The shamefully named "Operation Iraqi Freedom" by the invading American military forces was anything but for millions of Iraqis around the globe.
The start of the US and its allies' "illegal" war on Iraq, as former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan more accurately put it, 20 years ago was commemorated last week.
We did learn from the war that, when seen through a Western prism, labels in conflicts are vile hypocrites. As an Iraqi, this war has consumed my everyday thoughts since March 2003. Millions more others have been forced to flee their homes, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives as a result.
We will never forget the images of the City of Peace being bombarded mercilessly with bombs until the night sky over Baghdad was engulfed in flames. Iraqis prayed day and night for weeks in an effort to survive till daylight.
It was difficult to forget the years that came after either. Millions of people's lives have been ruined by the Iraq war, which has evolved into a repressive occupation and sectarian rule. Because of the horrific invasion, my own family is now dispersed all over the world, from Canada to Australia.Unfortunately, during the past 20 years, we have not seen any responsibility for the numerous lies and false claims made by the governments of former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which sparked a war that defined an age.
In comparison, during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it took current US President Joseph Biden just a few weeks to denounce his Russian counterpart as a "war criminal."
Of course, Vladimir Putin is waging a cruel and unlawful war against Ukraine. What about Biden's own belligerence, though? Recall that Biden supported an invasion of Iraq years before Bush had assumed office.
As a result of Washington's "shock and awe" strategy to overpower the country with its military strength, more than 15,000 Iraqis lost their lives in violent combat within a few of days of US military intervention in Iraq. To put this in perspective, and even if one innocent life lost is one too many, the overall number of non-combatants killed in Ukraine since the war started a year ago is thought to exceed 8,000.But while several Western countries and their allies have imposed sanctions on Russia and the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin, none of this was the case with the US, UK, Bush, and Blair.
Even the verbiage employed by Bush and Putin prior to their respective conflicts was remarkably similar. Bush used phrases like "freedom," "liberation," and "war on terror" prior to the invasion of Iraq. Putin also asserted that he was freeing Ukraine and reducing "terrorist" in the area.
Such are the similarities that, in a weird turn of events, Bush mistakenly criticized his own actions when seeking to condemn Putin's invasion of Iraq last year, calling it "the decision of one individual to launch a profoundly unnecessary and violent invasion of Iraq."
The truth is that both leaders manipulated public opinion to justify wars that reshaped their respective territories. Putin indicated Ukraine wants to use chemical weapons, similar to Bush's allegations that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Yet, it was Bush who used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon in Fallujah, Iraq, with infants still experiencing birth deformities as a result of the chemical's long-lasting effects. Yet instead of being held accountable, Bush has been given the freedom to rewrite his own story as an artist who values immigrants.
If he's not spending his retirement at his ranch in Texas, you can catch him dancing on prime-time television with Ellen DeGeneres. The architects of the Iraq invasion, former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, both died without being brought to justice. Before it's too late, Bush ought to answer for his actions.
Coincidentally, Bush pulled the US out of the International Criminal Court a year before the invasion of Iraq, making it virtually impossible to hold US authorities or military personnel accountable for suspected war crimes. As Putin's Russia has done with the current ICC prosecutor, US put sanctions on the top prosecutor in 2020 when she sought to look into alleged war crimes committed by US soldiers in Afghanistan.
In light of this, it seems hypocritical for the US to accuse Putin of war crimes. As a result of Bush's allegedly divinely inspired invasion of Iraq, at least 800,000 Iraqis died.
Insurgents were used to describe anybody who dared to protest the eight-year US occupation of Iraq. At the now infamous Abu Ghraib jail, numerous people were notoriously tortured and sexually assaulted by US troops.
But, comparable resistance movements in Ukraine are praised for defying Russian occupation. Using handmade Molotov cocktails as defensive weapons has been praised in Ukraine, but when comparable acts of resistance occurred in Iraq or Palestine, the term "terrorist" was employed. The past year has been marked by this racial double standard.
The heartwarming displays of international sympathy with Ukraine, such as the raising of Ukrainian flags at Premier League football games and this year's address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Golden Globes, were never seen for the victims of the horrific Iraq war.
The war in Ukraine exposed a disdain for the lives of people in the Global South who suffer from violent conflicts that are frequently planned in Western capitals, as if the loss of support and empathy were not bad enough. With all due respect, this isn't a location like Afghanistan or Iraq where a fight has been running for decades, according to Charlie D'Agata, a senior CBS News correspondent reporting from Kiev, Ukraine. You know, you wouldn't think that or wish that it would happen in this very civilized, reasonably European — I have to select those terms carefully, too — city.
The Bush administration's choice to attack a nation that had already been devastated by years of harsh sanctions in 2003 is directly responsible for the decades-long war that has decimated Iraq. Innocent Iraqi fatalities are equally as important as innocent Ukrainian deaths. Iraqis deserve life and solidarity just as much as Ukrainians do.
Bush should be held accountable for his crimes, just as we should insist that Putin be put on trial for his. Twenty more years are not enough time.
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