breadtube libs
I'll admit to being a bit of a doomer sometimes but it's been pretty clear for a while that what the mods want the site to be doesn't mesh with what it actually is. Breaks between struggle sessions are at record lows and longtime comrades have been dropping out for a while now, but I guess it's all good if we have people from circlejerk subs coming in to replace them lol
Actually, I didn't realize how many admins/mods left just now, we're super fucked lolI just want some sort of online community where I can shoot the shit with fellow leftists, it seems like ever since the whole "bad-jacketing" dilemma with Beatnik, shit's just been getting worse and worse. Something needs to shake, and fast, or this is gonna blow up completely. Which would fucking suck since it's obvious how much effort this site took to set up
I dont know, Im not really bothered by it. I dont have an opinion on any of the drama - major life lesson for me was realizing I didn't need an opinion or take on everything . it's too bad that theres been a few posters that decided to leave though, hopefully they werent getting nasty pms or rude replies.
I'm leaving too comrades. I have been one of the earliest users here and I've genuinely enjoyed using this website, as it has filled a void that was left with the banning of chapo. My perception of what concept of this website is, was always appealing to me because I've always wanted a shitposting space without chuds. If we look back 18 months ago, what was chapo? It was a collection of "look at this dumb lib" posts, John Brown-posting and "click here to sign up and canvass for Bernie". I barely knew any fucking usernames and I didn't care about the personal drama of a dozen power users. The disarray and the lack of direction within the "chapo community" since the summer in a way reflects the destruction of the American "Left" during that period, we're only stuck in a loop of he said this she said that and all substance is lost.
As an Iraqi American, I only feel that it's fitting that this journey ends today, on this dark day in both countries' history. Before I go and delete my account, I just wanted to say that I love the idea of this community, but sadly ideas don't always manifest themselves in the way I wanted them to. I also wanted to say that as a "POC" from a marginalised community, I never felt unsafe or anything of that kind here, and I'm thankful for that. Shitposting under the name Sankara has been also super cool, I was so happy when I nabbed this name. As a final goodbye and to wrap up everything, please read through my AMA about the state of Iraq today, and try to take away something from it. Thank you everyone and as always :amerikkka: and :sankara-salute:
Man I'm legit sad about everything going on here, I like this community and I don't like seeing people fight like this :(
Big same. It's my happy corner of the internet and it hurts to see this happen.
I find myself wondering: did we do this to ourselves, or were the threats from "silver legion" correct in retrospect?
I really wish I could communicate to the younger folks here how totally and completely the US public was behind the invasion of Iraq. There's been nothing like it since, so there's nothing to compare it to. Yes, the left was against it. But the left was even smaller back then than we are now. Some liberals, too, but not a ton. And as much as I despise libertarians, I will give them some credit because a lot of them were opposed to it, too.
It sucks because it's really hard to communicate a feeling. The invasion was something conservatives, many liberals, and the large bulk of independent and apolitical Americans were behind. It was a kind of unity I've never seen before other than shortly after 9/11. Trying to explain to people why they shouldn't support it was like talking to a wall. To them, Saddam was a "bad guy" and therefore yeah, of course we should take him out. Behind all this support was the implicit assumption that the war would be quick, easy, and painless. Only when it became obvious it was none of those things did the public start to turn against it. The people who initially supported it didn't care about all the horrors inflicted on the Iraqi people. They only stopped supporting it because it was taking longer than they thought it should. While the public was lied to and the people responsible like Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, the CIA should be minecrafted... I do feel the American public also has a lot of blood on their hands that they have never even bothered to try and wash off.
:amerikkka:
I decided I'm just gonna roll up here tomorrow and resume my usual megathread posting no matter how on fire this place is, would rather die than go back to r*ddit
Game theory: The reason we all saw mod tools earlier is because there will be no mods left after the dust has settled on this stupid kerfuffle and it'll just be us feral hogs fending for ourselves
When the last mod leaves we all become modded up at once
Two teenage girls made fun of my cute ushanka today :deeper-sadness:
The difference between this site and my day job is at least my day job pays me while it hurts me.
Could we have broken our site over something cooler and more interesting than Veganism
I go to sleep for like 7 hours and that's all it takes for shit to hit the fan around here again.
And now there aren't any more lizards here? Feels bad.
My grandma's condition has worsened. :deeper-sadness:
She has asked to talk to a priest because she thinks she's not gonna make it. The hospital asked for my father and grandpa to visit her too. I also spoke with her an hour ago through video and she looked very weak and was having trouble speaking.
It's probably only a matter of days until she passes, tbh :deeper-sadness:
Meanwhile this site has imploded, the world is absolute shit and this whole situation has only made my depression worse. I just feel like strangling god for creating the universe
Missed all the drama today but the goodbye posts always make it clear to me how much less invested I am in this website than everyone else seems to be
Posting here too, cuz fuck it:
I hope the site lives and continues onward.
It would sadden me to see all the work that went into it go to waste and for everyone still here to be further scattered to the winds.
