Barry Lando’s “The American Legacy in Iraq” Documents what Happens — When the United States’ Ignorance Combines Arrogance with Militarism — to Produce Geopolitical Hell on Earth — Then Turns to Ask (Like a 4-Year-Old), “Who Me?”

© 2014 Peter Free

 

11 January 2014

 

 

Citation

 

Barry Lando, The American Legacy in Iraq, CounterPunch (10 January 2014)

 

 

We Americans are really good at ignoring the anti-humanitarian consequences of the foreign policy interventions we begin — the Iraq War’s aftermath is a recent example

 

Recently, two ex-Marines have expressed moral unhappiness with America’s Iraq legacy.

 

The implication of both essays is that perhaps we should not have been there at all.  And, if we did have to go in, we should have done a much better job fixing the mess we created:

 

Paul Szoldra, Tell Me Again, Why Did My Friends Die In Iraq?, Business Insider (03 January 2014)

 

Ross Caputi, I helped destroy Falluja in 2004. I won't be complicit again, The Guardian (10 January 2014)

 

Joining them is Barry Lando, who has just published a very brief historical overview of the relevant details:

 

 

By 1999 a UNICEF study concluded that half a million Iraqi children perished in the previous eight years because of the [economic] sanctions—and that was four years before they ended.

 

Another American expert in 2003 estimated that the sanctions killed between 343,900 and 529,000 young children and infants–certainly more young people than were ever killed by Saddam Hussein.

 

Harvard medical researchers . . . reported that four out of five children interviewed were fearful of losing their families; two-thirds doubted whether they themselves would survive to adulthood. They were “the most traumatized children of war ever described.”

 

The experts concluded that “a majority of Iraq’s children would suffer from severe psychological problems throughout their lives.”

 

Much more chilling, is the fact that the Harvard study was done in 1991, after the sanctions had been in effect for only seven months. They would continue for another 12 years, until May 22, 2003, after the U.S.-led invasion.

 

[T]invasion unleashed another series of horrors.

 

Estimates of Iraqis who died over the following years, directly or indirectly due to the savage violence, range up to 400,000. Millions more became refugees.

 

And then, in 2011, the U.S. troops pulled out. President Maliki continued pouring oil on the fire, refusing to give Sunnis and Kurds a share of power. And now, fed by the conflict in neighboring Syria, Iraq is once again caught up in bloody turmoil.

 

© 2014 Barry Lando, The American Legacy in Iraq, CounterPunch (10 January 2014) (extracts)

 

All three authors are essentially asking:

 

For what purpose?

 

And how is today’s painful outcome not much worse (for the United States and Iraq) than anything Saddam Hussein could have done?

 

 

The moral? — The aftermath of American Iraq policy disadvantaged the United States (geopolitically) — and Iraq’s people (humanitarianly) — orders of magnitude more than leaving the pre-existing situation alone would have

 

The mask of good intentions is not enough to excuse ignorant, geopolitically moronic, even occasionally vicious American interventions.

 

You want to know why any sensible nation, including Iran, wants a nuke?

 

Just look at the way the United States has left shambles, wherever it has swaggered, from Vietnam on.

 

The United States’ legacy in Afghanistan is also going to be painful.  And there, we even had the Soviet Union’s failed example to warn us away.

 

Flip Wilson’s, “The Devil made me do it” — gives us just enough pause to reflect.  If we can get past the complacence and self-righteousness that so frequently blind us.