Ten years ago tomorrow the US along with its Coalition partners invaded Iraq to topple the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. The question of whether or not the war was worth the colossal loss of human life continues to divide opinion.
Ten years ago tomorrow the US along with its Coalition partners invaded Iraq to topple the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
After a fairly hasty disposal of the Iraqi army and the taking of Baghdad, President George W Bush famously declared “mission accomplished” aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Since then, however, hundreds of thousands have died in Iraq, and while elections have taken place and Saddam’s Hussein and his crime family have been deposed, for ordinary Iraqis life remains a struggle – a 2011 poll by Zogby found that 42 per cent of Iraqis felt they were worse off in the fledgling democracy than they had been under Saddam.
The question of whether or not the war was worth the colossal loss of human life continues to divide opinion in the US, too.
58 per cent of Republicans say Iraqis are “better off” compared with just a quarter (24 per cent) of Democrats. Almost half (44 per cent) of all Americans either are “not sure” or say things are “the same” as before the invasion.
Source: Costs of war
For those who backed the war, justification for the invasion may be found in the fact that Iraq is now a – albeit flawed – democracy.
The idea that there was ever a straightforward alternative to overthrowing Saddam Hussein by force was always rather simplistic too, and relied upon the continued presence of a no-fly-zone in the north of the country (also a form of intervention), as well as on crippling sanctions which, according to some estimates, caused the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children.
However, one of the lessons of Iraq, the French writer Pascal Bruckner says in his book The Tyranny of Guilt, is that “People who hope to see local versions of the Parliament in Westminster established in Kabul, Riyadh, Algiers, and Moscow will have to be patient and learn to accept necessity.”
Quite.
The point missed by those who follow Tony Blair around demanding that he be tried for war crimes, however, is that whether one supported the war in Iraq or not one was still wrong. There was no easy answer to the question of how to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and were he seated in Baghdad today the world would still face the question of how to prize him from power before the country degenerated into bankruptcy and massacre.
Would another Syria really be an improvement on today’s Iraq?
What do you think? Ten years on, was the decision to invade Iraq the correct one?
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21 Responses to “Iraq: ten years on”
Newsbot9
I happen not to hate the British as the UKIP do.
Duncan McFarlane
What’s your source? How old are these munitions? And why couldn’t the UN inspectors have been allowed to destroy them – they were making good progress in destroying Saddam’s last WMD reserves and in destroying missiles ranged over 150km, as Hans Blix told the UN Security Council in two briefings shortly before Bush invaded. The Iraq Survey Group appointed by Bush after the invasion found Blix was right. And by the way how many chemical munitions did Saddam’s forces use in the 1991 Gulf war or during the 2003 invasion or at any time in between? None. Not one. Because Saddam could only get off with using them while the big powers were all backing him against Iran – and he knew it.
Duncan McFarlane
Like Blair they’d support any US led war irrespective of the evidence. And you’re telling us MPs and shadow cabinet members were fooled by cheap propaganda that didn’t even fool ordinary members of the public? There were 139 Labour MPs who voted against war on Iraq – including pretty much the whole left wing of the parliamentary party. Only 15 Conservatives voted against it and Cameron, Osborne and IDs weren’t among them. It was a right wing pro-US British nationalist war supported by Tories and Blairites.
Duncan McFarlane
I doubt having your nails ripped out with pliers or being shot in the back of the head feels that much better when it’s the US trained forces of a democratic governments doing it rather than Saddam’s (oh wait many of them are Saddam’s former torturers) – google Iraqi Police Commandos and check Amnesty’s annual reports on Iraq from 2010 to present
Newsbot9
The fact is, they were found. And that’s really not true, it depends on the chemical.