{"id":36693,"date":"2023-04-08T07:31:34","date_gmt":"2023-04-08T12:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/?p=36693"},"modified":"2023-04-08T07:31:34","modified_gmt":"2023-04-08T12:31:34","slug":"20-years-after-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/2023\/04\/08\/20-years-after-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"20 Years After Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been twenty years since US forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, marking the beginning of a new \u201cforever war.\u201d The US\u2019 declared goal was to depose the country\u2019s leader, Saddam Hussein, who had invaded<\/a> neighboring Kuwait and oppressed<\/a> various minority religious and ethnic groups in Iraq, including the Kurds and people of the Baha\u2019i faith. In his March 2003 war ultimatum speech<\/a>, however, then-President George W. Bush highlighted the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) he claimed Hussein\u2019s regime had \u201calready used\u2026against Iraq\u2019s neighbors and against Iraq\u2019s people\u201d and the regime\u2019s role in \u201caid[ing], train[ing] and harbor[ing] terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda\u201d as having inspired the upcoming war.<\/p>\n

When Bush addressed the American public, the US was still reeling from the September 11th, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, as well as the deaths caused by a failed third attack. Although Bush had not directly linked<\/a> Iraqi leaders to the 9\/11 attacks, in October of 2002, the year before the invasion and Bush\u2019s speech, the Pew Research Center found<\/a> that the majority of Americans\u201466%\u2014nonetheless believed that \u201cSaddam Hussein helped the terrorists in the September 11th attacks.\u201d By contrast, only 21% thought that Hussein \u201cwas not involved in the 9\/11 terrorist attacks,\u201d while 13% were unsure whether Hussein had played a part.<\/p>\n

Other Bush administration officials were not as quick to dismiss the possibility of Iraqi leadership\u2019s involvement in the 9\/11 attacks. Bush\u2019s denial that the White House had evidence of a connection between Hussein and the perpetrators of 9\/11 only came as a response to his vice president, Dick Cheney, who had suggested<\/a> that \u201cat least some in the administration still considered the issue to be open,\u201d according to NBC.<\/p>\n

Still, regardless of whether he had unambiguously associated Hussein with the perpetrators of 9\/11, Bush repeatedly claimed<\/a> that Hussein had \u201cnuclear arms or a full arsenal of biological weapons\u201d that would allow him to \u201cresume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region\u201d as well as, it was implied, in the US. According to Bush, \u201cthe dictator of Iraq is not disarming\u201d as required<\/a> more than 10 years earlier by the United Nations (UN). \u201cTo the contrary, he is deceiving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bush continued, \u201cThis Congress and the American people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida,\u201d the group behind the 9\/11 attacks. Even if he would not condemn Hussein as having been in part responsible for 9\/11, Bush emphasized the Iraqi leader\u2019s supposed connection with the established culprit of the attacks.<\/p>\n

While Iraq is known to have supported<\/a> extremist groups such as the anti-Western and anti-Israel Abu Nidal Organization, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, \u201cconvincing proof of an Iraq-al-Qaeda link remained lacking<\/a>\u201d following Hussein\u2019s fall.<\/p>\n

Still, as American anger towards Iraq mounted, stoked by the Bush administration\u2019s rhetoric, Congress authorized<\/a> the US to use military force against the country. In addition to Iraq\u2019s \u201ccontinuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability [and] actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability,\u201d the bill explicitly connected al-Qaida and Iraq, saying that \u201cmembers of al Qaida\u2026are known to be in Iraq.\u201d Further, the White House used the 9\/11 attacks as a reason to fear Iraq\u2019s unlikely possession of nuclear weapons: \u201cThe attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations,\u201d such as the Iraqi branch of al-Qaida.<\/p>\n

Two years later, in 2004, former US weapons inspector David Kay testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying<\/a> that while \u201cthe best evidence [he] had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction,\u201d it turned out that he and other top officials holding the same belief \u201cwere almost all wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kay claimed<\/a> the Bush administration\u2019s false assertions were not made because \u201canalysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration\u201d but because of the \u201chonest difficulty based on\u2026the information that had been collected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless of why Bush and other administration officials pushed the story that Iraq was in possession of WMDs, the narrative bolstered support for the war, which began with the March 19th, 2003, launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Just two months before the war, 66% of Americans \u201cfavored US military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein\u2019s rule,\u201d according<\/a> to the Pew Research Center.<\/p>\n

The initial phase<\/a> of the war was brief: Less than a month after Operation Iraqi Freedom was announced, on April 9th, 2003, US, UK, Australian, and Polish forces overwhelmed the Iraqi army, proceeding to iconically topple the statue of Hussein in Baghdad\u2019s Firdos Square. Hussein himself had gone into hiding.<\/p>\n

On May 1st of the same year, then-President Bush gave his \u201cMission Accomplished<\/a>\u201d speech, announcing that \u201cmajor combat operations in Iraq had ended.\u201d Again referencing 9\/11, he told Americans that \u201cthe Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on.\u201d By deposing Hussein, coalition forces had \u201cremoved an ally of al-Qaida, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.\u201d<\/p>\n

On December 13th, 2003, Hussein was captured<\/a> by US forces. Having been charged with crimes including the invasion of Kuwait and genocide against the Kurds, he stood trial in Baghdad throughout 2005 and 2006. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging, which took place on December 30th, 2006.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, insurgent activities were picking up in Iraq, with the 2003 disbanding of the Iraqi army<\/a> having left hundreds of thousands of Iraqis well-armed and without organization. US forces remained in the country, launching efforts such as those in Fallujah<\/a>. After sporadically striking<\/a> the city from the air, US forces occupied Fallujah\u2019s primary school, provoking civilian protests and resulting in violent exchanges between the Americans and the Iraqis. As the American-Iraqi conflict escalated, insurgents entered the picture as well, taking advantage of the instability to try to gain control of the city.<\/p>\n

After Hussein fell, governmental power was shifted from the minority Sunni Muslims to the majority Shiites, with Kurds gaining<\/a> their own autonomous region. For the first time, Iraq had a Shia prime minister and a Kurdish president. Sunnis maintained the position of parliamentary speaker but lost many of the powers they had previously enjoyed. The result was rising sectarian tensions, which were exploited by figures like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadi who led al-Qaida in Iraq and whose group was involved in the fighting in Fallujah.<\/p>\n

Additionally, with the US-led Coalition Provincial Authority (CPA) overseeing the new Iraqi Governing Council government, members of Hussein\u2019s socialist Ba\u2019ath party were forbidden to hold office. In the party’s place, the CPA sought to enact<\/a> market-related reforms intended to lift sanctions on and encourage direct foreign investment in Iraqi oil, the revenues from which were supposed to provide the funds needed for the country\u2019s reconstruction as a free market democracy.<\/p>\n

More than 30 years earlier, the Ba\u2019ath party\u2019s 1972 nationalization of oil had allowed Iraq to invest in infrastructure and human capital. According to the US Institute for Peace, Iraqi universities, for example, \u201cflourished<\/a> in the 1960s and 1970s\u201d until they began to decline following a series of wars and Hussein\u2019s rise to power. When the CPA then began to implement<\/a> its deregulation and privatization measures, Iraqis were left without the structured\u2014if corrupt, under Saddam Hussein\u2014state upon which they relied.<\/p>\n

As unemployment soared<\/a> and security deteriorated, scandals such as US torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison<\/a> were brought to light. Pictures taken at Abu Ghraib, a US Army detention center 20 miles west of Baghdad, show the rape and physical abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war at the hands of US jailers.<\/p>\n

With US-created instability in Iraq having created an opening for the insurgents\u2014the threat of whom the US had initially entered Iraq to curb\u2014the US deployed additional troops to Iraq. Between 2007 and 2011, the 130,000 troops that had already entered the country were joined<\/a> by an additional 30,000.<\/p>\n

Bush sent these troops to Iraq despite increasing American disapproval of the war. As the Pew Research Center writes<\/a>, \u201cby January 2007, with the situation on the ground deteriorating, Bush defied growing calls from Democrats to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq and instead announced that he was sending more <\/i>troops to the country.\u201d This \u201cNew Way Forward<\/a>\u201d was met with the approval of only 31%<\/a> of Americans.<\/p>\n

Iraqi opinion of US intervention was falling as well. In November of 2005, a polling effort<\/a> conducted by international news and research agencies found that 67% of Iraqis thought life was improving in November 2005, but by March 2007, only 35% said the same.<\/p>\n

According to CNN,<\/a> US forces deployed under the New Way Forward reduced civilian deaths from 4,000 per month in January 2007 to 500 per month in May of the same year. However, Brown University\u2019s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs notes<\/a> that \u201cnot all war-related deaths have been recorded accurately by the Iraqi government and the U.S.-led coalition.\u201d The Watson Institute estimates that roughly 300,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, as of March 2023, since the beginning of the war in Iraq, though \u201cthe actual number of civilians killed by direct and indirect war violence is unknown but likely much higher.\u201d<\/p>\n

With approximately 100,000<\/a> troops remaining in the country, during his 2008 presidential campaign, future President Barack Obama promised to end the war in Iraq, saying that the US \u201cwould be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in.\u201d Three years later, in office in 2011, Obama saw \u201call but a handful\u201d of US troops\u2014and all combat troops\u2014withdrawn from Iraq and the US flag of command lowered from its position over Baghdad. 75% of Americans approved of the withdrawal.<\/p>\n

In 2014, however, with the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Obama began to target<\/a> the extremist group via drone strikes in both Iraq and Syria. The US and coalition partners also reinitiated previous efforts to train and advise Iraq\u2019s military.<\/p>\n

While in 2011, prior to US withdrawal, 56% of Americans believed<\/a> that the US had \u201cmostly succeeded\u201d in achieving its goals in Iraq, seven years later, in 2018, only 39% made the same conclusion. More than half\u201453%\u2014said the US had \u201cfailed to achieve its goals\u201d in the country.<\/p>\n

In 2023, roughly 2500 US troops remain<\/a> in Iraq, continuing the “train and advise” mission begun by Obama. Though, US troops are now more concerned with containing Iraq\u2019s neighboring Iran than managing affairs in Iraq itself. US presence poses challenges to Iranian forces attempting to move weapons across Iraq and Syria into Lebanon, whose anti-Israel groups aim to use them against their southern, US-backed neighbor.<\/p>\n

On March 29th, the Senate voted<\/a> 66-30 to repeal the legislation that initially authorized the US to enter the Iraq War and the earlier 1991 Gulf War from which many of the issues that prompted the Iraq War stemmed.<\/p>\n

NPR writes<\/a> that \u201cthe action is largely symbolic as the U.S. combat operations against Iraq ended more than a decade ago, and if enacted, the repeals would have no effect on any ongoing military operations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been twenty years since US forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, marking the beginning of a new \u201cforever war.\u201d The US\u2019 declared goal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":576,"featured_media":36694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2724,1],"tags":[4138,2327,1101,1197],"coauthors":[3434],"class_list":["post-36693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-worldnews","tag-iraq","tag-middle-east","tag-united-states","tag-war"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/576"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36693"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36753,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36693\/revisions\/36753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36693"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=36693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}