18 years ago, a United States-led ‘Coalition of the Willing’ invaded Iraq on spurious pretexts. Toppling the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein.

Iraqis have paid a staggering human cost for Operation Iraqi Freedom, A conservative, independent assessment by Iraq Body Count estimates that between 180,807 and 202,757 civilian deaths from violence have occurred since 2003. By 2006, however, the medical journal Lancet had already pegged fatalities at more than 600,000, with subsequent studies validating and expanding this number to well over one million.

Successive waves of violence since 2003—insurgency, airstrikes, terrorism, communal violence—exacted a terrible toll by displacing people and destroying homes, infrastructure and livelihoods. Today, 8.7 million Iraqis are in need of humanitarian assistance, 2.6 million of whom are displaced, in a nation of approximately 37 million. Compounding the effects of the previous 15 years of war and sanctions, the invasion and its aftermath have turned a breadbasket of the ancient world into a country reliant on food imports.

The rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was Baghdad’s alleged possession of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMDs) that might be provided to al-Qaeda. War-planning began almost immediately following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, yet archive documents show that regime change in Iraq had been on the foreign policy agenda for years. In hindsight it’s clear that the neoconservative administration of US President George W. Bush sought a pretext for militarily confrontation and removal of Saddam Hussein. Linking Iraq to the threat of al-Qaeda provided that pretext.

The regime change agenda took the form of a disinformation campaign, largely driven by the US and UK governments, to discredit UN weapons inspectors and create public fear of Iraq. Bush branded Iraq, along with Iran and North Korea, part of an “Axis of Evil” endangering world security; while the UK Blair government’s notorious ‘sexed-up’ dossier claimed Iraqi weapons posed an immediate danger to the UK. The US sought the UN’s imprimatur to provide international legitimacy for the invasion, hypocritically invoking previous resolutions regarding Iraq’s putative WMDs while simultaneously deriding the UN as irrelevant.

Not only were no WMDs found, there was no evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime. The invasion of Iraq, however, breathed new life into the global jihadist movement. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) prior to 2003; the country’s rapid descent into pandemonium provided fertile recruiting ground for the jihadists.

The chaotic insecurity unleashed by the invasion, and the emergence of insurgency and jihadist terrorism, was compounded by the incongruous US decision to disband the Iraqi army and dismantle the bureaucracy. This effectively hollowed out the capabilities of the state while disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of former members of the security forces and government employees. Former Ba’athist officials and military personnel later constituted the core planning cadres of the successor to AQI, the Islamic State terrorist group: Da’esh.

Moreover, rather than bringing liberal democracy to Iraq—the new mission in the absence of WMDs—the occupying power installed a provisional government based on ethno-sectarian quotas. This was largely filled by ‘carpetbaggers’ returning from decades in exile. Many lacked a natural support base amongst the local population, so appealed to sectarian identities to augment their political standing. Today, Iraqis stage weekly protests demanding an end to this quota system and the corruption they believe it entrenches.

• Iraq: The United States’ endless war :amerikkka:

• To Kill Iraq :parenti:

• Blowback is an excellent 10 episode podcast covering the history of Saddam Iraq and the Iraq war. Cannot recommend enough to anyone interested in learning more. Features Saddam voiced by Jon Benjamin and James Adomian as Bush :president-parrot-patriotic: recomendation by @CDommunist

Hola Camaradas :fidel-salute-big: , Our Comrades In Texas are currently passing Through some Hard times :amerikkka: so if you had some Leftover Change or are a bourgeoisie Class Traitor here are some Mutual Aid programs that you could donate to :left-unity-3:

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