Iraqi Trauma Post-9/11 Horror

Exactly 22 years ago, hijackers took over two aircraft and crashed into New York’s Twin Towers, killing about 3,000 people. The two attacks were separated but by an hour or so.  The Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States’ defence secretariat, was also affected partially. Most of the hijackers were Saudi nationals, not Iraqis contrary to initial speculation in some Western press. 

Osama Bin Laden, the attackers’ organisation Al Qaeda, installed a hideout in a small Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where he was killed by an American elite squad a decade later under the second-to-second virtual watch of US President Barack Obama. His successors kept their “revolution” aflame, but the group fizzled out within the next decade, as the US and its allies hunted down the key leaders relentlessly.

America’s hyper reaction to the Al Qaeda led to Muslims in the US becoming targets of intimidation, scorn and such other homilies reserved for enemies. Then came the totally unjustified invasion of Iraq. From the beginning the US and its core allies were in the know that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein did not possess banned weapons of mass destruction. Mounds of documents subsequently said so. Washington cannot find any excuses to deny that vital knowledge.

Murky decision

US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice were part of the war team. Powell lied when he reported to United Nations Security Council about Saddam Hussein having at his disposal banned weapons of mass destruction that actually never existed. He justified the reasons for an Iraq War which started a few weeks later in March 2003 with the invasion of Iraq. Fox News and The New York Times were among those backing the war. The United Kingdom’s so-called liberal Observer newspaper did the same. CBS television’s star news anchor Dan Rather relied on the briefing by devious official sources in supporting the invasion. 

In London 1.5 million protested against the war but British Prime Minister Tony Blair went ahead assuring US President George Bush of unwavering support “whatever”. Opinion polls indicated that a majority of Americans did not want any US intervention in Iraq without the UN endorsement. The UN inspection team could not support the allegations of the lethal weapons being hidden. So false claims were created and the oil-rich Iraq was invaded by the US-led troops. 

A year later, The New York Times apologised for the error of its support. Powell regretted his presentation at the UN Security Council. By that time enormous damage had already been wrought. About 8,500 American military personnel and contractors lost their lives as against 1 million to 1.5 million Iraqi lives. Their families, much to their chagrin, eventually came to know what a hoax the cause of the conflict really was. Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, voted in support of the war. Now the US president, he said in February: “The idea that over 100,000 forces would invade another country—since World War II, nothing like that has happened.” More than two decades later, the horrendous war has haunted the American psyche as to how the people were recklessly misled by their government that knew the truth but wanted to topple the government of an independent country because Washington did not like the Iraqi president who refused to be its loyal pawn. There were also oil drilling contracts to be secured for profit sharks among American companies.  

Barack Obama, entered the White House in 2009 vowing to “turn the page” and end the protracted war. He ordered the American troops to pull out but deployed them again in Iraq three years later. This time, the reason given was to fight the Islamic State — something Saddam Hussein had accurately predicted. It took ten years for the US to locate the hideout of Bin Laden who killed at point blank range by an American elite squad and buried in the sea. America’s hyper reaction to the Al Qaeda attacks and Bin Laden caused Muslims in the US becoming targets of scorn and intimidation. 

Joe Biden recalled the troops not long after he was sown into office in 2021 but the baffling mess that the chaotic pullout shocked millions of American citizens and many millions more across the world. 

Hoax & deceit

Invasion of Iraq was wrong and committed deliberately. From the beginning that US and its core allies were in the know that Iraq had not developed banned weapons. Mounds of documents subsequently said so. Washington has not been able to find any excuses to deny prior knowledge of the situation. In total, the 700 inspections that UN team carried out did not finding any evidence of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. 

Saddam Hussein never had such weapons. President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice alleged on numerous occasions that they had unambiguous evidence, supported by CIA intelligence, of an Iraqi nuclear weapons programme. This was a complete fiction that is yet to be public acknowledged the American people and the rest of the world. Bush wanted to complete an “unfinished war” and his officials and intelligence agency obliged him. 

Mounting evidences gathered over years irrefutably portray how the US government misled its people to commit a horrible war that remains a big blot on American image. The US might wish the world to forget the war altogether, but that will not happen, as new files open and more details are pursued doggedly by researchers and intellectuals of integrity. 

No one is held accountable for the grave injustice on Iraq and its people all these years. It will probably remain that way, except perhaps for a critical assessment acknowledged by the US government some more decades later. 

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)