Malou Innocent: The Iraq War is Still a Massive Mistake
[Malou Innocent is a foreign-policy analyst at the Cato Institute.]
There’s a growing narrative that Iraq’s solidifying democracy makes the seven years of US war and occupation a worthy enterprise.
Some observers have even spun Iraq’s March 7 elections as proof that democracy promotion via military occupation can succeed. Don’t believe the hype. The Iraq war remains a mistake of mammoth proportions. And Iraq’s election represents a pyrrhic victory, as the economic, political, and moral costs of the occupation far outweigh any benefits....
A...side effect of the war waged purportedly in democracy’s name is that it came at the expense of America’s already frayed reputation in the Muslim world. Far from being seen as a benevolent liberator, the United States was perceived as a blundering behemoth – and an abusive, hypocritical one to boot.
People of the region are well aware of Washington’s policies toward Iraq in the decades preceding 9/11. Policymakers tacitly supported the Baath Party’s suppression of the Iraqi Communist Party in 1963, and helped restore the Baathists to power after a takeover by pro-Nasser Arab nationalists in 1968. From 1980 to 1988, during the Iran-Iraq War, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency gave Hussein battle-planning assistance, satellite imagery, tactical planning for airstrikes, and information on Iranian deployments.
As The Economist detailed last fall, torture became routine under the US-supported Maliki regime. Hussein-era tactics of censorship are also reemerging. The government announced plans to censor imported books and the Internet, and rescind the protective anonymity of e-mailers and bloggers. These repressive policies are quite similar to those imposed by yet another US-supported dictator in the region: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. As modern-day Egypt and now Iraq demonstrate, countries with procedural elections yet devoid of liberal norms can merely be Potemkin villages masquerading as democracies....
Seven years later, let’s hope Americans have learned the right lessons. Let’s hope, too, that fortunes in the Middle East will turn for the better, not just for the US and its tarnished prestige, but for the millions of innocent civilians uprooted by conflict.
Read entire article at CS Monitor
There’s a growing narrative that Iraq’s solidifying democracy makes the seven years of US war and occupation a worthy enterprise.
Some observers have even spun Iraq’s March 7 elections as proof that democracy promotion via military occupation can succeed. Don’t believe the hype. The Iraq war remains a mistake of mammoth proportions. And Iraq’s election represents a pyrrhic victory, as the economic, political, and moral costs of the occupation far outweigh any benefits....
A...side effect of the war waged purportedly in democracy’s name is that it came at the expense of America’s already frayed reputation in the Muslim world. Far from being seen as a benevolent liberator, the United States was perceived as a blundering behemoth – and an abusive, hypocritical one to boot.
People of the region are well aware of Washington’s policies toward Iraq in the decades preceding 9/11. Policymakers tacitly supported the Baath Party’s suppression of the Iraqi Communist Party in 1963, and helped restore the Baathists to power after a takeover by pro-Nasser Arab nationalists in 1968. From 1980 to 1988, during the Iran-Iraq War, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency gave Hussein battle-planning assistance, satellite imagery, tactical planning for airstrikes, and information on Iranian deployments.
As The Economist detailed last fall, torture became routine under the US-supported Maliki regime. Hussein-era tactics of censorship are also reemerging. The government announced plans to censor imported books and the Internet, and rescind the protective anonymity of e-mailers and bloggers. These repressive policies are quite similar to those imposed by yet another US-supported dictator in the region: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. As modern-day Egypt and now Iraq demonstrate, countries with procedural elections yet devoid of liberal norms can merely be Potemkin villages masquerading as democracies....
Seven years later, let’s hope Americans have learned the right lessons. Let’s hope, too, that fortunes in the Middle East will turn for the better, not just for the US and its tarnished prestige, but for the millions of innocent civilians uprooted by conflict.