"US President George W. Bush on Wednesday defended his decision to go to war against Iraq five years ago, vowing no retreat as he promised the battle would end in victory." - quote source: from Aljazeera Magazine/AP
If you're like me, you're asking yourself how exactly staying is a good idea for Americans or for Iraqis, Afghanis or really the the world in general since everyone is feeling the impact of this war in greater or lesser degrees.
So, on the anniversary of the Iraq invasion, though not a happy one, I thought to myself why not assess the "Battle of the Bush" and determine whether "the Decider" has made the right decisions.
There are many articles online, but I believe that that the one selected below really sums up the broad reaching impacts of this war in a digestible format.
Five years after Washington inaugurated its “shock and awe” campaign, striking Baghdad with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs, it has become abundantly clear that the war of aggression against Iraq has produced the greatest geo-political disaster in American history.
The war’s costs, in terms of both US imperialism’s global position and sheer dollar amounts, have eclipsed the immense damage wrought by the protracted intervention in Vietnam nearly four decades ago. It has already lasted longer than the American Civil War, World War I, World War II and the Korean War. Even in Vietnam, after five years of major troop deployments, the withdrawal of American forces had already begun.
A “war of choice” that was launched as a demonstration of the overwhelming and irresistible force of American militarism has turned into an operational debacle that has strained the US armed forces to the breaking point and eroded the strategic position of the United States in every corner of the world.
For the Iraqi people, the war has produced a catastrophe. For the American people, as well, it has yielded nothing but suffering and tragedy. It unquestionably constitutes the single greatest war crime of the twenty-first century. In both its motivation and execution, it embodies the essential characteristics of similar crimes carried out in the last century.
Read full article at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/mar2008/iwar-m19.shtml
- excerpt from www.wsws.org 19 March 2008
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