Eight years ago on March 19, 2003, the United States government flouted international law and defied the millions who protested in the U.S. and around the world by unilaterally invading Iraq. The rape of Iraq undoubtedly will be recorded as one of greatest crimes of the 21st century.
Initially, the Bush administration justified its unprovoked aggression by claiming Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. When this was exposed as the lie it was, efforts were made to qualify the crime as an orchestrated liberation of a people from a despot. The record of the past eight years has proven this narrative a fraud as well.
Remembering this grim anniversary is all the more appropriate given the military actions by the U.S. and European powers to enforce a “no-fly zone” over Libya in the name of “humanitarian” assistance.
On Thursday, the United Nations Security Council approved the use of force in Libya, including “all necessary measures…to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.”
While the U.N. resolution forbids “a foreign occupation force on any part of Libyan territory,” extreme naiveté is required to believe such an action is off the table for the imperialist powers.
Considering the intervention in Libya, it is worth asking, where has the “assistance” rendered to the Iraqi people gotten them over the past eight years?
A 2006 study conducted by Johns Hopkins University and published in the British medical journal, the Lancet, concluded at that time between 393,000 and 943,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion. Other credible estimates since then put the toll more than a million. Millions more have been maimed and displaced.After denying it maintains official death counts, the Pentagon acknowledged last year it had recorded some 77,000 Iraqi deaths between 2004 and mid-2008.
Documents released by WikiLeaks show more than 109,000 Iraqis were killed between 2004 and 2009, about 23,000 of who were classified as “enemy” deaths and more than 66,000 – or more than 60 percent – as “civilian.”
The infrastructure of this modern country was destroyed and never rebuilt. Reuters noted last month, “Almost eight years after the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq’s infrastructure remains severely damaged. The country suffers a chronic water shortage, electricity supply is intermittent and sewage collects in the streets.”
Some 47,000 U.S. troops still occupy the country, and the population despises its corrupt government as American stooges. Over the past several weeks, Iraqis have joined their brothers and sisters in the region, protesting against appalling living standards. Official unemployment is more than 15 percent while public services are inadequate amid food shortages and soaring prices.
These are the conditions of a country that holds the world’s second-largest oil reserves. However, the nation’s oil fields are now largely controlled by western companies underscoring the real motivation behind the invasion.
While it is true the ends can justify the means, it is always the case the means determine the ends. The undemocratic, brutal and illegal method by which the U.S. initiated regime change in Iraq precluded the establishment of a democracy in any genuine sense of the term. Indeed, Iraqis are currently being gunned down by their “democratic” government for protesting against their devastating social conditions to the silence of the American government.
The same original sin of imperialist intervention was at work with regards to Afghanistan, where one of the most corrupt and hated governments on the planet remains in power only by the grace of the American government. Hardly a week goes by where one does not hear American un-manned drones have killed dozens of civilians.
The imperialist “assistance” to Libya will be at the expense of the Libyan people. There are no shortcuts to democracy. It can only be obtained through a broad popular movement, guided by a correct political perspective, through which society as a whole determines its future. An imperialist intervention in Libya threatens once again to prove this true in the negative.
