The Cruel Jest of American “Humanitarian Aid” to Iraq
By Juan Cole
The United States of America has no claim on the language of “humanitarian aid” to Iraq after what it did to that country. It is rather as though Washington should send Meals Ready to Eat to the good people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One is happy that the US has dropped food aid for the Yezidis trapped on a mountain after they escaped the so-called “Islamic State” of self-styled “caliph” Ibrahim. But the US press either has a short memory or is being disingenuous when they talk about a humanitarian mission in Iraq!
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent 8-year military Occupation of that country caused over one million Iraqis to be displaced abroad, especially to Syria and Jordan, but some of them got to Sweden and a few to the US itself.
Further about 4 million Iraqis were displaced internally. Baghdad underwent an ethnic cleansing of its Sunni Arabs, with the proportion likely falling from 45 percent of the city to 15 percent or so of the city. The “Islamic State” push on the capital in concert with other Sunni Arabs is an attempt to recover what was taken from them by the Bush administration. Likewise, the Sunni Turkmen of Tel Afar under the Americans were ethnically cleansed and the town became largely Shiite. Turkmen Shiites are among the northern ethnic groups now menaced by IS.
The US was the proximate cause of a civil war in 2006-2007 in which at some points as many as 3,000 people were being killed each month.
How many Iraqis died because of the US invasion, i.e. the extra mortality rate, is hard to estimate. But likely it was at least 300,000 persons. Typically wounded in war are three times as many as the killed, so that would give us nearly 1 million wounded. Most of the 300,000 who died were men, many of them with families, and in Iraq there were few or no insurance policies. That left 300,000 or so widows and likely 1.5 million orphans.
“Humanitarian mission” may sound good to American ears. But there is no way a few food drops can make up for what the US did to Iraq.
——–
ABC News: “Crisis in Iraq: US launches Second Round of Airstrikes in Iraq”
Posted in Featured,Iraq | 95 Responses | Print |
95 Responses
Juan, I am happy that the US is dropping food and water. I hope they drop a lot more in different areas so that there is better distribution of the food and water….and I hope that the huge number of Yazidi families get a safe passage quickly for they have no shelter on that mountain.
But you make an excellent point. We should never forget the vast amount of death and continued suffering in terms of the staggering numbers of impovershed widows and orphans and the staggering number of wounded including terrible injuries such as losing both legs, etc.
We need a memorial built in Iraq and the US for this. I hope there is great documentation and photographs of not only what happened but of photographs and video of those who are currently in deep suffering because of the illegal invasion and attacks. If we attacked Saddam Hussein when he was actively engaged in killing large numbers of Kurds or Shia, I would not have felt bad but we attacked him when there was relative peace in the country except for the mass suffering from the cruel sanctions we imposed on Iraq for some 13 years which also killed at least half a million children. The sanctions which led to large numbers of Shias, Sunnis, and others dying prematurely with great suffering (including premature death within Yazidis) also reveal that our policy in Iraq the last few decades has been not of humanitarianism but that of causing unimaginably massive amounts of suffering. Having said that though, I hope all the Yazidis reach safe areas. May God help all the people there from suffering and guide them in all ways. Ameen.
You are spot on correct. And the real criminals, Bush, Cheney, Rummy, and ALL of the neoCONS should be rotting in jail for eternity for their lies, crimes, and blunders of historic proportions.
Thank you for pointing to those, who are guilty for the crimes against humanity (the Bush era crew.) I travel a lot in the world, and can compare the news coverage in the other countries and the US news. All we hear here are stupid non-event news. One wonders why people even bother to turn on TV here.
Bush invaded Afghanistan, Rumsfeld was DoD chief… once Kabul was in coalition control the Taliban fled to Kandahar, most notably their leader Mullah Omar. Rumsfeld decided not to pursue (Bush had other plans)… now we pay the price. Bush was then planning to invade Iraq for oil.
Bush advisor Wolfowitz said the Iraqi’s would pay for the war… Bush advisor Rumsfeld said the war would last a few months…
Let’s not forget the real reason Bush/Cheney invaded Iraq at the cost of $1 Trillion tax dollars and over 4,400 American lives.
Fox News — Greenspan: Oil the PRIME Motive for Iraq War
America’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
It is impossible to undo a war, no do overs, no absolution for additional atrocities, you are stuck with the shame of what was done and for all time what you did will affect the lives of a growing number of people. The fact that we were lied to to gain the support for a war against a tyrant is irrelevent. This atrocity is to America’s shame and the distrust of the World will be our ex president’s legacy.
namora: Being lied into war is irrelevant? Holding people accountable for their actions is kinda what we’re supposed to be all about here. If you want to prevent this kind of thing happening again, you concentrate on the causes.
Thanks to Mr. Cole for writing about this. Instead of spending $3 million taxpayer dollars to sue the Obama, the Congress should spend that investigating how much damage we caused that country.
In the end the truth will emerge when history judges Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al., to not only have horribly botched an invasion but horrifically botched an occupation. And now we must go back if for no other reason than to reset our moral compass, plus we had a major hand in creating ISIS.
Many blame Obama for pulling out of this mess much too soon. But Obama was only fulfilling an agreement Bush had signed in 2009 with the Iraqi regime requiring all U. S. troops out of Iraq by 2012.
And EVERYONE seems to have forgotten that the U.S. had control of the $26.5 billion that Iraq had accumulated from “allowed” oil sales—THAT HAD TO BE USED FOR FOOD AND MEDICINE ONLY, PER THE U.S. What happened to THAT money, is it off shore?
Thank you for this concise and timely summary of the reality
of Bush’s war in Iraq. We need to remember this again and again, lest we slip once again into our easy delusion of being the perfect and chosen world saviors. If we are to have a chance of saving anyone at all, we must remember the cautionary tale of the horrible errors of our recent past.
This does not at all mean that Obama is not doing what is correct right now, far from it. It just means that whatever help we can now give pales into insignificance compared to the overall horrors resulting from what are undoubtedly the worst foreign policy choices of US history.
Actually, everyone of us who was paying attention at the time knew Bush in general, and the Iraq invasion in particular, would be a total disaster. This last includes the vast majority of the State Dept, CIA, and high-ranking military at the time, as well as of course all academic experts who actually knew something (excepting the handful of ideological idiots known as neocons). And so we watched that disaster unfold from 2000 until the present moment, unable to stop it or alter its course in any way, helplessly watching a tragedy in the making….. It would all be an unbelievable joke if it weren’t for the enormous cost in human suffering caused by this madness.
How could any human being choose the insane radicalism of IS or Hamas instead of a Ghandi-like enlightened way? Well, perhaps, simply set as good an example of insanity as we did, then remove all hope and next drive ordinary people to desperation. The watch as their own latent psychosis is amplified beyond measure.
We now see the results, as the after-waves from the earthquake and tsunami we started
extend out into the unforseeable future.
Juan, you didn’t even bother to mention some of the further costs: the continuing tragedies of the cancers and birth defects caused by the DU in Fallujah, documented at the time in Rolling Stone and ignored since then by the media; the contribution to global warming by the immense amount of fuel and resources consumed, by all sides, including by oil field fires; (no one has even attempted to guess at this as far as I know); the additional cost in lost opportunity by not spending these vanished trillions instead on green energy or infrastucture/education/health projects (ditto).
Bush et al screwed the entire planet royally. Their crimes have never been adequately addressed, thanks to Obama’s “let’s look to the future” cowardly and imbecilic absurdity. Nevertheless, this Prez is infinitely better than Bush, and just now is doing something which must be done. Of course, ironically this in part involves just destroying our own weapons left there by himself, but to do nothing now would certainly be worse. Maybe it takes courage to actually do something right after such a history of wrongs…
Yes to all you wrote. The American neocons intended to destroy the area for generations to come, and they’ve succeeded. What they couldn’t control, they were more than content to destroy. Israel’s supposed to feel safe now that the neocons have succeeded, but I think the opposite will come to pass.
We all especially politicians/congress forget the wisdom
of one of our greatest generals, who was also one of
our best presidents….
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
None heeded his words…now they have complete control
and we are all at their mercy…
ref: link to coursesa.matrix.msu.edu
Bush & Cheney along with the MIC conspired to bring us 9/11 as the “Pearl Harbor” event to justify attacking Iraq and the Middle East for oil, and continue the looting of the Treasury that was occurring all along. On 9/10 there was a meeting at the Pentagon about the missing 2.3 TRILLION dollars worth of unaccounted purchases, and the next the big distraction and looting on steroids to “protect” us… Bush & Cheney would be in jail except for the largest coverup ever of a crime where 3000+ American citizens are dead and nobody bothered to find out who was really responsible. The problem is stupid Americans who care more about the Kardashian’s, than the ongoing murder of millions of people for the benefit of a few…
Knock out piece. Why such large discrepencies in the 2006 Lancet report that stated that at that time 650,ooo Iraqi people had been killed as a direct result of the U.s. invasion. Iraq Body Count report, a Pentagon report somewhere around 100,ooo. Hope you write a stinging piece about the choice of Obama etc, news pundit using the very powerful term genocide for the potential killing of Yezidis but this same term did not apply to what has happenned to the Palestinians.
You might be interested