Iraq War 
-
SOURCE: TomDispatch
5/25/2023
Americans Still Fumble in the Dark for Facts on Torture
by Karen J. Greenberg
The persistent efforts of scholars and human rights advocates are chipping away at the secrecy surrouding America's use of torture under the banner of national security in the War on Terror.
-
5/21/2023
From "Shell Shock" to PTSD, Veterans Have a Long Walk to Health
by Charles Glass
Iraq War veteran Will Robinson brought himself out of a mental health crisis by hiking more than 11,000 miles of trail from the Pacific Crest to the Appalachian, following the century-old prescription of British military doctor Arthur Brock.
-
4/16/2023
No Blood for Oil: Examining the Movement Against the Iraq War
by Charles F. Howlett
David Cortright's history of the opposition to the Iraq War places the peace movement in the context of the underacknowledged peace movements of the American past.
-
SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/29/2023
What Iraq Should Teach Advocates of Foreign Policy Restraint
by Joseph Stieb
Many advocates of a less assertive role for United States power in the world point to Iraq as an example of the folly of intervention. But if they want to make their views a reality, they need to understand why pro-war arguments succeeded by offering a solution to Americans' post-9/11 fears and anxieties.
-
SOURCE: New Statesman
3/24/2023
The 2003 Iraq Invasion Was the Culmination of a Long Betrayal
by Noah Kulwin
Although the UK backed the US invasion of Iraq, that nation had been supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein since the 1980s to advance anti-Iranian policy in the middle east. Before the invasion, the government worked to cover those tracks.
-
SOURCE: Jacobin
3/20/2023
Iraq Discredited Liberal Interventionists. Why are they Still in Charge?
by Daniel Bessner
"War for oil" explains only part of the push to invade Iraq in 2003; the ideological belief that American militarism serves a noble and righteous cause appealed to many liberals. That general belief has been frustratingly immune to 20 years of exposure of facts about the falsehoods that sold the war.
-
SOURCE: Contingent
3/20/2023
A Known and Unknown War
by Michael Brenes
"Time and distance are essential to the historian’s craft. They help us pursue the false promise of objectivity. I should embrace them when thinking about the Iraq War, but I don’t."
-
3/26/2023
An American Witness to the European Movement Against the Iraq Invasion
by Brian Sandberg
The European Social Forum, held in Florence in November 2002, didn't stop the US invasion of Iraq. But it did usher in an era of pan-european civic action that remains powerful today.
-
SOURCE: WNYC
3/17/2023
We're Living in the World (un)Made by the Iraq War
Three New Yorker writers look at the impact of the Iraq invasion, from the rise of Trump to the collapse of public trust in experts and authority.
-
SOURCE: Responsible Statecraft
3/20/2023
Aside from Bush and Cheney, Who's Most Responsible for Iraq?
Historians, journalists, and international relations scholars assess whether lesser-known figures in government, media and intelligence deserve more blame for the Iraq invasion.
-
SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
3/19/2023
How One News Desk Got Iraq Right When Others Failed
by John Walcott
The former head of Knight-Ridder's national security desk explains how his agency passed by the agency bigshots, interviewed experts and analysts closer to the intelligence, and followed up on red flags that others missed in the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, instead of protecting their access to the administration.
-
SOURCE: Boston Review
3/15/2023
Iraq's Militarized Politics Keep the Country in Turmoil
by Simona Foltyn
Sectarian divisions and easy access to weapons have ensured that force remains a determinative factor in Iraqi politics.
-
SOURCE: The Guardian
3/17/2023
20 Years Later, a Massive Effort to Forget the Runup to Iraq Invasion
by Stephen Wertheim
The impulse for American leaders to forget about Iraq and move on reveals the pathologies of American primacy in world affairs.
-
SOURCE: The Century Foundation
3/7/2023
America Broke Iraq, and Itself
by Thanassis Cambanis
"The U.S. occupation of Iraq normalized torture, impunity, manipulation of intelligence, and a new level of official mendacity."
-
SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
3/10/2023
Iraq War at 20: What the Neocons Got Wrong
by Max Boot
"I desperately wanted to believe that spreading freedom could solve the security dilemmas confronting the United States—that by doing good in the world, it could also serve its national security interests."
-
SOURCE: Financial Times
3/7/2023
20 Years Later, What is the Cultural Imprint of the Iraq War?
The US war against Vietnam sparked a broad array of artistic responses, and more importantly became a litmus test for a future generation of leaders. Despite disagreements about the invasion and its serious consequences for the Middle East, the war seems to have left no trace on the West.
-
SOURCE: Foreign Policy
2/23/2023
20 Years After Iraq Invasion, Need for Dissenting Perspectives is Clear
by Matthew Duss
A left foreign policy analyst argues that labeling opposition to Ukraine's NATO membership as "pro-Putin" echoes the worst moves of the runup to the Iraq war, and that good policy grows from open discussion.
-
SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/23/2023
Why We Went to War on Iraq
by Melvyn P. Leffler`
One foreign policy historian argues that the decision to invade Iraq was made out of genuine concern for thwarting attacks on Americans and preserving the United States' ability to use military power in the Middle East.
-
SOURCE: Substack
10/18/2021
Why Powell's UN Speech Was So Crucial (and Bad)
by Greg Mitchell
Colin Powell's 2003 speech to the United Nations was short on evidence for Saddam Hussein's WMD program, but he put down his reputation as collateral, changing history for the worse.
-
SOURCE: New York Times
10/18/2021
Colin Powell Dies at 84; Career of Military and Diplomatic Leadership Featured Controversial Support for Iraq Invasion
“I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world,” Mr. Powell said, acknowledging that his presentation “will always be a part of my record.”
News
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel